Mississippi Gumbo

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host, Ramsey Russell. Join me here to listen to those conversations. One of my favorite things about going to hunt camp worldwide anywhere on earth is food. Gumbo is one of my favorite things in food, it seems like everyone has a couple of favorite things they like to cook or like to eat at hunting camp. And as I recall not too long ago and he was telling me that the first thing he cook most times when he walks in the house is gumbo. He makes it his way, got been cooking for years like that. My personal duck camps at table are things like olive-green, cornbread, I like red beans and rice made from scratch. And I cook a lot of duck. No shortage of ducks around the Russell household. I like them roasted. I like them chicken fried. You want to get rid of a bunch of them quick and delicious chicken fried duck breast. Hands seared mallard breast skin on. I love that way to do it. But one of my favorite ways to cook gumbo, that’s what I meant to say. One of my favorite things to cook is gumbo and everyone’s is different. That’s the thing we’re going to talk about with today’s guest is how gumbo is so different and so personal. My gumbo is duck and oysters and Dooley, if I’ve got some fresh gulf shrimp, I’m going to put them in there too. I like to make it from scratch. I don’t pour roux out of a jar. I’ve had some great jar roux’s that are fine, marinate, I like to make them scratches that process it is that whole chopping up the veggies and getting in the kitchen and doing it. That’s cooking gumbo, that’s what I like about it. But everyone is different and that’s okay. I’ve had them thick, I’ve had them thin, I’ve had them dark, and light from the jar made from scratch, personal preferences and taste is just kind of what gumbo is all about. And my go to online resource for the last 20 years. 20, some odd years was written by todays guest who says that web page was written, “back before he really even knew what he was doing”. Today’s guests is colorful and controversial. Those you all know him know he was subjected from nearly every waterfowl chat room back in the day. He’s a free thinker. He’s also from my birth place in the banks of the Mississippi River Greenville, Mississippi and our families, we’ve learned go way back to my grandad. My granddad and his father were close associates back in the day. Mr. Benny Marascalco. How are you sir?

Benny Marascalco: I am doing good today Mr. Russell, how are you?

Ramsey Russell: I’m fine and I understand you are in Greenville Mississippi back in old stomping grounds today.

Benny Marascalco: I am. I have been here for a couple of months and got some projects going on and try to take care of some old friends who kind of worried about this virus, hanging out.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’ll tell you what man, we’re all hanging out, you know Benny what made me think to call you and do this podcast, not just about gumbo in general was this freaking COVID pause this thing, the shelter in place, this whole fact that the whole world going through right now. You know my wife and I didn’t hardly leave the house for a month, weeks and we were going through the freezer and she had given me a really nice and normal cast iron pot for Christmas and I’ve been traveling so much, I finally had my feet nail before, couldn’t go nowhere. And I started making gumbo. I may have just, I’m home, I ain’t got nothing to go through the past. And I said you know, you know more about gumbo than hardly anybody I know, you’ve read a lot. Benny since I’ve known you always been this extremely hyper focused person. I mean I’ve known you 25-30 years practically my whole life. But you’ve always been very topically, hyper focused. Before we get into all that it’s going to be a long story folks, you all want to hear some of this stuff. I promise you. Tell everybody, introduce yourself and what are your duck hunting origins? I know you grew up cutting your teeth there in watching in a bottle in [**00:06:00] Mississippi duck hunting. What are your duck hunting origin?

Benny Marascalco: I actually did most of the hunting that I did in my entire life all in this small leagues and I know you are international these days. Getting around but most of my experiences in the Mississippi Delta. I started with dad we hunted lately and the Boss shell, let along the levee start with it, he was growing as to hunt. Man he met some guys who through his practice that had property and had ducks. And next thing you know we were hunting with Gerald down there around Hallandale in the rice fields and John had a lease there in the back of pea rose swamp behind like watching you know what I’m talking about?

Ramsey Russell: I do.

Benny Marascalco: Oh that’s where I shot my first duck was in that place. My dad gave me four of those paper machine, the decoys and in a bag and I had my 410 that I had earned by making straight A’s and whatever grade I was in, he always had to have something you do this and I’ll give you something. I got a 410 and the guys would never let the kid shoot after two or three of those trips. I said, give me some decoys I’m going to go over there and shoot some for myself and he did. He gave me four decoys or something. I wandered off in those big cypress there in that pea rose swamp. I got my first 2 wood ducks.

Ramsey Russell: You still got that 410?

Benny Marascalco: Oh no man it was one of those cheapies from over Gibson’s or something and bolt action 410. I do have an 870, 410 that I’ve never even shot.

Ramsey Russell: Your influences are a lot like probably everybody listening and I can really relate to it growing up in the Mississippi Delta because if you’re from Mississippi and everybody duck hunts. But really and truly there was a time that it seemed like you duck hunters came from the delta because that’s where most of the ducks were migrating through and over winter and things of that nature back in the day.

Ramsey Russell: All that stuff that we went through, we were young, of course we didn’t understand what was going on, but I stayed around long enough to try to learn to understand all of the migration and the reason why they’re doing this and doing that and back then I mean we were using red ball rubber waiters and a Korean hunting jacket and we were freezing our butts off. You had to want it back when it still got cold, you know, like if you had to walk and man, I mean I just really loved it. It was hard.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve wondered sometimes if it really got that cold in the Deep South, I’ll just freeze my butt off from wearing that time equipment.

Benny Marascalco: I’ll tell you one thing, I saw a guy riding a horse across lake at one time, it has to get pretty cold to be able to do that. So I’d say if we did have some long duration ice out back and that we just don’t see today you have a cold.

Ramsey Russell: One thing I will say since you mentioned I have since then traveled a lot of places around the world but home is who you are. You never, no matter how far away from home you get. You take home with you when you grow up like we did that part of the world. Benny Marascalco: Absolutely. How could you not?

Ramsey Russell: And I told this one time I think and I’ve just marveled, I’ve been in some of the most far flung places halfway across the world, different species and different habitats and different people and cultures, but somehow it reminds me of home, something about that experience reminds me of home and really makes me appreciate home even more. And I mean home. I live in Mississippi but the Mississippi delta, which ain’t for everybody. Folks move into that part of world, other parts of the world. I’ve seen some government folks come into take a job in the delta and they just say this is just way too different but we won’t get into all that but I mean influences home is who you are.

Benny Marascalco: [**00:10:40]

Ramsey Russell: Benny you’re hyper focused man and look I know you still do a lot of it or will do some of it but beaver trapping for example, there was a stretch, I can remember you getting into beaver trapping. I know a lot of folks go out with a catch your favorite too. But I mean, you actually wrote a book, a bona fide biblical type book on beaver trapping and I know one time my boys were baby still. I mean they were belt higher less and you came over and gave us a barrel full of counter bears and taught us how to, we got tangled up with how to get ourselves out. I mean, you wrote the book on beaver trapping, you still do any of that at all?

Benny Marascalco: Well, you know, actually I would like to get involved in a consultation for the project where somebody is having difficulty the managing the water and being able to produce a crop based on the relationship with the beaver. I would like to do one more of those because I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I’ve been involved in one over in Arkansas for eight years now. And my friend over there, his name is [**00:11:51] he’s one of the finest gentleman that I have ever met in my life. He’s a wonderful person who is interested in managing his waterfowl habitat correctly so that he feeds more ducks and he takes care of more ducks than he takes that compensatory immortality, he’s really serious about it and he has more ducks than anybody that you know, probably and he has it consistently, but he does and he’s got some beaver problems over there. And we figured out how to work with them. So I spent quite a few years killing them to try to solve the problem with that as long as you leave the food there, if you leave the habitat there, all you’ve done is created a temporary vacuum that will quickly be filled by other ones. So what you got to learn how to do is move water without them move it you from doing it, basically being the beaver, really the easiest way to do that is to be the beaver and move the water before they have a chance to move it and then stop it back up so that when they come to work there’s no work for them to do because you’ve already done it, you stop the water so they can’t push one hand full of mud to change the thing, basically the secret to managing beavers in a habitat like that is to beat them to the work. And if they can’t work, they can’t do anything. And it just ends up being economically much more feasible than spending a track or whatever out there to dig out all their stuff and three days later back again.

