Happening now: A Corona Virus- & Politics-free open cook thread:

When you leave Louisiana for an extended period of time, you begin to realize all of the things that you took for granted. This is especially true when it comes to food.

Food is such a part of our culture. Not that we’re gluttons, but we are passionate about what we eat. This is one of my favorite quotes:

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know that I am pretty resourceful.

I learned to make my own andouille:

There is a stunning lack of quality sausage in Virginia, so I had to develop my own Creole smoked sausage in the Savoie’s-Manda’s-Richards’s vein:

I recently reverse-engineered a recipe for pickled pork. That was hard. All of the recipes online used pickling spices and vinegars. The stuff we buy at Dorignac’s and Rouses only has four ingredients: salt, sodium nitrite, sugar, and sodium erythorbate.

It took a deep-dive down the rabbit hole of the USDA’s website to find guidelines and limits on pickling solutions.