Making Gumbo File

A little over a month ago, I posted This Post about Making Sassafras Tea in which I detailed how we identified the sassafras tree, got the roots cleaned up and boiled, and made some sassafras tea.  While doing that I asked Benjamin to take his machete and chop a few branches from the top of the tree we felled.  For the past month we've been drying the leaves.

To be honest, I had forgotten about them.  Somehow the sassafras branches with the leaves had made their way into the umbrella stand.  A couple days ago we had a 5 inch rain and when I removed the umbrella on my way out the door, I saw the leaves in the bottom of the stand and it reminded me of the unfinished project.  The leaves were dry and 'crinkly' and ready.

Dried Sassafras leaves

If you remember from the April blog post, sassafras trees have single-lobed, bi-lobed and tri-lobed leaves. Here is a dried tri-lobed leaf from the sassafras tree.  I always think it looks like a ghost.

Our project today involves making gumbo file (pronounced FEE-lay) with the dried sassafras leaves. Gumbo file is an herb that is used to thicken gumbo.  The native Indians in Louisiana taught the Acadian settlers about how to make it and use it to thicken gumbo.  Along with thickening, it provides a nice, earthy flavor. Normally, okra is used to thicken gumbo, but we sometimes use file along with okra for seasoning/thickening.

I carefully removed the dried leaves from the branches, trying my best to remove the stem of the leaf.  Then I put them in the food processor with the chopping blade on.

Spin Cycle

After putting the top on, I pulsed it around for a while.  The aroma coming out of the processor was nice and can only be described as 'woodsy,' 'earthy,' and fragrant.  I made the mistake of removing the top before the 'dust' had settled and inhaled a big nose of it and started sneezing.

Finely Chopped

I learned a couple of things from this experiment:

#1 The next time I do this (and I will do this again!), I'm going to dry a whole lot more leaves to make file, as the amount I made will be consumed after we make the first one or two gumbos.
#2 While the food processor certainly makes things easier, it doesn't pulverize it to the fine, powdery consistency that I'm looking for.  I'm going to use a mortar and pestle (or molcajete) to further grind the dried leaves after I get them to this point.

It didn't make much!

I poured the ground up leaves into a sieve with a small screen as I want to only allow the chopped leaf portion to get through to the bowl.  I don't want any of the little sticks from the veins in the leaf in my file.

Filtering the file

I use a spoon to run back and forth against the sieve to force the finest portion of the ground leaves into the bowl.  You can see the finer particles sifting through the wire mesh.

Partly cloudy with a chance of File Showers

And here is our file.  Again, I'd like it to be processed to a little finer consistency, but we can work to improve that portion of the process.  The main ingredient is there and if the fragrance is any indication, it is a better product that one you purchase at the store.

All we need is a gumbo now!

I save little spice containers and re-use them to repackage homemade ground criolla sella pepper that we make, to store seeds that I save, and now to store homemade gumbo file.

Packaged in a spice container

After thinking about it, I dumped the file into the molcajete (mortar & pestle) and ground it up real fine - into a nice powder.  It pulverized it a lot finer than the food processor could get it.

Pulverizing the file in the molcajete

For comparative purposes I scooped some store bought gumbo file out of a jar in the spice cabinet.  That's it on the left.  Then I scooped out a spoon of the file that we just made.  Ours is in the spoon on the right.  Just look at the difference!  They both smell great and I'm sure they'll both do the job in a gumbo, but I like ours and give it two thumbs up in the 'eyeball test.'

Store bought on the left.  Homemade on the right

Now all we need is a nice Chicken & Sausage Gumbo to put it to the taste test!