Ramsey Russell: Beavers are brilliant engineers. They are brilliant animals. They work, work, work but the only thing as somebody that has to, we then the delta, every ditch and creek waterway slapped beaver I think it’s, but the cons ponding things about co existing with a beaver is without fail. They were out without fail. Where you want water they don’t and when they want water, you don’t and that therein lies in the irreconcilable differences is, if I could ever get on the same page with a beaver my job would be complete but on the same page with beaver you know, we want water over here they want it over there, I want it over there they wanted over here again.

Benny Marascalco: I have to say that if, I have to say this about but it does not admire them tremendously. Beavers are for the last 100,000 years and longer. They created the fly ways that these migratory water files used to come back and forth. It was them they are the ones that have provided habitat for timing for him. And then we come in and decide we’re going to manage it differently. They don’t need our help. You had to be honest with you, the ducks don’t need our help either in that department. But you learn, if you learn how to have a symbiotic relationship with them, you can both live in the same place and both get what you need. So there’s a lot of things about moving water and how to move it that can help you do that. Actually my thing, those first two slough that you and I hunted up there in the [**00:15:40] I got to where those beavers would not frighten me when he got time in the spring to turn that water loose. They do not to mess with it. Once I busted that dam, we’re not coming back. I mean how I got them trained to do that with but you could –

Ramsey Russell: They probably just figured out you were just hard headed as they were.

Benny Marascalco: Well actually I did some pretty nasty stuff to them. I don’t know if I can say that kind of thing but I would kill them and wire them down on the beaver dam and would come at night and tell him all the pieces. So when their family and friends and neighbors came out there and saw that happening. Put spear rod in them and they would leave that dam alone, did that for a couple of years and they got to where there was no need and doing that anymore. They knew once I busted a hole in it, I’m in it. So they can be trained and you can have a relationship with them but most folks are dead they want the water gone and but it can be done and actually that could work for you. I’ve taken a willow tree like I wanted to provide this slough one time I wanted to catch water in the front and leave the back of the dry for later on in the season. So what I did was cut down some tall great willow and drove them along across that thing in a straight line and across the bottom of that slough during the summertime when we it was dry. Well the first thing they did was stop it up and what they did was segregate that whole and gave me 2 different holes out of one. All I did was just drag the trees in there they took care from there. So you can really use them to do a lot of stuff in conservation anyway, I mean I know they’re a pain, I trapped out all the time and that was 2008, there was a lot of problems involved.

Ramsey Russell: Well it’s just like everything else, they need to manage to get on the same page with them and I’m sitting here thinking as you’re talking, I know this is all over the world, but again that Mississippi Delta, you are who you are, your home, you are where you come from and you know what’s growing up there in the Mississippi Delta, Benny, one thing I’m not saying hardly anywhere outside the lower Mississippi Arkansas Louisiana or Indian mound. And I will say this though one time for anybody listening, I don’t know what Indian mound. I’m going to tell you what it is. Back when the ancient people, these ancient Native Americans, in the big flood plain of the wild un-levied, uncork engineered Mississippi river exceedingly flooded. And these ancient folks would, they built these massive mounds, some of them as big as your house, some of them as big as your neighborhood, way above ground but in the spring when the water came up and flooded, they could get up on that high ground and I –

Benny Marascalco: That’s exactly why they did it and I’ve heard archeologist come up with the explanation about it being a spiritual Mecca blah, that’s not what they did. They just build in place to get up the water.

Ramsey Russell: Get the heck out of water. Now I will tell you something funny. I was in Sweden and we’ve been goose hunting over there and agriculture, real rolling hills kind of like Tennessee agriculture and we were driving down the road and I saw a little old mound out there in this field and it didn’t look like an Indian mound but it was bigger than a fuel station, you know how folks will have a build a mound out in the field and put a gas tank on top with the gravity feed to fuel the tractors. It was better than that but it just didn’t look like an Indian mound. But I say it because it was out of place and I want a fuel tank on top. And I said to my host, I said Christopher you know back home where I’m from the agriculture and all that stuff, nowadays I said if that were at home that mound without a fuel tank on it were in Mississippi, it would be an Indian mound. And he said what’s an Indian mound? I explained it to him. He says it’s funny you should notice that because that is a Viking mound. I said what? He said, yeah. He said we’ll go over and look at it. It was a Viking, I mean it was big as half as big as an average home, but it had a little like about 3ft. high, little stone entrance, pitch black dark and it went inside it like an igloo and you turned on your phone and looked around and nothing but a bunch of stones. But it was a Viking. That’s the only place in the world I’ve ever seen anything quite like that. And the reason I bring up this subject, I’m thinking about the delta, I’m thinking about those older civilizations, Indians, or Native Americans, whatever the proper word to call them nowadays is I don’t know, but I know in another one of your hyper focused moments, since I’ve known you, you got big time, big time into arrowhead collect and there in Mississippi delta and what I recall the most is, a lot of folks just go out, okay, there’s a creek bank, it’s high ground, which would be cutting a lot of times there in Mississippi delta and they’ll just walk. The farmer goes plough the field, no, you were studying photography and everything else finding those old sites do you go a little bit into that. I mean first off associated with Indian mound from that?

Benny Marascalco: Exactly how that happened. I was doing the same thing as everybody else is looking for those hot spots along the Sunflower River, actually when this happened, because they didn’t use those high spots, there’s no question about it. So I had walked this whole area was probably 8000 acres, I guess I’d walked all the places they’re one of the farmers that was farming a portion of it asked me if I would help him take care of some beavers. So I said, yeah, and the first thing I always used to do when I was working at is to go to the aerial satellite images and look at the actual water shed and its structure because I could learn in about 20 minutes what would take me 10 hours of walking to figure out on the ground just by looking at those images. So that was a good jump start for me when I started processing. But because I had walked this place and found arrowheads there, I just, I looked at those places and I noticed that there’s a different color soil exactly where I had found all of those rocks that I found the soil was a different color. It was actually darker. Ramsey Russell: What caused that?

Benny Marascalco: Okay, all right, there’s only one thing that can cause that and that is potassium which a product of campfires does not leave through the soil like other stuff does it stays right on the surface. And so those darker spots are potassium got on their feet and they walk around in the camp and they spread it around so you can literally see that stuff on the satellite image.

Ramsey Russell: Over ion like they made a campfire and walk away. They have done this to make ion.

Benny Marascalco: That’s right. They stay for a good long while would have that characteristic and if you, it takes a while to learn to discern the difference between just a low bottom spot in the field or is it the high spot that’s the right color. Usually they’re almost always down the edges of any type of water shed. I found three of them that were actually along the edge of the Ohio River and that was in, I’d say that’s 8 miles southwest of Indianola. The Ohio River used to run through the delta before that earthquake. So I located the old river bank and found a couple camps where they were doing the same thing. Except these camps, 8000, 1000, 14000 old camps, there’s not very many places you can find those older camps in delta, but that was one of them. So that once I did that, I would find a spot on a map and drive 100 miles walk out across the field that I’ve never been to before and walk right up on those areas. It was just like I didn’t tell anybody about that for a long time because I didn’t want anybody else doing it, but it certainly does work at least in the agricultural property or find filthy loan within the delta. It does not work in other areas. I’ve hunted in 5 different states. And really you have to have this alluvial fine soil where that potassium sprayed on the surface that actually work in the process of doing that you are and what kind of places they frequented? They’re almost always the same, it’s the highest spot along any given water ship because they had to have water, so it’s going to be close to the water shed and the highest spot that they can find on it. So it’s really pretty simple. It could take a long time looking.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the coolest things you ever found? Is there a hedge or?

Benny Marascalco: Well actually one of the coolest things I’ve ever found. It was a pair of graves that a farmer just run a disk through it, for the Gosh know how many times and it was in all pieces and jawbones with him and just he was just grinding it in the dust. I took, I went to the truck got a couple of five gallon buckets and shovels. And I went out there and pick those two people up as much of them as I could possibly find and I took them over on the river bank in the trees where it wasn’t going to happen to him anymore. And I buried them again. They had a, there were a couple of ambulance in there, which is a little piece of jewelry that they have they’re obviously older people. So I found grazing just right up on the surface. I found a clay pot one time that was in perfect condition and guess what it was? It was a moose. I don’t think that many people understand that you can make a bunch of digs in those caves that are over there in the Tennessee Valley in North Alabama. And put produce journals about them and stuff, those people eat ducks and geese more than anything else. If you look at the bones that they found they ate ducks and geese all the time. Now, this is 5000 years before the board arrow was even introduced into this area. So it makes you think how you all were killing them with a spear? Come on, how are these guys doing this? But that was a big part of their diet.

