There was a time in Louisiana when asking whether someone ate squirrel would not necessarily have sounded like a question about an unusual food.
It might simply have meant somebody had been hunting.
Squirrel has a long place in Louisiana’s small-game tradition, and generations of cooks developed several practical ways to prepare it. Young squirrels could be fried. Firmer animals could spend an hour or two in onion gravy. Squirrel could disappear into gumbo, share a sauce piquante with rabbit, cook beneath dumplings, or simmer slowly in a black pot until the meat became tender enough to serve over rice.
Traditional Louisiana squirrel cooking is not one recipe. It is a collection of hunting, home, camp, Cajun, Creole, and broader Southern food traditions built around making good use of a locally available small-game animal.
That tradition is still alive. Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries reports both gray and fox squirrels throughout the state and estimates that roughly 50,000 Louisiana squirrel hunters harvest around 750,000 squirrels in a recent typical year.
Louisiana is not keeping all of those squirrels as pets.
Louisiana Has Gray Squirrels and Fox Squirrels
Louisiana’s two principal game squirrels are the gray squirrel and fox squirrel.
Both occur throughout the state, according to LDWF, and both have long been popular with small-game hunters. Their populations are closely tied to mature forests producing mast—the acorns, nuts, fruits, and other foods squirrels depend upon.
For the kitchen, cooks tend to pay at least as much attention to the animal’s size and age as its species. A small young squirrel may be tender enough for frying, while a larger or older animal often benefits from moist, extended cooking.
That difference helped produce two very different Louisiana approaches.
One squirrel goes into the frying pan.
Another goes into gravy and stays there awhile.
Squirrel Hunting Has Been an Entry Point into Louisiana Hunting
Squirrel hunting traditionally requires much less equipment and expense than many forms of big-game hunting, which is one reason generations of young hunters began with squirrels.
LDWF continues to describe squirrel and rabbit hunting as good introductions to hunting and emphasizes the amount of public-land opportunity available in Louisiana.
That connection matters to the food tradition.
A child’s first harvested game animal might be a squirrel. The child could then watch a parent or grandparent clean it, cut it into pieces, brown it, and eventually put the same animal on the supper table.
Louisiana Sportsman has documented families continuing exactly that kind of cycle: hunt the squirrels, teach younger hunters how the animal is prepared, and eventually sit down to eat it together.
The lesson is larger than squirrel.
Food came from somewhere.
In this case, the child knows exactly where.
Squirrel Was on Louisiana Tables Long Before Modern Hunting Camps
Squirrel should not be treated as a recent novelty created by modern wild-game enthusiasts.
Nineteenth-century Louisiana sources show it appearing as recognized table game. An 1885 description of New Orleans listed squirrels alongside rabbits, venison, wild turkey, grouse, snipe, woodcock, and other game available to diners, demonstrating that squirrel belonged to the broader Louisiana game market as well as rural households.
Lafcadio Hearn’s 1885 La Cuisine Creole even included a recipe for squirrel or young rabbit pie. The animals were cooked with butter, mushrooms, parsley, shallots, herbs, wine, gravy, and lemon before being enclosed in pastry.
Another historical Louisiana recipe index records preparations for broiled squirrel, squirrel ragout, and gray-squirrel soup.
So squirrel once occupied more culinary territory than the modern image of a hunter standing over a black pot suggests.
It could be camp food.
It could be home food.
It could even be dressed up enough for pastry and wine.
Squirrel Is Not Exclusively Cajun Food
South Louisiana certainly has strong squirrel traditions.
Squirrel gumbo, squirrel sauce piquante, and dark squirrel gravy fit naturally into Cajun cooking. But squirrel has also been part of North Louisiana and broader Southern cooking, where fried squirrel, biscuits and gravy, dumplings, and hunting-camp stews have their own histories.
One North Louisiana hunting-camp account remembers a cook making squirrel or deer mulligan, along with brown gravies and other camp dishes.
Another Louisiana hunter described fried squirrel with homemade pan gravy and biscuits as a favorite meal, a preparation far more closely related to broader rural Southern frying traditions than to a dark Cajun roux.
Louisiana is long enough north to south that one squirrel can encounter several cuisines before reaching the plate.
