Celebrate Mardi Gras With These Classic New Orleans Recipes

This recipe combines inexpensive cuts of meat, including oxtail, ground sausage, and turkey necks, yielding a rich, hearty gumbo that, despite its humble ingredients, is nothing short of extraordinary. Get the recipe for Oxtail Gumbo »

Pickled okra is great smothered in tomato. Get the recipe for Smothered Okra »

Duck and Andouille Gumbo

Located in a Lafayette, Louisiana farmhouse from the 1830s that has served as both a Confederate Army headquarters and, during the city’s 1980s oil boom, a singles bar, Café Vermilionville smokes the turkey for this luxurious gumbo right out back in a makeshift smoker. The resulting dish embodies the rich flavors of dark roux and barbecued meat.

This classic oyster stew from Justin Devillier, the chef of La Petite Grocery in New Orleans, is packed full of Swiss chard and flavored with smoky ham and absinthe, which perfumes each steaming bite with an enticing note of licorice. The buttermilk biscuits on top are just as delicious cooked separately and slathered with butter and honey. Get the recipe for Oyster Pie with Buttermilk Biscuits »

This traditional Mardi Gras cake, made here with rich brioche dough and stuffed with a decadent cream cheese filling, is drizzled with a buttermilk glaze and sprinkled with crunchy green, gold, and purple sanding sugars.

Fried Chicken and Andouille Gumbo

Two of our favorite New Orleans desserts combine in an extravagant white chocolate and banana rum bread pudding.

Banana liqueur heightens the flavor of the bananas in this flambeed dessert from the New Orleans restaurant Brennan’s. Get the recipe for Brennan’s Bananas Foster »

Fried oysters are paired with a garlicky sauce in a toothsome appetizer served at Upperline, a restaurant in New Orleans’ Uptown neighborhood. Get the recipe for Upperline’s Oysters St. Claude »

Spicy paprika and whole-grain mustard sauce coats plump shrimp in this classic New Orleans red rémoulade from the late chef Warren Leruth.

This ubiquitous New Orleans dish was invented at Antoine’s in 1889. Get the recipe for Oysters Rockefeller »

In this slow-cooking Creole classic, ham hocks give the dish a savory, smoky depth. Get the recipe for Red Beans and Rice »