Ramsey Russell: If I had to guess, I would guess there’s a chance to back then maybe in the spring or the fall or summer, some of them ducks maybe breed down here, especially the wood ducks, maybe some geese, maybe some other migratory birds, maybe that even moat to where those guys could round them up in big catch pins or something. That’s what I guess that’s how you feed a village. I wouldn’t think, you better one at a time, one duck at a time, I think you want to catch as many as you could. I don’t know.

Benny Marascalco: It was a lot colder then and so I’m really questionable Canada ever thought out during that period of time. The whole migration and the whole thing could have been situated further south, which means they could have been there year round but they didn’t have the hunting restrictions that we do. So to me it would say if you want to kill some ducks in the cypress slough. You just get you a nice long sapling, probably 25 ft. tall and straight. And you go stand out there in that water after the sun goes down and wait for them to come. And when you see one, Saluki one of the oldest dog breed in the United States has also found in one of those caves and guess what he was covered with duck bones. So that’s just something about even as far back as then they could have been using dogs like swatting and discombobulating for the dog grabbed it before you had a chance to get back together. So I don’t know, but anyway, ducks and Native Americans have a long relationship, they still to this day revere beavers because they understand the significance in the environment, they won’t hurt a beaver so all of that tie together down here in the south, it’s pretty interesting to me.

Ramsey Russell: That’s very interesting stuff. Boy I tell you what that delta has got an incredible history. I love history anyway, but going to, [**00:29:54] never heard that story.

Benny Marascalco: I’ve got a place over there just out towards southeast of Arizona, I would take you over there. [**00:30:05] It’s just one of the most spectacular landscapes I have ever seen in the delta. It was caused by catastrophic release of water. I really like to take you over there and show you sometime it’s covered up with Indian.

Ramsey Russell: Well that wasn’t the, that wouldn’t have been the levee break with the 27th.

Benny Marascalco: No, it was not. It’s actually, I’m stretching out here a little bit, and it’s actually formed a man-made lake by accident. They did it by accident, I can’t put my finger on how long ago it was. I’m guessing probably 2000 years ago someday I’d love to take you over and show you that so really interesting topography over there like you have never seen anywhere in the delta topography every step you take you go, what in the world? What happened here? Something happened what in the world could possibly shape that like that. And the answer is massive volumes of water.

Ramsey Russell: I went one time on a government call or something to a property over in the Baldwin County that was exactly where the Mississippi River Levee, the main line Levee broke in 1927, flooded the entire delta. They described [**00:31:14]. When that levee broke, they describe some of the historical accounts describe the 12-foot wall of water, as far as the human eye can see sweeping across the delta. But on that point, what was so amazing in a landscape of [**00:31:42] what struck me the most is the sand, it looks like Texas.

Benny Marascalco: It looks like the edge of the beach. It was so much water coming through there. It was making 12ft rolls in the sand. You can go walk through the [**00:32:06]

Ramsey Russell: Its nuts. It’s just nuts. How that river shape that delta like that. Especially right there at that point. And I looked the last time I laid eyes on Benny Marascalco. My wife look I’m married 25, some odd years now and I think she records and watches cooking channels a lot and flipping through the TV and on Emerald, I’m flipping through and by god there’s Benny Marascalco on Emerald. How did you get on Emerald?

Benny Marascalco: [**00:32:45] still red neck from Mississippi. Well I’ll tell you exactly how I did it. I learned a lot of cooking by watching them cook and I enjoyed his show. It was really my favorite cooking show. I don’t want to watch cooking shows anymore. When he would make something that I like, I would run to the computer and get the recipe because they posted the recipe for whatever he was making at the same time making it on TV. And so let’s get the recipe and there was this little square on the side of the screen that said join this tailgating recipe contest and I clicked on it, they just wanted a recipe that you would make to like go to Old Miss and go to the tailgate party, because it’s football season. And so I just, I thought about it a second and I put some anchovies Italian sausage and hamburger, meat, garlic and all that stuff together and made this, I made a hamburger out of a local French bread which you can cut up and pass around it’s not just one burger, it’s a big burger that you can cut up and share. I thought that would kind of be a good idea. And I just sent it in few months later they called me and they said you wanted to, I’ll be honest with you, I forgot what I even made up when they told you.

Ramsey Russell: Anchovies hamburgers with Italian sausage would be a tough thing to get. I mean where did you even come up with something like that Benny?

Benny Marascalco: Well I’ll tell you what? I can’t get with this, but we’re trying to get as pure as I can with ingredients. Woodie fisher sauce which a lot of guys use in hamburgers and Woodie fisher sauce, it’s made out of anchovies. What I was doing was going back to the source, Woodie fisher has a very distinctive Woodie fisher flavor to it. So I was going after that original flavor. And also I put some mint in there and the reason I did that because my dad used to cook burgers when we were young and they put mayo in them and that was delicious. So I keep that in there. So I don’t know which one of the things they looked at and said well I was really something. But anyway they flew down with the film crew down to the north island club, they want to be cooking it a couple months they put me up at New York put me up on Time Square, big fancy room. And next thing I know I’m sitting there talking to [**00:35:23] about tomatoes over in Bell’s aroma, it was just like wow.

Ramsey Russell: I did not know that was filmed in New York, for some reason I thought that had been in New Orleans.

Benny Marascalco: They filmed it in New York and yeah so that was a really great experience. You know his wife is from South Mississippi and during the commercial break, she came out we started talking and he said what about that Arizona tomatoes? Best there is. I don’t know if you know about that back there, up against that river that makes the best tomatoes in the world. He said yeah, he said I had to buy a piece of that. He said I bought a piece of property over there, so I can grow my own.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Benny Marascalco: Yeah, over in Arizona.

Ramsey Russell: I didn’t know that either. Hey let’s talk about this Benny, let’s talk about this because gumbo because to me one of the most enduring legacies of Wild man [**00:36:15] was gumbo. It was just another one of your hyper focused moment that I know you still practice this stuff right here. And I got to thinking that you wrote that page way back, way back when. Think about that Benny’s gumbo pages guys, you ever look it up. He wrote it in tripod. I had a page in tripod one time but it wasn’t a recipe, it was how to make roux, how to make different roux, what to put in? It was the basic it was just like reading a short book and to this day I go to and now I don’t know why because I made gumbo the same way for 20 years and I made my gumbo very, very basic and I like my gumbo. I like everybody’s gumbo because that’s the thing I love about gumbo. There ain’t no right or wrong way to cook it because all good now I don’t really care for a super thin gumbo but I’m a polite guest so by all means serve it up, I’m going to eat it. But to me, I don’t cook gumbo all the time but when I cook gumbo, I commit myself to it because I like, it’s a ritualistic is the best thing it’s like, normally if I’m at camp it’s going to involve a couple of tall drinks that I’m going to sip on and nurture to it but I sit there and I chop my celery, chop my onion, chop my bell peppers and I just go to basic and if I have some fresh jalapenos around I might put one or two and they’re just a little something but just the holy trinity I chop it up and always ducks and Dooley and I mean real end Dooley boy I tell you get down South Louisiana and some of the butcher shop down there you get the real stuff.

Benny Marascalco: Yeah but you can’t get that up here. They sell some stuff in the store, it’s labelled up but it’s not the same thing.

Ramsey Russell: It ain’t the same thing. It’s like Tasso. Tasso you got the place I’ve been out of somebody in place along and I bought real Tasso.

