ROUSES_MarApr2020_Magazine_Pages_High-Res

Rouses Means Local farmers

Guidry’s Fresh Cuts by ken wells

town of Arnaudville, about 15 miles north of Breaux Bridge in the heart of Acadiana. Founded in 1992 by Ray Guidry, who remains president, the company began as a mom-and-pop enterprise with four employees in a tiny facility, and has grown to more than 100 employees who today operate out of a 70,000-square-foot produc- tion plant. One impressive Guidry statistic: These days, it processes 10 million pounds of onions annually. Early Guidry’s wasn’t a Cajun-centric enterprise, even though the Guidry family was already well-known among the grocers of Arnaud- ville as a family that had long supplied fresh fruit and vegetables to local vendors. Taking a cue from a trend that had begun in California, “We were one of the first ones who got into the precut vegetable business,” says Todd Stelly, also an Arnaudville native, who serves as Guidry’s vice president and oversees the production facility. One of the first big Guidry contracts was supplying premade salads to more than 40 parish schools every Monday on a weekly basis, recalls Stelly, who joined the company at its founding after a stint in the oil and gas industry. Early on, the mixes came by truck from California. Transit interruptions sometimes made it difficult for Guidry’s to fill its orders with a single Monday delivery, which is when Ray Guidry decided enough was enough. “I’m just going to build my own plant,” he told Stelly. “We know it’s going to be done and it will be fresher. We can do it on Saturday and Sunday and deliver it on Monday.” With the plant in place, Guidry’s began to explore other markets. One of them was the local restaurant scene, where demand proved brisk for things like individual tubs of precut onions, celery and bell peppers — the gumbo trinity — plus items like diced cabbage that could be turned into coleslaw. Out of that experience came the fresh six-veggie blend known today as Guidry’s Creole Seasoning. It was so popular among restaurants and other clients that Guidry’s decided it could become a hot consumer product. By this time, the company was mindful of how the market for gumbo

I’m a gumbo purist. I like to make my own roux. I like to chop the bell pepper, celery and onions for my trinity.

But then, sometimes, reality sets in. Two years ago, I rented a fishing camp south of Houma and promised two of my out-of-state guests an authentic Cajun chicken-and-andouille gumbo just like my momma taught me to make. I checked in to the camp before heading to the supermarket. The kitchen was rudimentary. There wasn’t an adequate cutting board. The knives would never pass the sharpness test of my home kitchen. And my guests were arriving in just a few hours, so I did what any enterprising gumbo chef would do. I improvised. I live in Chicago most of the year but when I’m in Houma, where I grew up and where three of my brothers still live, there’s only one supermarket I go to: Rouses near Bayou Black. Perusing the gumbo fixings, I came upon a time-saver: a plastic tub of Guidry’s Fresh Cuts Inc.’s Creole Seasoning — basically, what appeared to be a precut trinity (a blend of chopped onion, bell pepper and celery used by Cajun and Creole cooks). I scooped it up along with everything else I needed for my gumbo. Back at the camp, having made my roux, I studied the Guidry’s offering a little more carefully. Ah, it wasn’t exactly the trinity. Green onions, parsley and garlic had been added to the mix. It was also far more finely chopped than the way my mother taught me to chop my trinity. I became somewhat dubious but, by this time, it was too late to go back to the grocery. So I dumped it into my dark-brown roux and stirred like crazy. I needn’t have worried. I’d say the Guidry’s imparted a slightly sweeter aroma and taste to the gumbo that was otherwise indistin- guishable from the taste of the gumbo I’d been cooking for more than

products was exploding and also how gumbo- cooking culture was beginning to change. For every traditionalist who insisted on making their own rouxs and trinities, there were younger, novice gumbo cooks whose active lifestyles had them looking for ways to fulfill their gumbo- cooking ambitions without a lot of the muss, fuss and time of their parents or grandparents. Stelly says there was some concern at first that the Creole Seasoning’s addition of parsley, green onions and garlic to the mix might turn off Gumbo Belt consumers. But that hasn’t happened. “Our original focus was on the younger generation — they weren’t using the trinity anyway, but they still

40 years. (All credit to you, Mom.) My fishing- fanatic nephew, who lived in Thibodaux at the time and who hails from a long line of gumbo cooks from Petit Caillou, was my canary in the gumbo coal mine. He took a bite and said, “Killer good, Uncle Ken.” My out-of-town guests gorged on the gumbo like they hadn’t eaten in a week. (I’m not trying to be immodest, by the way. It’s what I call the Gumbo Effect. If you learn to cook Momma’s recipe and just stick to the plan, your gumbo will never miss.) I’ve since learned that there’s nothing surprising about Guidry’s authenticity. It’s the real deal, a company from the bedrock Cajun

33 WWW.ROUSES.COM

ROUSES