Cooking Gumbo with Coach O | What’s For Lunch

I had the honor of cooking gumbo with one of the most legendary figures in Louisiana — Coach Ed Orgeron. From dominating the SEC at LSU to being the king of the bayou, Coach O knows a thing or two about gumbo, and I had to bring my A-game.

Together, we made a classic Louisiana gumbo from scratch — roux, sausage, chicken, all the flavor you’d expect. Along the way, Coach O shared stories from his life, Cajun cooking traditions, and even spoke some French with me.

This one’s a celebration of Louisiana food, culture, and football. I even got a Geaux Tigers out of Coach!

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Coach Oo, what’s for lunch? Come on, baby. Let’s get cooking. I love it. What’s for lunch? What’s for lunch? I know he’s in the kitchen whipping something tough. What’s for lunch? What’s for lunch? Want to see what Chef Donniey’s cooking up? What’s for lunch? [Music] Guys, welcome back to What’s for Lunch. Coach O. How you doing, buddy? Welcome to the kitchen. And I’ll tell you what, this smells good. I’m excited. This is the first gumbo. Uh, I’ve I’ve made jumbo. I’ve made some some Cajun food before. Never really made a gumbo to and from scratch. And now having you in the kitchen trying my first gumbo is a lot of pressure. Uh, and I found out yesterday you were coming in too. So, I usually like to practice if it’s something I’ve never made. I go, “All right, let me get let me get a few recipes. Let me learn. I didn’t have time for that.” So, this one we’ll hope it’s good, but uh, you know, I No pressure having you here. Well, it smells good. And look, anything I can do to help you along, I’ll see my mom and dad cook a bunch of gumballs. I’m here to help. I was going to say you’re probably the like the most the biggest connoisseur of a gumbo, right? Because you grew up eating it. Grew up eating it and every house that I’d go into when I was head coach LSU in a in a recruiting visit would have gumbo for me and every couple things they were all great but every every everyone tastes different. Everyone you ever judge a player based on if they have better gumbo or not? Is that is that factor at all? Well, I wouldn’t judge Jarro that. Okay, good to know. Good to know. Um All right. So, we’re I mean there’s tons of variations, right? You can go shrimp, you can go chicken. We’re going to go I saw you last night quickly. So we we’re doing chicken and we have the we I got good on dewy sausage here to start. And then you know just the basics from what I saw from my research. Some green pepper some onion. And then we have our flour which we’re going to make our r with and then the seasonings. Onion powder, garlic powder, mustard powder. Perfect. Felt which is ground sassifrass which which I was able to find last minute. Found the file. I found some felt. So So I was like we got to make sure it’s it’s on point. And then I have some. Do you like how what’s the spice level that you like? Do you go spicy? You like medium plus? Medium plus. But is that occasion? Is that Louisiana medium plus? Yeah, Louisiana medium plus. A little higher. A little bit higher. Okay, perfect. Chicago, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. But I like the heat, too. So, I’m I’m with it. What do you As far as cooking any Do you cook at all? Do you like to cook? Do you just like to eat? Yeah. When I have to. Okay. You know, I spent all my life coaching. Yeah. But I I watched I love eating. I love food. I love watching it being cooked and be part of, you know, we grew up like like like the men in the neighborhood would cook. Everybody would come on over and, you know, you shoot the bowl and have a blast, have a couple of coal pops. We had a blast. I love it. Okay. Well, that’s what we’re going to do today. So, we’re going to start we’re going to get this going. We’re going to start with the uh with the chicken. So, we’re going to build kind of we’re going to build all the flavor in the pan. Starting starting with the chicken first. So, essentially, we’re going to take all that all of our spices that we just talked about. It’s going to go into our flour. Now, this just give this a quick mix. This we’re going to save. We’re going to use some of this just to lightly dredge the chicken. And then we’re going to save most of it for the for the root to build build the root. We want all that seasoning in the root. My favorite dish is okay. Besides gumbo, pork chop, and turnip fus. Ah, the for you. Yeah. Forget it with chicken. Yeah. But it’s the broken bone and you stew it in. You stew it. It’s like people call that a stew. Mhm. Well, my mother puts pork chops in it, but the the biggest thing is is she puts the turnups in there. Yeah. And I love the turnups and the pork chops in the freaking over rice with fried potatoes. Oh, now we’re talking. That’s calm down, man. Yeah. I mean, that’s got to be the a football player’s dream, though. This kind of diet. You’re just load you’re loading up and you’re ready to go. You can play for hours on that. So, we’re gonna let this go not too long. We’re not trying to cook it through because it’s going to cook through in the in the gumbo out. So, we just want to build like a nice color on it. Nice crust. I’m going to have you do the green pepper, man. And the celery. And the celery I’ve already sliced. So, we just want a little bit of that. And that we’re just doing doing a dice