Benny Marascalco: I made three times before I like it but I don’t, to me I like Andouille[**00:38:35] better. Yeah and then also in Breaux Bridge there is a wonderful meat market there. They have excellent boudin and other stuff including Andouille but you really got to go down there to get that if you want it. But the stuff that they, for years the grocery stores up here didn’t have anything like Andouille so I use smoked sausage because he simply couldn’t get it but today there’s numerous companies that are producing one version or whatever what they’re calling Andouille and it does have a flavor that’s not like smokes office and it tastes sort of more occasionally. So that’s what I use. I always brown mine when I do mine though.

Ramsey Russell: I use brown it and then put it in. I brown my Andouille sometimes, if it’s for whatever reason it just occurs to me I might brown my ducks in the pot before I bought them. But I make, I bought my ducks and I don’t, I’m not loyal to any duck species. I’m not loyal at all to them. I just I get handful of ducks and that’s what I’m making gumbo with and I have season them and brown them in the pot. But a lot of times I just boil them too. And then and then I like to pour that liquor off into the into the stock when it’s done, I shred my ducks off the bone, set aside with the skin, flavors in the fat, put my oyster liquor off in it, set it aside and if I’ve got some pretty jumbo gulf coast shrimp, I mean I got the idea from you, I take the heads off, I boil the heads, pour it off into my stock. But that’s how I’m going to make a gumbo and then my basic gumbo I want from scratch, I just do, I won’t make my gumbo from scratch.

Benny Marascalco: It’s part of the ritual you know it’s not like cooking anything else if you do it from scratch if you really when you get done it’s a great thing that I really love about it. You probably saw some of the pictures of me down and stuff weekend, catching my own shrimp, catching my own crabs, going to ruin the oyster man over there and getting some oysters. But I haven’t even gotten down there before that’s where the gumbo starts. The adventure of going and getting the materials that you need to make it. I mean that’s such a big part of it to me so that I mean I’ve earned it, I have these wonderful ingredients, I caught them myself and let’s get at it and just makes it much more of a sort of a serious endeavor. Just throw in a couple of steaks on the grill and anybody can do that. Try to make some of this.

Ramsey Russell: But I like ritual. I like it, I like listening to little music or listening to something and folks and there’s nothing quick about making a gumbo for me. I’m going to start from scratch I’m going to make that we get down and making that roux. I know you explain to me but when we do that roux, I go to the full cup of oil, full cup of flour sometimes I use duck fat if I got it. And I brown my veggies in and get them kind of softened up and then I pour my flour and I’ll watch it like a dang hawk I won’t I don’t think I got the nerves of steel to get to “yaya” but I want it dark. Dark and I watch it like a hawk and I got my stock on hand within arm’s reach I’m stirring and I’m watching and I’m stirring and I’m watching.

Benny Marascalco: [**00:42:33] first try to get to “yaya” you got to turn that heat way down after it’s so dark that is really almost losing all of the maroon color. You got to turn the heat down but you can’t keep cooking it where smoking, when it’s smoking is too hot. All I do when that happens I just pull it off to the side and keep stirring it until it stopped smoking again and then turn the heat down a little bit and keep going you’re right at the edge you’re burning it when it starts smoking. You got to stir.

Ramsey Russell: You got to stir it. You already got a third but it’s just I can just come standing over, I can smell it. I ain’t saying like smoking up the kitchen but it’s cooking I need the I pull the stock in and get it stirred mixed up good and I started making I put so much meat and my gumbo, you can stand a spoon in it and if you eat –

Benny Marascalco: You don’t tell me that I’ve done that before too.

Ramsey Russell: If you eat a full bowl of my gumbo, you’re full. Maybe two if you’re a big man but I’m telling you a full because it’s just a lot of meat that’s how I like it and I think I was telling you down in Peru –

Benny Marascalco: That’s a colloquial preference. You see that’s one of the wonderful preference.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what I love about it.

Benny Marascalco: The thing is you can cross all the way across country down there and you will go through different colloquial groups who cooked gumbo in a very specific way and that’s the way they think it’s supposed to be made. Well you go down the road and they will say that something completely different from that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s you know, it’s like their zip codes. They’re both slips hell there’s household this how you cook gumbo and nobody cooks the same. I mean I know you get a regional differences from mobile Alabama to the west Louisiana. You getting a little regional differences. I know you explain better than me but it’s different and it’s all good and you can’t go wrong.

Benny Marascalco: You can’t hardly mess it up. I’m going to tell you there’s only three things that I would suggest from experience that people try not to cook. One is Gobler duck[**00:44:37] they just, they’ve been eating fish for too long. It’s no good. You cannot make a gumbo good enough to have that. Second one is Corner ranch. No, I did not shoot one and cook a gumbo blah-blah and otters because their diet is exactly the same. You can’t. I cooked an otter gumbo you just can’t eat. Because it’s a funny thing when the red meat is fishy, it’s not good. But if you put in a straight meat like mallard or whatever and then throw shrimp on top of it, which is a fishy taste. They taste wonderful. But if you get both of them out of the red meat, it’s just not, it’s just something, it’s just not right. So those three things and loggerhead don’t try too, I’ve done that before. And it takes like mud just like a loggerhead. So other than that you can cook almost anything and combinations of almost anything. It’s really hard to mess it up. I mean, quail and oysters. I love that man. I mean I could have, you know that Kansas went to helps you and your boy learned about, well there’s a creek right down there that I was tracking more softshell turtles than anywhere in my life. It was full level. I mean couldn’t be three miles from there.

Ramsey Russell: It runs right through the, Collins creek runs right through the middle of our property.

Benny Marascalco: I came down there the next day with some strange bacon and right quick cost four beautiful softshell turtles out of there and made a gumbo of them but with something like that. You want that gumbo be Khaki flavor, khaki color. You don’t want a heavy roux. Like even I like it’s just overwhelmed. Gators, the same way. You got to have a light roux or else you can’t even taste the meat.

Ramsey Russell: Well back up to the basic, you know talk about where to talk, where to start, talk about roux. Let’s just talk roux. Let’s just talk basic, hard bold making a roux anybody listening that need to learn how to cook gumbo because number one I believe –

Benny Marascalco: Let me start at the beginning. A roux, actually before roux ever showed up in the gumbo, gumbo had already been here for 200 something years or at least dishes that were named gumbo. In in the form of okra gumbo, filet gumbo. And then another gumbo they call gumbo zerbes down in New Orleans which you probably won’t eat unless you go there, it’s made out of winter greens. And it came about because very catholic oriented down there and they can’t eat meat during [**00:47:56]. So during [**00:47:57] between Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras and Easter, they ate [**00:48:07] what it is 11, the true recipe is 11 different winter greens. You’d be hard pressed to find seven of them these days. So that’s another type of gumbo not too many people know about it has no roux in it, but today they put it in. But really the history of gumbo goes like this, the thickeners or what finds what type of gumbo it is in the beginning it was Okra, which came from West Africa with the slaves. And I know they’re not going to like it when I say this but it appears at the same time, both in South Louisiana and South Carolina down in that low bottom country. They simultaneously what these West African people called Gumbo started appearing about 1790.

Ramsey Russell: So the West African name of Okra is gumbo, GOMBO.

Benny Marascalco: GOMBO. And so of course because tomato is Native American they right quickly added the two together and putting on it and they were doing the same exact thing in both Louisiana and South Carolina and that was gumbo. So the second is the Okra, you know that slimy, I love it too, but most people don’t anymore, I’ve almost quit using it because people don’t want that slime but that was the original thickener then over in Louisiana during the wintertime when they couldn’t get Okra. They started using what’s called today filet powder which is grounds to substitute for the Okra and that came from the top and they called that word for that is Kombo, KOMBO so they were so close, the two thickeners, although they were completely different to me, the other had a name that was so close. Some food historians is still arguing today about what is the actual real origin of the name gumbo. I think it’s from the African descent. So you’ve got West African got you’ve Native American [**00:50:06] and then you’ve got Cajun influences in this. So of course Cajun put all three of them in it. But real Gumbo like what we’re talking about, you want to talk about some roux didn’t show up until about 1890 in the warms, a French chief who came over from France made a small roux. The recipe calls for filet gumbo roux. But he used like two tablespoons of flour in it to thicken it up. Well that’s the same thing is making great, and that’s French are doing that oversees forever. Hundreds and hundreds of years. So he just tried that technique in and put the flour in it. That’s where the flour started with in 1890’s. But the real Cajun took that and they started cooking it deep, deep dark to get this roux that we’re talking that served to replace the Oakland and replace the feeling I guess it might have been easier to get flour than any of those during the wintertime but so dark roux like what we’re talking about that is distinctly Cajun, there’s no question about it and it didn’t actually even come to New Orleans until the early 70s, when Paul the famous chef who was that grew up on a farm in South Louisiana. He brought his yaya roux and Brown roux to New Orleans. They gave him the head chef jobs at Britain’s and he changed the face of history in gumbo. He made Gumbo world famous and he made it distinctly Cajun, there’s Cajun now that he did that only in the 70s, I mean early 70s. So the Cajun’s has been cooking and like that for a long time. But he got famous in the 70s.