Squirrel Gravy May Be the Most Revealing Louisiana Preparation
Gumbo may have the bigger name.
Squirrel gravy may tell us more about everyday wild-game cooking.
A traditional version begins by seasoning and browning squirrel pieces in a heavy pot. Once the meat develops good color, it comes out temporarily while onions, peppers, garlic, sausage, or other ingredients cook in the same drippings. A little flour may thicken the mixture, water is added, and the squirrel returns to simmer until tender.
Then the gravy goes over rice.
Louisiana Sportsman documented one family’s old-fashioned squirrel gravy in which squirrel and smoked sausage are browned, onions and peppers cook in the leftover fond, and everything simmers for roughly an hour and a half before being served with rice. The cook specifically connected the dish to meals his father and uncles prepared after hunting.
That is classic Louisiana cooking.
The squirrel provides meat.
The pot provides gravy.
Rice makes enough dinner for everybody.
Brown the Squirrel Before Making the Gravy
Browning is especially important in many Louisiana squirrel gravies.
A deeply browned squirrel leaves concentrated meat residue on the bottom of the pot. Louisiana cooks then use onion and liquid to release that flavor back into the developing gravy.
One opening-day squirrel recipe from Louisiana Sportsman specifically instructs cooks to brown the squirrels until dark enough to produce a flavorful residue in the pot, then cook the onions in that same residue before returning the animals with liquid for a long simmer.
This technique should look familiar after the previous EatBayou articles on pork rice and gravy and smothered chicken.
The animal changes.
The bottom of the pot remains extremely important.
Cast Iron and Squirrel Have a Long Relationship
Heavy cast iron is particularly useful for squirrel.
It holds steady heat for browning and handles the slow simmer that tougher game often requires afterward. Louisiana hunting cooks repeatedly identify black or gray iron pots as preferred equipment for squirrel gravy.
The pot itself does not create authenticity.
A modern Dutch oven can cook an excellent squirrel.
But cast iron fits the traditional method remarkably well because one vessel can brown the meat, cook the aromatics, build the gravy, and then simmer everything until tender.
It also weighs enough that nobody is likely to accidentally throw it away.
Young Squirrels Can Be Fried
Not every squirrel needs a long braise.
Young animals can be tender enough for frying.
One Louisiana hunter described quartering squirrels much like chicken, seasoning and flouring the pieces, then shallow-frying them in a cast-iron skillet. Afterward, some of the cooking fat is removed and the browned drippings become gravy for biscuits.
That gives the meal a completely different personality from squirrel rice and gravy.
The exterior stays browned and crisp.
The gravy is served with the squirrel rather than slowly swallowing it during cooking.
Biscuits replace rice as the obvious starch.
It is traditional Louisiana food, but its Southern-country accent is stronger than its Cajun one.
Older Squirrels Usually Benefit from Patience
Age changes the cooking method.
Louisiana hunting accounts repeatedly distinguish between younger squirrels suitable for frying and older animals that become considerably tougher. One longtime squirrel hunter summarized the old household practice clearly: young squirrels were chicken-fried, while tougher older ones went into onion gravy.
That is not complicated culinary theory.
It is practical meat knowledge.
Quick cooking works when the animal is tender.
Slow cooking works when it is not.
A black pot filled with onions and gravy has rescued many older squirrels from becoming a disappointing supper.
Squirrel Gumbo Has Deep Louisiana Logic
Louisiana Folklife makes a telling observation about regional gumbo traditions: if a Louisiana family makes duck, venison, or squirrel gumbo, there is a good chance somebody in the family hunts.
That makes perfect sense.
Gumbo is one of the most forgiving ways to prepare wild game.
A dark roux provides deep roasted flavor.
Onions, celery, bell pepper, garlic, and stock develop around the meat.
Long simmering helps firmer squirrel become tender.
Sausage can bring smoke and pork fat.
Rice stretches everything into a larger meal.
Southern Foodways Alliance oral history from Cajun country likewise documents families making dark-roux gumbos with whatever wild game hunters brought home, including duck, rabbit, and other small game. The cooking method emphasized boiling the game long enough for the roux, onions, garlic, and meat flavors to merge.
Squirrel slides naturally into that system.
A Few Squirrels Can Become a Pot of Gumbo
One advantage of gumbo is that several small animals can feed considerably more people than they could as individual portions.