on. Yep. Okay. You got it, man. Look at that. I I don’t even have to give you any instruction. You’re doing You’re going You’re going great there. Get it going, man. All right. You know, this I’ll do the onion. You know, you know, when you sit around and cook, it’s a good time. We like to talk about the good time, talk about recruiting. Yeah. Talk about what we’re going to do. You know, the men sit around, have a cup of beer, have a good time, and enjoy a good meal together. So, these we’re going to take off. I did some earlier just to kind of speed ahead of time here. And then, so this is the color we’re looking for. So, we would have let those go a little longer. You don’t want to grease. We want We do want to grease it, but we want I just There’s a little bit of black bits. You don’t want it to start to taste to taste burnt. So then what we’re going to do, we have our undo. We have our sausage here. And then this we’re going to add We’re going to get some color on this, too, cuz we could put it in. You could put it in like this, but you want it to have a kind of a crispy sear on on the outside. I like that fancy cut. That’s that fancy. You like that on the bias. If you’re going out to a dinner, are you a steak? Are you steak dinner? Are you meeting Italian? I eat Italian all day. You’re in the right city for that. We got some great Italian here in Chicago. All right. So, we’re going to get a little bit of color on that. And then while that’s going, the next the hardest part really of this is the is the root like we were discussing after. So there’s two ways you can do it that are wrong. You can undercook your R and it tastes tastes just flowery, super flowery. You can overcook it and if you burn your R, the entire thing is going to taste burnt. You might as well throw it away and and start over. Um, but the root and you know the difference with with a with a Cajun Rof or gumbo or jumboa or is you want a deep color on it. So you really want to cook it till it’s it’s brown, golden, or even further than that. That’s hard, right? So when to stop it, when to stop it. So if you’re cooking a traditional roof or, you know, let’s say you’re you’re making just a beef stew or something, you know, classic French, you stop it when it’s nice and blonde and bubbly. With this, we’re taking it till it’s, you know, deep brown. That’s how you get the color you want in your That’s kind of like Cajun. We take We take everything to the edge. Take it right to the edge. All right. So that’s the kind of the color we’re looking for on the on the outside here. You want a nice fire you got on that. This is like we’re going pretty high pretty high heat like medium high. But see just so we’re getting this kind of color and now we’re building the flavor in the pan like this. That’s all good fun. For this the sake of the show I have some already done in here. So now we’re going to take we’ll take the sausages off after it gets nice and crispy like that. Off to the side here. Okay. Now it’s time for the roof. So here we go. So, we’re using some of that fat from the chicken skin, which is great. And then we let the leftover bits and then a little bit more oil. For for this kind of a root, we want it usually you go a little medium heat. For this, we want to take it higher cuz butter, if you make a root traditionally, we use butter. And butter smokes and burns at a lower heat. With oil, we can take it a little hotter and that’s how we’re going to get that darker color. So, we’re going to take it just before it starts to smoke. So, hotter than you think. And then ruse. People get nervous. The the thing that people kind of like get nervous about with Rue is they’ll they’ll get, “Oh, I think I broke it or it’s too soon. It gets clumpy.” With the Rue, as long as you keep whisking and you add your stock, Yeah. you you’re going to be you’re going to be fine. You can save it as long as you don’t burn it. Don’t worry about the the way it looks. So, what we’re going to do here, we’re going to get this going a little hotter. We want to We want We want to see You can test it, too, by if you put the flour in. See how it kind of bubble, but not that much. We’re going to give this a couple couple more seconds. How’s that sound? That’s just like how my mom does. That’s just like my mom does. You know, actually say, “Hey, mom, how you cook?” Well, you know, you take about two little pinches in there and put it in there. What’s a pen? That’s a Well, you know, you know how Yeah. You know. Yeah. That’s why people ask for recipes and I always go like, “Let me let me try to write it down.” But, you know, it’s cooking such a It’s just a feel. You got to feel it. It’s a It’s all feel. You know, baking is a science. Baking you you follow exact. But but cooking really is just it’s it’s all feel. That’s why most every gumbo that you eat is going to taste just a little bit different because everybody has their own personal touch on it. Right. Right. So now now we’re going in with the flour. And see we’re kind of smoking a little bit. So now we take it off the heat a little bit and then we stir. And then we stir. And you just got to keep keep that going burn it. Right. Keep Exactly. You keep it moving. Keep it moving. Keep it moving. Now we go back on the heat. And it’s just it’s just a balancing game. So now you took it off the heat. So now But now you can start to smell the flour. So, like people are always like, I don’t