Ramsey Russell: That’s when Gumbo became mainstream. Just tell somebody that may have never cooked it how simple it is or just walking through the basic of cooking the roux. I told you how I make my gumbo. But what are the basics of cooking a roux? Because that’s the basis of a gumbo and a roux.

Benny Marascalco: Okay, I used to cook mine the way you do. You start with that roux and I used to throw my onions and celery and pepper and everything in there and pull it down and stop cooking. I did that for a long time. Really if somebody wants to learn how to cook gumbo even the easiest way, the most complicated thing and the most intimidating thing, it stops people from trying to cook it is the roux because the roux is hard to cook. I mean when you first start doing it, even though it’s only flour and oil, it’s still, I label mine one beer, two beer and three beer roux. One is a khaki color. Two is getting sort of brown and three beer roux is maroon and I have to take a leak. So that’s the end of that. So it takes a long time, it takes a long time to cook one and it’s kind of dangerous. What some advice I would give is do not cook roux in short pan and I’m speaking from experience because one little splash of that stuff, will light you up very hot so it’s intimidating to cook it, old school on the stove, that’s not how I cook it anymore. This is how I do it, this is

Ramsey Russell: Now we’re getting into your advance message, but I would still recommend anybody serious about learning to cook gumbo even though because like we said earlier starting to show benny home is who you are, you past is who you are but I would recommend anybody listen to this gumbo podcast, go google Benny’s Gumbo pages and just get a cursory overview of basic hardball gumbo making it look I’m from the deep South and flour and all to make gravy or make a roux is just a way of life. It ain’t no big deal. And turn your stove down to about medium on my burner but low medium on some people and just watch it and enjoy your drink and enjoy company in the kitchen and but don’t take your eyes off until it gets you got to stir it.

Benny Marascalco: You got to stir it constantly, you cannot walk away from it.

Ramsey Russell: You got to stir it don’t stick. And I would say you know way back when because you mentioned something about peanut butter and a reference way back when I would take a jar of peanut butter and set right there. I would just look at, I would watch it and say okay I don’t like, I’ve had light roux. It looked like chicken noodle soup and it just ain’t me. And I can see trying to fish that that doesn’t make good sense and fish and turtles and stuff like that. But no I for ducks I want it a little bit.

Benny Marascalco: You can’t put fish by the way, don’t put fish in gumbo you’ll get thrown out of every parish in Louisiana doing that’s a no-no.

Ramsey Russell: I know but I do it anyway.

Benny Marascalco: Moving to a bully based type of thing. They don’t like that. They don’t fish in the gumbo. My mom through on that used to be has to come from the shelf and in South Louisiana, shrimp, oysters and crabs, maybe some crawfish. So you don’t put fish but let me tell you about this roux. It’s very, first of all it costs a dollar to make it. So what you have to do is –

Ramsey Russell: Talk about your advanced technique. Give me back online. You’re talking about advanced technique, roux making. Is that right?

Benny Marascalco: Well any roux I mean it’s only flour and oil like a book so don’t worry about messing it up if you don’t stir it enough and it starts to get black flakes in it. That means that you burn it and what that is the flour has stayed on the bottom of the pot long enough to actually burn it. So in order to keep a roux from burning, you have to constantly stir it. I use the skillet and a wooden spatula with a nice black edge on it so that I can go back and forth across the bottom of that skillet and just keep doing it, you just have to keep standing there and stirring it now if you turn it up to try to speed it up and it starts smoking a little bit, you got, you’re getting too hot so you just pulling off to the side and keeps stirring it, turn it down a little bit when the smoke stops, put it back on the heat, the whole process for maroon roux I guess for 35 minutes you think I mean you can cook faster than that, that’s a comfortable time, medium high is what I would say. I mean if you’re going to do it traditionally that’s the way to do it. But don’t, I mean just because you burn it a couple of times don’t get upset about it. I still burn roux every once in a while I’m not paying attention but you do have to pay attention to it and you have to constantly stir you cannot stop and go to the bathroom and go get you a beer refrigerator, any of that stuff because if you do you’re going to burn it you just have to stand over and nurse it. I really over the years have gotten sick of doing that. But so I’ll tell you how I do it today. I get the skillet on the stove top pull my oil in there however much it’s going to be and turn it on.

Ramsey Russell: And what’s your basic? You say however much you going to be, but what is your standard a cup and the cup? A cup of flour a cup of oil?

Benny Marascalco: Well it depends on how big a pot of gumbo you going to make. But I also make a lot more because it freezes excellent. So when I make a batch I’m like a big batch so I don’t have to do that again. So you pull a cup of oil in the skillet and when those [**00:58:28] in the oil starts showing up, you know what I’m talking about that’s when you put your flour in and if that process I just use a whisk to whisk it off so that it breaks up all the clumps in the flour and instead of foam a little bit you know as a moisture in the air start coming out of it it’s going to slow them a little bit and once it starts to calm down I shove it in a 400 degree oven and forget about it for 50 minutes. I don’t stir it I don’t stand there and do all that. At 50 minutes I go and look. I cooked one this morning I looked at 50 minutes. Not done enough yet. So moisture and humidity for some reason has something to do with all of that it takes different times. I looked at it.

Ramsey Russell: I’m trying to walk through this, I’m going to probably try this method here shortly. You put it in your skillet your oil you get your flour then you get the color you want and you put your holy trinity. Okay go ahead, walk me through this thing now.

Benny Marascalco: Okay let me see if I can do this, I put it in the oven for 50-70 minutes. When I cooked this morning, I pulled it out at 70 minutes it was dark enough and I just let it sit on top of the stove and cool off and what happens when you do that is a lot of the oil that you use it, it will come to the surface so you could just pull it off because the flour tends to solidify in the bottom of the skillet. You can pull off a lot of that grease right from the beginning I don’t like grease I know that you don’t mind it because you really very similar to that.

Ramsey Russell: I like fat. I love fat.

Benny Marascalco: Well this is vegetable oil you really shouldn’t cook anything but that because it’s too hot. So anyway I can lay out a bed of paper towels in the same way that you would, if you were frying catfish or french fry or something, you want to let them drip dry oil off of them. I pull out one of those and I pull that roux out on top of that paper towel and what happens is all oil runs out of it just like it does or anything else and it ends up being a cakey sort of thick, it’s not loose like it is when you when you cook it and it’s also at room temperature you see so it forms a cake I get most of the oil out of it. Now where you and I do things opposite of each other. You start your roux in the pot, do all of that. I get my stock completely where I want it to be flavor wise before I add the roux to it. I add the roux later on I don’t put any spices in it or anything until I’ve got that roux to the consistency that I want it in the pot. So because I make a lot of it, I don’t have to, I just do it by the spoon full and sturdy.

Ramsey Russell: Well that’s right, you make the roux and then you use it as a thickener.

Benny Marascalco: That’s right. Well if you’re using ‘yaya’ it’s not going to thick it. So you have to do some other things, a lot of the work that I’ve done blessed five or six years with the gumbo is to how to thicken it without using Okra because it seems like nobody likes Okra anymore that’s the primary thickener. I don’t really like filet that much. I mean it’s all right but it’s not good gumbo to me, so in the absence of being able to use those two you have think some kind of way. So if you’re going to have to be roux or something else, I’ve been working on that something else for a good while.

Ramsey Russell: I just got to get my mind wrap one more time around you start on the stove, right, you start with the oil and the flour on the stove. And then you move to the other at what point in the process do you move from the stove top into the oven?

