# What's the most complicated meal you've ever prepared?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-complicated-meal-youve-ever-prepared/980588>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** food-cooking\
**Created:** [March 2, 2023, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-complicated-meal-youve-ever-prepared/980588 "2023-03-02T14:20:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 132

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**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2024, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-complicated-meal-youve-ever-prepared/980588/132 "2024-02-19T16:36:18Z")

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> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> Yeah, my suggestion for allspice was from your recent thread on making award-winning chili (where you do say you used it, too):

Ah yes, so I did. That was the day of the NFC Championship game the Lions lost, so _my_ memory of that day was a bit scrambled from the awful loss (and a beverage or two) 😊

> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> I checked around, and I don’t see myself suggesting using it for gumbo.

I just searched around a bit and couldn’t find it either, but you did post several gumbo recipes in a thread awhile back. One of them was a ‘gumbo with greens’ recipe that had allspice as an ingredient. I found a reference I also made to it in this thread from Sept. '22, so it predates this:

> [@Advice on BBQing an 8 lb ribeye roast?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advice-on-bbqing-an-8-lb-ribeye-roast/971724/18):
>
> It’s good in beef stews. Interesting. In another food thread here, someone (may even have been you) posted a link to an older Beef Stroganoff recipe that didn’t use mushrooms but did include allspice and mustard. I tried making it and I found that allspice (mustard too, but not as much) works very well with beef & sauce type dishes. A gumbo with greens recipe you gave me included allspice, and now I add allspice to my gumbos routinely. It pairs really nicely with the flavor of a well-browned…

Anyway, I will have to do some more searching, because that gumbo with greens recipe was _ **good** _.

ETA: found it!

> [@Jambalaya recipe](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jambalaya-recipe/848318/16):
>
> BTW, [here’s a nice Cajun brown jambalaya recipe](https://www.gumbopages.com/food/jambalaya-gautreau.html). Have a nice stroll through that website. It has served me well for … oh … at least a decade. I want to say closer to twenty years, though. (ETA: Yeah, it looks like the domain has existed since 1997, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been cooking from it since c. 2000/2001.) Donald Link’s book “Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link’s Louisiana” is also a nice resource. He writes: “In my opinion, there are two types of jambalaya – Cajun and Cre…

[Here’s the ‘gumbo with greens’ recipe leading from that link](https://www.gumbopages.com/food/soups/gumboz.html) (actually called GUMBO Z’HERBES). It only calls for a grand total of a mere 2 allspice berries, yet it was my inspiration to experiment with allspice in gumbo.

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