know when a R is done cuz know when the flour the flour is going to cook off and you’re going to smell flour in the air. So, you want to keep it going and just keep stirring. So, now this is going to go I don’t know, we’re going to take this like 2 3 minutes. You can take it to like a really dark you can go 5 minutes and get it to like almost like a black a black r. Uh but this for this we’re going brown like a dark brown. How how you know how much flour to put it in? So, usually with a rue, it’s equal parts of flour with the the oil. So, we had about half a cup half a cup of oil in there. So, half a cup of flour. Yeah. You didn’t tell me that little secret. There you go. That slipped my mind. Catch your little secret there. I mean, that’s a big part, right? Yeah. That’s a huge part. Yeah. Equal any kind of fat. So, you could use butter, you could use duck fat, you could use peanut oil, you could use any fat. And then equal parts. You know, we got a decent color and and we have the all that fat. Yeah. You give that Give that a stir. And see how it’s thickening up. So like we can really just whisk this. And the problem is too people if you got away, you know, you walk away from this, that’s where it’s going to burn. You the heat is not high enough that you kind of got to keep it moving as as you go. And now we can start adding a little bit of stock. So now this is where people might see See how we got that deep color pretty fast. Now we go a little stock. Yeah. Little stock. And see how that’s thickening up. Yeah. Look at that. So now we got that thickening up. Be quick on that, right? And now we go in with our vegetables, too. You know what I like you do? You pull it off the fire. Yeah. Cuz otherwise it’ll burn. Yeah. It’s all about adjusting. Now veggies go in. And now this is going to just thicken together. And this will make our r. So now if we have just for the sake of the the the show, I’m going to kind of skip ahead in time. But now you want this to go for about 5 minutes with the vegetables just so it all softens up. Yeah. And then you’re going to pour in the rest of your stock. Man, this smells just like my house corn. That’s a good sign because coach, this is the first gumbo I’ve made. So, you know, I’m Yeah, I’m going off just research and feel. So, yeah. Keep it keep it keep it moving. Keep it moving. And now we go in with the rest of our stock. Keep that stirring. Yep. Mhm. Look at that. And then we go in with our sausage. And then our chicken. Since we just browned our chicken, it’s not cooked through. It’s going to sit in here. And now this gumbo, we’re going to let go for, you know, an hour. And it’s going to start to thicken up even more. The chicken’s going to cook through. The sausage is going to flavor it. Yeah. We chuck a bay leaf in there. And then boom. We’re going to end up with something like this. Let me give this a quick stir. So now we have our chicken pieces that have cooked. So if anything, you know, we can cut those off the bone a little bit here. And then we got our gumbo. So I got some rice. We’re going to serve this up. Got a little bit of rice here. Oh my god. And then coach, you’re the one that told me it was a boiled egg. Got to put it in there. I boiled up some eggs for you. Okay, here we go. So, you show me. Yeah, you you show me how this was done. Feeling pretty good here. Yeah. That’s the first one, man. Yeah. I didn’t know you put bo. So, you put them in now or you put them in on the plate? Put them No, put them in now. Let them get the taste. So, we got our rice here, man. Look at that. That’s a bowl right there. Let’s get We got to get a little bit of everything in here. Yeah. So, I’m going to go with a scoop. Get an egg. Get all that sausage. Man, how about that, guys? Good thing we got a bunch here, T. I like that. You see that? That’s experience right there. You see, we got the spoon to pick up the ingredients and you got the spoon to pick up the sauce. Oh, yeah. That’s a guy with experience right there. Okay, my man. Here we go. Hey, voila. Bonapet. Appetite. Oh my god. What is it, bro? How do you think? What do we think? Excellent. Yeah, man. Is that good, man? Tob, you coming in too? Yeah. Hell yeah. I’m down, man. How about this, TBob? I don’t know if I have another bowl. Do you have a spoon? I’ll just I got a spoon right there. Kind of comes at the end. Here, coach. You want a Pepsi? Yeah. You want a little pepper? The spice is perfect. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Thank you. Thank you. Little Pepsi Zero sugar with some gumbo. Can’t go wrong. M m. Bro, is it good? I mean, good, dude. It I was so nervous making this cuz it’s my first gumbo for you, coach. Cheers. What? Oh, we got to bring you to South Louisiana, man. We go We go restaurant with you, son. There you go. delicious. Coach, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here. Thank you, man. I got something for you, too. Little book here. This is all This is just like if you don’t nothing crazy, nothing too fancy in here. Beginner cooks, advanced cooks, everyone can kind of use it. Just Thank you. Right on. How about this? Look, if John I gave one to Gruden. If coach Gruden can use that and he made something out of it, I think anyone can. So, he was the guinea pig. I’m going to use it as video tape. I tell you what, you know, I haven’t done this in a while, but this is so damn good. Makes success. Hey, mercy. [Music]