Benny Marascalco: Well when you first put the flour in there it’s going to start bubbling and foaming and stuff. As the moisture and the air that is in the flour contact that hot oil. You stir with a, I use a whisk the whisk will bust up and but once it starts to calm down in other words it stops all that bubbling and stuff, you’ve got all the lumps out of it. So I’m saying what, two minutes maybe shove it in a 400 degree oven and start checking it. I mean if you want a dark loose, start checking it at 50 minutes. If you want a light khaki roux, you may start checking in 30 minutes.

Ramsey Russell: And then I guess you could take that cake you make after you drain it, get like you want it you could freeze it or store to do anything. So next time you want to make a gumbo, you ain’t got to start from scratch like.

Benny Marascalco: Exactly what I do and I just snip off a piece of it, you can push it down in the bottom of the bag and roll it up into a log in a bag and then you can just pinch of a piece of it and I put it in a [**01:03:33] sometimes I just put it in stuff because it’s a lot of different uses for that particular flavor. Yeah in the freezer it’s just fine. But what I wanted to say for people who are thinking about doing this trying to make a roux, if you have a big cast iron skillet, let’s say you go ahead and put six cups of flour and all in it. So you make a big batch and you put it in the oven to do it the easy way. Well the first time you do it you need to be looking at it, just watch it changed like in about 20-25, minutes look in there and if it’s a khaki color getting sort of tan then take a stainless spoon and scoop some of it out and put it on paper towel, a little bit of paper towel. Get you two or three spoons of it so that you have a khaki flavor roux then let it get a little bit darker, reach in there and grab some more, put it on the paper towel then let the rest of it go as dark as you wanted to go. I wouldn’t probably took it over 75 minutes. So that you if you can get three particular profiles for roux out of one skillet. So the first one, the khaki one is going to have much more thickening power than the oldest one that is very dark, once you get it really dark and there’s almost no thickening power at all.

Benny Marascalco: But the light roux does so you can mix those together to get both the consistency and the flavor that you want. Of course when you mix three flavors of roux together you started, you’ve made your own completely, this is yours, and you own it. You made it with this this and this and that’s something I really like to do because different meat takes different types of things light roux or dark roux. The ducks, we’re talking about ducks here I have just about stopped making duck and andouille gumbo. And the reason why I did that is because if you bowl those ducks it’s a bill that starts the way you’re supposed to its wild enough that is sort of a thins a mixed group like women and kids. It is strong enough that they kind of offsets him a little bit you know? And that’s the way I do it at hunting camp because that’s what the guys want. But if you don’t cook for a mixed group I always the chicken and duck.

Ramsey Russell: I can see that I’ve got the two ways I know to cook a duck that andouille and my wife going back to a college store where I cook some bad duck one time does not like the at the room phone she ain’t eaten up unless I cook gumbo unless I chicken fried. And then she’s going to eat it every time. And so I’ve had good luck. I mean when I cook gumbo, especially during hunting season I cook a big pot. And it’s a pot that can feed little 15-20 of us at camp. Everybody gets eat and then there’s some left for tomorrow. I mean and gumbo just gets better tomorrow.

Benny Marascalco: What I have started doing now you know if you cook duck breast for five minutes it’s done now you don’t even have to cook it that long. But however the rest of the other duck add some egg and other stuff you need to cook that for a good long while and that also helps you until that. So what I do is, I pull the breast meat out of them and I put the rest of the duck in there for the stock and I cut it up into spoon size pieces and I spice it and then I put it in the refrigerator and I only put it in at the very last, just like you do shrimp so that it’s just barely cooked. It is not tough really, it doesn’t take two seconds to do it. The same way you do shrimp just like the very end, put it in there. So you got all that back ground slow cooked flavor with this really fresh. I mean it takes like stake, I cooked a gumbo out of those crane guber[**01:08:26] in Texas, they call them Flying Stake. It was like stake because I did it that way. I mean it was just absolutely fantastic. I have never shot one of them but I cooked them. So anyway, what were you saying?

Ramsey Russell: So what are your favorite go to ingredients? I mean like mine is duck and andouille but what is your absolute go to.

Benny Marascalco: [**01:08:51] I want fresh shrimp, fresh crab meat and fresh oysters.

Ramsey Russell: With a khaki colored roux.

Benny Marascalco: Well not necessarily that depends on how you make the stock. You see if I put 5lb of shrimp. I think you saw those pictures for me down there catching and shrimp and stuff and the crabs. Well what I do is I peel the shrimp and get the heads and the tails to make and also I steam the crabs and put all the meat out of them and crush those shells up and stick them in there too. So if you make a stock with that much flavor in it you can go with a darker roux. I like mine with dark, I don’t see people who say you got to have a light roux for seafood. They’re just wrong. That’s it’s not true, you have to get, you have to be able to put more flavor into it. So that’s how I do it of course add all of that. And I’m going to tell you something too what I’m thinking about it because you love oysters and I going to tell you, I tried for years to figure out how those chef’s down there and the ones we’re creating that particular signature flavor of New Orleans seafood gumbo. You know what I’m talking about? I know you’re reading it before. It has a very specific flavor. And I tried to figure out forever how in the world they did that, how where is that coming from? I mean I took it all kind of ways of oysters trying to figure it out. Then one night we had some guests over one of the girls with us. I saw the oysters and she said oh I really don’t like the texture of those. It it’s just too gross for me. Well I wasn’t about to not put oysters in the seafood gumbo. So I took some of gumbo to the side and I put the about a half a dozen of those oysters into a skillet with some of the stock and I cooked it really well and then I put that into the blender and blended it to smooth like a milk shake to get the oyster flavor into her stock, even without getting the old oyster in it, you know what I’m saying? Low and behold. Presto there was that flavor. I accidentally discovered it, that’s exactly what those guys are doing down there. I’ll tell you some, oysters putting them in a blender, blended and smooth and pour it back in the stock signature in New Orleans flavor.

Ramsey Russell: I will add that to my recipe. That is exactly what I’ll start doing.

Benny Marascalco: It certainly is man. Boy when you do that with a good fish stuff.

Ramsey Russell: What are of the most unconventional ingredients you ever put in a gumbo?

Benny Marascalco: Meat wise you mean?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Besides tomato.

Benny Marascalco: I mean, I’ve cooked on a Benny Gumbo, the rattle snake gumbo, I cook everything you could, Elk everything. Everything that’s out there just about, I don’t know if I ever see anything that I have never cooked a gumbo with, that’s the first thing I think about, I wonder what that tastes like.

Ramsey Russell: I know some of them hardcore, some of them hardcore coon asses down below. I work on follow up but you put tomatoes in your gumbo and I tried it last time I cooked it here at the house a couple of weeks ago and I love it. It’s good [** 01:12:30].

Benny Marascalco: That colloquial heritage thing they don’t display about that about tomatoes in the gumbo. It’s delicious I use, but listen, the first real gumbo was Okra and tomatoes with butter. That’s the original recipe for gumbo. So I say you can’t put tomatoes what’re you talking about. I mean yeah, you put tomatoes in what I like to do it Roll out a little cherry tomatoes on a pan, put them in the oven for about 400° so they’re just starting to pop and take them out and in the pot so that when you get a spoon full and you get one of those tomatoes explodes in your mouth to get that great tomato flavor out of them. So I don’t try to incorporate the flavors tomatoes actually into the stock. I try to keep it, I’ll tell you another thing and I know that Cajun’s want to beat me up, but you weren’t taste an unusual gumbo cook your roux like you normally do on the stove top and stop it from cooking by pouring a can of tomato sauce in it and stirring it up and it makes it a very unique flavor that tastes neither like roux nor like tomatoes. I used to do that for a while so that’s another avenue you can go with somebody just don’t tell the Cajun.

