Clesil Kitchen

New Orleans, in a home kitchen

Creole Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Gumbo, red beans, maque choux and pain perdu, written the way the old parish kitchens made them: butter, lard, good stock and a heavy black pot. Not a drop of refined seed oil anywhere on this site.

Browse the Recipes Six dishes, one standard
A cook working over a flaming cast iron pan in a busy kitchen

Fire, cast iron and butter. The Creole way since before the seed oil era.

From our black pot to yours

Six Creole Standards

A meat pot, a seafood pan, a vegetable skillet, a soup, a loaf and one sweet indulgence. Each written in full, each free of refined vegetable oil.

Stewed red beans served beside white rice on a dark plate

Red Beans and Rice with Andouille

The great Monday pot of New Orleans, born on wash day when beans could simmer unattended. Smoked sausage and a ham hock give it depth; butter gives it silk.

  • Time2 hrs 45 min
  • Serves6
  • DifficultyEasy

Ingredients

  • 1 lb dried red kidney beans, soaked overnight
  • 12 oz andouille sausage, sliced into coins
  • 1 smoked ham hock
  • 3 tbsp butter
  • 1 large yellow onion, diced
  • 1 green bell pepper, diced
  • 2 celery ribs, diced
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 bay leaves, plus 1 tsp dried thyme and cayenne to taste
  • Cooked long grain rice and sliced scallions, to serve

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a heavy pot over medium heat and brown the andouille coins until their edges crisp. Lift them out and set aside.
  2. In the same fat, cook the onion, bell pepper and celery until soft and sweet, about 8 minutes, then stir in the garlic for one more minute.
  3. Add the drained beans, ham hock, bay leaves, thyme and enough water to cover by two inches. Bring to a boil, then drop to a bare simmer.
  4. Simmer uncovered for about 2 hours, stirring now and then, until the beans are fully tender and the liquid has thickened.
  5. Return the andouille, pull the meat from the hock into the pot, and mash a ladle of beans against the side to make the pot creamy. Season with salt and cayenne.
  6. Serve over hot rice with a scatter of scallions.

Creole cooking never needed refined vegetable oil. It was built on butter, lard and patience long before the seed oil era, and it tastes like it.

Clesil Kitchen is a small editorial project devoted to the classic Creole table of Louisiana. We write each recipe in full, test it in an ordinary home kitchen, and keep the fats traditional: butter, lard, tallow, olive oil and nothing from the industrial press. There is nothing for sale here, just recipes meant to be cooked, stained with roux and passed along.

Clesil Kitchen, est. in a cast iron pot