A Louisiana youth hunter recalled his first squirrel being cleaned and frozen until the family had accumulated enough squirrels to make a gumbo.
That is a practical detail worth noticing.
One squirrel does not contain much meat.
Several squirrels plus roux, stock, sausage, vegetables, and rice become an entirely different proposition.
Traditional cooking often solved problems of quantity through technique rather than abundance.
Louisiana gumbo is exceptionally good at that.
Squirrel and Sausage Work Well Together
Lean wild game frequently finds smoked pork waiting nearby in Louisiana.
Squirrel is no exception.
Old-fashioned squirrel gravy recipes may contain smoked sausage, while gumbo frequently combines small game with sausage for additional fat, salt, smoke, and flavor.
This is the same culinary pattern seen with rabbit, duck, beans, and other relatively lean ingredients.
Squirrel contributes the game flavor.
Pork fills in the corners.
Louisiana sausage has built a career this way.
Squirrel Sauce Piquante Is a Cajun-Country Classic
Squirrel can also go into sauce piquante, the peppery, tomato-seasoned Louisiana stew discussed in Article 234.
John Folse publishes a combined Rabbit and Squirrel Sauce Piquante that browns the game, develops a dark roux, and adds onion, celery, bell pepper, garlic, tomato paste, tomatoes, stock, Worcestershire, herbs, and peppers before simmering everything until tender and serving it over rice.
The combination of rabbit and squirrel is telling.
Both are lean small-game animals that benefit from slow, moist cooking.
The sauce does not care which animal had the longer ears.
The cook simply adjusts until the meat is tender.
Sauce Piquante Gives Squirrel More Than Heat
As with rabbit sauce piquante, the word piquante should not be interpreted as permission to bury the meat under cayenne.
The dish is supposed to have a peppery or sharp character, but tomato, Worcestershire, aromatics, herbs, black pepper, and other seasonings contribute just as much to the finished sauce. Folse’s squirrel-and-rabbit version explicitly describes sauce piquante as peppery without requiring overwhelming heat.
That is especially useful with squirrel because the meat itself is relatively subtle.
The sauce should make the squirrel more interesting.
It does not need to make the squirrel disappear.
Squirrel and Dumplings Belongs to the Tradition Too
Squirrel and dumplings is another old-fashioned small-game direction.
The basic idea resembles chicken and dumplings. Squirrel is first cooked until tender, often in stock, before the meat is separated from the bones and returned to a thickened broth. Dumplings then cook directly in the pot.
Louisiana Sportsman continues to identify squirrel and dumplings as one of the traditional dishes associated with Louisiana squirrel hunting, alongside sauce piquante.
A modern version published by the magazine even treats rabbit and squirrel interchangeably, braising the animals until tender, shredding the meat, and serving it in a roux-thickened soup beneath cornbread-style dumplings.
This may not be as strongly identified with Cajun cuisine as dark squirrel gravy.
It is every bit as much a part of Louisiana’s broader small-game table.
Dumplings Solve the Same Problem Rice Does
Both rice and dumplings extend a small amount of meat into a larger meal.
Several squirrels may provide plenty of flavor without producing a huge volume of meat. Broth, gravy, rice, biscuits, or dumplings help transform that game into supper for a family.
This is one of the recurring principles of traditional cooking.
The meat is important.
The starch makes the arithmetic work.
Louisiana usually chooses rice.
Sometimes a dumpling gets the job.
Squirrel Could Even Become Pie
The old Louisiana repertoire was broader still.
Hearn’s nineteenth-century squirrel-or-rabbit pie browned young squirrels with butter, mushrooms, shallots, parsley, herbs, white wine, gravy, and lemon before sealing everything beneath pastry.
That dish feels distant from the modern hunting-camp image of squirrel.
But it is useful evidence.
Squirrel could move between rustic and relatively refined preparations depending on who had the animal and what kind of kitchen was cooking it.
Traditional Louisiana food has never divided neatly into “fancy Creole ingredient” and “country Cajun ingredient.”
The same squirrel could cross the line.
Squirrel Ragout and Soup Appeared in Older Cookery
Historic Louisiana recipe indexes also preserve squirrel ragout, broiled squirrel, and gray-squirrel soup.