Ramsey Russell: We were down in New Zealand a couple of years ago hunting, and we stayed at it’s a little hotel, six bedrooms operate like a bed and breakfast built in 1901 is to look this little stewed home in hotel, and the manager there named Sam Murray. And very nice guy. Well then we get to talking down at the bar trying to find out he operates a travel business where he brings Australians and New Zealanders over to America And they tour a route 66, they all rent mustangs or some classic car and they go across the country. And then another every few years he comes down Highway 61 and I go, well man, my hunting camp is just eight miles off highway 61. Next time you all do that to here, please call me well I got to have a fish fry or do something we’ll have a good time. I love to entertain you all. So we got to talking and he says it comes up one night and then we don’t want to stay for whatever we order off the menu. And he says you’re from the south right? I go yesterday he goes do you like gumbo? I go yeah I love gumbo, you’re kidding. And he goes, well I make a gumbo and what do you put in yours? I said man I put everything blah blah blah, you know? And about two seconds talking about this conversation and he said, well I want to make a gumbo tomorrow if you’re up for it. And I want your honest opinion I said well heck yeah man I yeah I’m all in. So the next day he comes up make a big elaborate presentation brings this gumbo is artificial crabs and ducks and just all kinds of stuff and it was delicious. I said my plate was clean because well what do you think. I said well Sam, number one that ain’t gumbo but it was absolutely delicious. But number one that ain’t that I call it a stew, I call it a soup, I call it something but that ain’t gumbo.

Benny Marascalco: Basic primary ingredients that I used to be authentic Onions. You have to have onions. And the first recipes from in the 1700s that are documented with Okra, onions and butter. Later on as the Cajun got ahold of it changed onions, bell pepper, celery. And of course anybody who cooked gumbo is going to put garlic in with the trinity which is onions, bell pepper and celery that should be considered. You got to have those. Oh it’s not gumbo and you got to have a roux or it’s not gumbo. Except now you got all these people arguing about the six different times gumbo but really and truly these days it doesn’t have a roux it, it’s not gumbo either.

Ramsey Russell: But you got to figure real gumbo. Real Arcadian. Think about historically they were dispelled from Nova Scotia. They got dropped off in South Louisiana swamps and they thrived on whatever they could eat. They were dropped off in the world. And gumbo was just a, I mean flour was cheap, oil was cheap, Its whatever you have got to put in and put it in there and back and call back in those days, back when gumbo originated that it was whatever daddy called  out swamp that day, the gumbo pot something.

Benny Marascalco: Let me tell you don’t turn your nose up [**01:17:34] that stuff is delicious, beaver delicious.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve eaten those in down South America and they are, everybody we’ve ever served that to not in a gumbo but everybody, they got something to cook over a big cast iron pot outside over fire. I called them a stew but they cook some [**01:18:02] that way. And anybody we’ve ever served that to just couldn’t get over how it was white meat. Like a big old squirrel really wouldn’t just white —

Benny Marascalco: And they’re herbivores. So they don’t have any of that fishy taste that I was talking about that problematic with an otter, they are delicious. I mean every single one of them that I killed when I was doing that work, he got put in the gumbo. My dad love neutral [**01:18:46]. He cooked them on the grill. So I mean people say, I think it’s a big rat well, so what? I think it’s just a big pig. What’s the difference?

Ramsey Russell: Hey, speaking about putting everything in the gumbo years ago there, can’t you come and help us trap all that time. We’re going to have a big meat and everybody’s going to show up. And some of the men got the idea, let’s cook a gumbo.

Benny Marascalco: And I love you guys are listening from Mississippi. I’ll tell you what I love show up and cook a pot of gumbo with a hunting camp for everybody. So you all want me to do that, I’d be happy to come do it and meet some people and have some fun.

Ramsey Russell: Put me down this number one. We were going to meet last year camp and cook gumbo, Benny. Just got busy and travel and whatnot. And we didn’t have no dogs know how. And but I’d love to have you come over and catch you.

Benny Marascalco: I’d like to revisit that whole thing about what’s going on in the delta some point. Maybe I’ll tell you,

Ramsey Russell: I’ll tell you all I’m going to tell you about that continental gumbo. We decided we got a big old pot, 3ft tall burn to get it going good on stove and decided to everybody going to bring some meat we had, even though you said don’t put fish in the gumbo. We had everything from gulf coast redfish, we brown and salty good for it went to pot all the way to rock them out. I think somebody brought pronghorn. I had duck somebody had woodcock. I mean we just had it all went to pot and it. That fish I never get one of our members our Mr. Van Duncan sat on a stool for an hour watching that gumbo get right, I mean watching that roux watching that color change, he said he had to put in there so long starting that roux, watch it like a hawk for at least an hour, 3 beer roux. But after putting a bunch of those, we had a griddle and we charge those sautéed red fish they went in, and I’m going to tell you there wasn’t any chunks of fish. Fish is a real fine textured meat and it got,

Benny Marascalco: You have to fairly drop it in there.

Ramsey Russell: It got well now it just it cooked and it and it fell apart and it just, I guess it thickened it or something it was so good. That was unbelievable gumbo. You couldn’t replicate and imitate and repeat that exact gumbo in a million years. [**01:21:22] No, just here because you were telling me,

Benny Marascalco: See you [**01:21:33] can also put some shrimp in it, but if it’s got fish in it, it’s not gumbo I mean they’re pretty strict about that, you know, of course if you’re hungry it doesn’t matter. But I bet you that fish did put some interest in flavor and it.

Ramsey Russell: It did. It just, the gravy or the sauce was just so good. I think it could have that disintegrated, real fine fish just fell apart and became a part of the texture of it. But something else interesting I’ve noticed too is you cook gumbo, you cook rice, gumbo rice, goes together. My gumbo so thick, so meaty, I don’t put I just fill up. But what’s so interesting to me is that everybody have rice with a gumbo anywhere I’ve ever eaten, have rice with a gumbo put in the bottom of the bowl covered up with gumbo.

Benny Marascalco: But you eat rich man’s gumbo.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. But what’s so interesting I think about sides with gumbo. And potato salad I had something about 5-6 years ago some boys from South to come over to the Arkansas commanders corner, they cooked a big old chicken and andouille gumbo, it was just out of this world, it was so good. But they made potato salad. They were scooping that big old and I’m talking mama which is mayo, mustard and sweet pepper, they sweet, not sweet but anyway I will go without it. I know I won’t do that.

Benny Marascalco: I want it in the gumbo but I don’t want it, but I do like it on the side. I’ll tell you what that is vinegary and the reason why it goes so good with gumbo is, gumbo is really heavy and it’s that’s very good potatoes salad from that mustard and that other stuff and those pickles and everything that they’re in there, cut it off your tongue and it cleans your palate basically. But when you mix them, both of them together, I don’t know what you’re doing there but I don’t like well.

Ramsey Russell: But when you move around different zip codes, whatever within Louisiana it’s like I was telling this me and Mr. Dale Borton were talking and text message or something like that about some of his calls. And I sent him a picture this gumbo I was making and he saw the potato salad in back he said man you must have got that idea from, I mean south of him, he called but he met south in my zip code or his area, they all sweet potatoes as a side.

Benny Marascalco: That’s because they probably groceries.

Ramsey Russell: Oh they grow the best sweets potatoes on earth.

Benny Marascalco: So why not great thing about everything. I mean almost everything. My preference besides that started a couple of years ago cooking French baggage from scratch and good fresh bread with some guarlic, black pepper and better it’s hard to beat that next to some gumbo but it’d be good with some potato salad too. That’s you know that’s the funny thing about those is that all the different groups of gumbo start with thicken okra, chili powder and roux. Oh but the Cajun put all three of them in there. So you know that makes it wonderful. Have you ever had that?

Ramsey Russell: I have. I Thought you were supposed to put when I started making gun by way back when I was still living in your thought you supposed to put and but now I don’t know I just put so much meat and if I’ve got Okra because I love okay I’m going to put Okra in there just because I like to taste, I like.

Benny Marascalco: I love okra but you know what I’m trying to serve other people. Yeah I mean the sensibilities about Okra changed over the last 50 years. So I don’t put it in there because of that if I do I put it in the skillet, turn off all that stuff before I pointed in there. I love that thickener I like that chicken in that too it is really good.

Ramsey Russell: Benny, wrapping this thing up. Just a little bit. I would prefer just for people listening that need to make gumbo but don’t know anything about it go to Benny’s gumbo pages. It’s back an old format called tripod. It’s still there, I can’t believe it.

Benny Marascalco: I can’t believe it either. I refer them to that because I cook it so differently from that now I have a Facebook page called gumbo fanatics some of my higher end changes on there. I mean showing people how to layer like get three different flavors out of onion. How did you do that if you’re going to try to stay with your primary ingredients like pepper, celery and onions, there’s a whole plethora of different flavors, that you can get out of just those three things, then you add roasted garlic for instance, garlic, you cannot, I mean and caramelized onion. Oh Golly man put all that stuff in the blender and one more little tip before you wrap it up. You know when you cook those ducks and you cook I cook chicken and ducks together. Once I get them out of the pot, I pull all the skin away from them and I put them a little Tupperware container and pack it down in there and put it in the fridge. Oh it always takes me two days to make gumbo. So I put it in the fridge and let it cool off and what it does is solidify and it makes it very easy to cut it into pieces about as big as your fingernail on your little finger small, pretty small stuff then put it in a skillet and sauté it. Oh and so I’ll tell you what happens is all the oil comes out of it and it browns and crisp that skin to give you a completely different flavor. What I use that for is I put it in a blender and put some top on top of it along with some caramelized onions and some roasted garlic and blended smooth and put it into that stock. You try it one time. And so you ain’t going to believe how much difference it makes to do that, the skin has enormous potential. It thickens it, it makes it taste more chickeny or duckier. The flavors in the fat.

Ramsey Russell: Now I’m going to tell you right now I’m a huge I just don’t I just do not have a duck is not skin on you know like you were talking about earlier taking those breast out and I am going to add those breast to my gumbo. Later in the process will come off a little more medium rare. That just sounds delicious to me. But a lot of time that’s a lot of times when I may take out like my normal gumbo that will be 5 or 6 ducks and sometimes I might pull out 7 or 8 and what I’ll end up doing is I’ll whole picked up only but I’ll breast out those matters picked up with the skin on, set them aside and I’ll cook them different. I like I really like to pan sear my mallard breast.

Benny Marascalco: I’ll tell you one thing about those early season ducks when they first get here, they got the fat reserves on them, I will pluck them all the way to the head, the entire neck all the way because you’re just wasting that wonderful flavor in part into you got to pluck them.

Ramsey Russell: But when you boil that whole duck you get lots of pieces of duck but you really don’t get any other way and you get that little pieces of meat.

Benny Marascalco: You want fat, you want to treat it like butter, you want to. French people are crazy about duck fat. It is wonderful but early in the season like that when they’re carrying that layer of fat on them. You know what I’m talking about later on is right when they first come down they got that big thick layer of fat, cut the breast meat out leave the skin from the breast and put them on a baking tray and bake them the 375 for about an hour and 20 minutes what happens is extract all of the oil out of it and you can pour it off, you can pour it off into a skillet and just let it sit there and it will solidify like butter. I mean now you can put as much as little as you want to into your gumbo but also you can do things with it like, if you want to make some homemade biscuits stuff, put the stuff in the freezer and use that instead of butter.

Ramsey Russell: You can put, you can put duck fat on popcorn. I have cooked everything with fat and I really do like at times when I got enough on hand I do use that instead of vegetable oil, I use duck fat I like that richness, I like that fat, I like that flavor excellent.

Benny Marascalco: The only bad thing about it is it has a very low flash point. It will light up.

Ramsey Russell: It does.

Benny Marascalco: It takes some practice but that’s all right.

Ramsey Russell: Getting back to where we started Benny, I’m going to tell you I’ve known for a long time and I had always had a good time hanging out with you and visiting with you. But if that boy ever told me, I completely forgot a few years ago, I was down at the kind of duck hunter guy I want my ashes scattered not during the drought year but in the regular year and one of my guests down there from Houston Texas. I knew we talked a lot on the phone leading up to this hunt we travelled, I mean you can’t hardly get there from here so far away we travel whatever we get there. We got to know each other talk we have a few times and one afternoon one morning after the hunt we’re sitting on the front porch just visiting and got to talking and who originally said you know I thought of Houston Texas. He said well no I kind of grew up the neck of the woods up there you know up in Mississippi and really he said well yeah my uncle taught me everything I know about duck hunt my daddy didn’t really do much and my uncle taught me to duck hunt taught me everything I know and I go who’s your uncle? He goes Benny Marascalco you don’t know I mean look that kid puts you on a pencil man and he is grown man and very successful man.

Benny Marascalco: He’s a very successful man too but I tell you what I didn’t have a kid of my own and was those years that I spent teaching him how to hunt up for some of the best years of my life. He was gun holding he’s still going still good, it’s really a perfect combination that he and I got together got to spend that time together and I taught him how to do it. He didn’t take much he was like a fuse all you had to do is get a spark to it and I’m glad that he went down there with you. He did email me, he said something about I’m going with Ramsey Russell what about told him he said you had mentioned my name on some podcast somewhere. I don’t know anything about it, I don’t know what you said, but anyway, he knew that I knew it was just basically screaming you to be sure it was okay to go to Argentina you know?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, no it was good if I messaged you Benny, it was good. You’re I’m not, quite free thinking as yourself but there ain’t nothing wrong free. Thank you know the thing I’ve always said it is, it’s always I don’t like having to wonder where I stand with somebody. I don’t like it.

Benny Marascalco: I like I don’t like it either. That’s why I’m so straight up. You know what I think if you don’t like it, I do not give a crap.

Ramsey Russell: And so but anyway Benny look, I appreciate your time. I appreciate you having you on here and we’re going to probably record again but I want to get you over to Willow break this year cooking gumbo and catch up.

Benny Marascalco: You still got that same place over there?

Ramsey Russell: We still got it. It’s been tough man this South delta flooding. I’m telling you don’t need anything.

Benny Marascalco: [**01:34:03]

Ramsey Russell: I don’t know where we get 12 ft. of grip because now we’re talking the way that river’s been flooding the last couple of years. We’re talking a half million south delta acres that are where we are down at the bottom of 12 ft. underwater. 12ft.

Benny Marascalco: While you’re hunting it?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that that sounds delta Mississippi, I’m going to get somebody on here, I made up my mind, I’m going to get that exactly what they got to do. I don’t want to get all political and everything at the end of a great podcast. But my God, that is an absolute half assed half-baked boon doggle.

Benny Marascalco: It’s most certainly they have got to put those pumps down there. I don’t understand why that hasn’t whole bunch of political suffering from a whole lot of other animals flying in and stuff, trying to keep starving to death down there.

Ramsey Russell: I read the other day, the thousands of thousands of turtles killed just by the raccoons up on high ground and the deer there were no, the deer didn’t have nowhere to go, so they’re falling and just on top of the shade they can find and the coons are so bad. They were eating the fawns. I mean it’s just an absolute wildlife tsunami, because of federal policy in that South Delta right now.

Benny Marascalco: Corps of Engineer policies, that’s what it is.

Ramsey Russell: Well, corps of engineer and EPA and other government agencies that have predicated, the whole amazon, like romance drama of the South Delta on what I think, or false environmental impact statements that don’t take into account that this is all created by a man made dam.

Benny Marascalco: All they got to do is put those pumps in there and fix it.

Ramsey Russell: They are hurting people, they’re hurting farmers, they’re hurting society, they’re hurting citizens and you know it don’t matter much to a bureaucrat sitting up and Washington DC but matters If your home stomping grounds are being affected.

Benny Marascalco:. But look I’ll tell you one thing you do have an advantage Ramsey Russell you are international. You don’t have to stay there and put up with that. I hope you find a really good duck hunting place somewhere.

Ramsey Russell: Ramsey Russell: Oh I will but look Benny, thank you very much. And you all thank you all for listening. I’d like to hear what is your favorite camp dish? What is your specialty? I’m going to go out and say this too I’d like to hear what you all’s favorite camp dish is? What y’all’s speciality is I’d like to know if you do cook gumbo. What do you what kind of gumbo do you cook? You all can reach,

Benny Marascalco: You all can go to that gumbo fanatics and pitch in over there.

Ramsey Russell: I was just about to say, go check page out Benny Gumbo fanatics page on Facebook. Folks stay in touch with us if you enjoyed this episode, tell your friends about it. Subscribe to it on Apple or rate it on Apple podcast. I’ll see you all next time until then just remember Life is short Get Ducks.