That suggests cooks once treated squirrel the way cooks treat other meats: as an ingredient with several possible techniques rather than as one specialty preparation.
This is easy to forget because modern grocery shopping standardized American meat choices so heavily around chicken, beef, and pork.
Earlier kitchens did not necessarily operate that way.
If squirrel was available, squirrel was food.
The recipe followed.
Squirrel Mulligan Shows a North Louisiana Side of the Tradition
Louisiana squirrel cooking is not entirely tied to French culinary vocabulary.
In North Louisiana hunting camps, squirrel could become a mulligan, a loose camp-stew category associated more broadly with rural American outdoor cooking. One Louisiana Sportsman profile recalls squirrel or deer mulligan as part of a North Louisiana camp tradition alongside simple brown gravies and later, more seasoned versions.
This matters because Louisiana food culture does not stop at the Atchafalaya Basin.
North Louisiana shares plenty with Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and the broader inland South.
Squirrel is one ingredient that makes those connections particularly visible.
Squirrel Gravy Shows the Same Regional Blending
An old-fashioned squirrel-gravy recipe profiled in southwestern Louisiana was described by its cook as partly Cajun and partly broader country cooking. His family roots connected Texas, the Sabine River region, and French Louisiana influences, while the finished dish combined squirrel, sausage, peppers, onions, gravy, and rice.
That plate is difficult to assign to a single culinary box.
Which is exactly why it is valuable.
Louisiana food often formed where traditions met.
The squirrel did not ask which category the gravy belonged to.
Rice Is the Natural Partner in South Louisiana
Once squirrel enters a dark gravy, rice becomes difficult to avoid.
Rice absorbs the concentrated sauce and makes a few small animals feed more people. It also connects squirrel to a larger Louisiana rice-and-gravy tradition shared with beef, pork, chicken, rabbit, and duck.
Both documented old-fashioned squirrel gravy recipes and sauce-piquante preparations finish the same way:
Serve over rice.
The wild game may seem unusual.
The plate structure is not.
Someone raised in South Louisiana can look at squirrel and gravy over rice and immediately understand what is happening.
Biscuits Tell a Different Regional Story
Travel farther into Louisiana’s broader Southern cooking traditions and biscuits become more prominent.
Fried squirrel with pan gravy and biscuits is one documented Louisiana favorite.
The principle is still familiar.
Brown meat.
Use the drippings.
Make gravy.
Give the gravy a starch.
South Louisiana frequently reaches for rice.
Other rural Southern kitchens may reach for biscuits.
Nobody has wasted the gravy.
That is the important part.
Squirrel Can Be Smothered
Smothering is almost perfectly designed for squirrel.
Brown the pieces first, then cook onions into the same pot. Add modest liquid, cover, and let the animal simmer until tender. Flour or roux can thicken the gravy, although enough onion and reduction may provide much of the body.
The result sits somewhere between squirrel gravy and a light stew.
A campfire version of smothered squirrel uses browned pieces, onions, flour, and liquid in a Dutch oven, demonstrating how naturally the technique translates to outdoor cooking.
Louisiana did not invent smothering specifically for squirrel.
Squirrel simply benefits greatly from it.
Squirrel Can Take More Time Than Chicken
This may be the biggest adjustment for someone cooking squirrel for the first time.
Supermarket chicken has been standardized for tenderness and quick cooking.
Wild squirrel has not.
Older animals have spent their lives running across limbs, climbing trees, and doing everything necessary to avoid becoming gravy. Their muscles can require considerably more cooking before they soften.
Louisiana squirrel recipes routinely call for long simmering after browning—often around an hour and a half or until the meat becomes tender.
The recipe clock is therefore secondary.
The squirrel gets the final vote.
Deboning Can Make Squirrel Easier to Eat
Traditional squirrel dishes sometimes serve the animal in pieces on the bone.
That approach provides excellent flavor but requires diners to navigate many small bones.
Modern cooks may prefer braising the squirrel until tender, allowing it to cool, pulling the meat from the bones, and returning that meat to gumbo, dumplings, dirty rice, or another dish. Louisiana Sportsman’s modern rabbit-or-squirrel dumpling preparation uses exactly this strategy.
Neither approach is more authentic.
One is rustic and direct.
The other requires less concentration at the table.
Families with small children may appreciate the second advantage.
Squirrel Dirty Rice Is a Logical Modern Variation
Traditional Louisiana cooks have long paired game meat with rice, so using squirrel in dirty rice is not a dramatic conceptual leap.
Modern Louisiana wild-game cooking has adapted squirrel meat into dirty-rice-style preparations by slow-cooking and shredding the meat before combining it with aromatics and rice.
That does not mean squirrel dirty rice is one of Louisiana’s oldest documented dishes.
It illustrates how the traditional ingredient remains useful in contemporary cooking.
Living foodways are allowed to invent something after 1900.
Squirrel Cooking Can Be Extremely Simple
Not every traditional squirrel meal needs roux, wine, tomatoes, or twelve seasonings.
One hunter may use nothing more elaborate than salt, pepper, flour, hot oil, biscuits, and pan gravy.
Another may brown squirrel with onions and simmer it until the meat loosens.
That simplicity can tell us as much about traditional food as an elaborate recipe does.
People cooked to eat.
Not every supper was auditioning for a cookbook.
The Famous Louisiana Black Pot Works Here Too
When people describe traditional Louisiana squirrel cooking, the black pot appears repeatedly.
It can mean a cast-iron skillet for frying.
A Dutch oven for gravy.
A heavy pot for sauce piquante.
A large vessel for camp gumbo.
What matters is that the cook can move from high-heat browning to slow, controlled simmering without changing equipment.
That is exactly the range squirrel often requires.
A good squirrel pot needs two personalities.
So does the cook.
Squirrel Was Often Connected to Opening Day
Small-game hunting has historically had a strong opening-day culture in Louisiana.
Louisiana Sportsman has documented communities where the beginning of squirrel season was anticipated as a major social event, including Evangeline Parish traditions so strong that the opening weekend has long been woven into local family routines.
The food follows naturally.
Opening-day squirrel gravy.
Camp meals.
Freshly harvested animals cooked for family and friends.
Stories about who shot what and who somehow missed the tree.
Hunting season becomes food season too.
Squirrel Dogs Add Another Louisiana Tradition
Not all squirrels are hunted by sitting beneath oak trees.
Louisiana also has a strong squirrel-dog tradition, and LDWF works with squirrel-dog associations as part of its small-game management and hunting programs.
Treeing dogs locate squirrels and hold them in trees until hunters arrive, turning the hunt into a partnership between people and dogs.
That experience can become part of family food culture much the same way beagles are tied to rabbit hunting.
The animal on the plate is only the final chapter.
The dog may deserve partial credit.
Squirrel Cooking Connects Hunting to Family Memory
The strongest traditional foods often survive because somebody remembers a person rather than a recipe.
One Louisiana cook recalled squirrel gravy as something his father prepared after hunting with family members.
Another chef, raised around Pierre Part and Bayou Pigeon, remembered squirrel and duck in brown gravy as some of his deepest childhood food memories even after going on to cook professionally in sophisticated restaurant kitchens.
That is the kind of testimony that explains why squirrel remains culturally important even though most Louisiana households no longer cook it regularly.
The food remembers people.
Traditional Squirrel Cooking Was Also About Not Wasting Food
Hunters who harvested an animal generally had a strong incentive to make use of it.
That practical mindset appears repeatedly across Louisiana wild-game traditions. Squirrel was relatively small, so several animals might be needed for a large meal, and cooks developed preparations capable of stretching their flavor through gravy, rice, gumbo, dumplings, or stew.
This is not unique to Louisiana.
What becomes distinctly Louisiana is the toolkit used to accomplish it:
Roux.
Dark gravy.
Rice.
Sausage.
Smothering.
Sauce piquante.
Gumbo.
The animal fits into cooking systems already designed to get as much flavor as possible from what the household had.
Squirrel Is Still Part of Louisiana Food Education
The tradition has not vanished entirely into hunting nostalgia.
LSU AgCenter’s 4-H wild-game cookery programming still places squirrel among the game meats young Louisiana cooks may prepare in culinary competitions.
That means squirrel continues to exist simultaneously as wildlife, hunting culture, and food.
The preparation may be modern.
The basic lesson is old.
Harvesting an animal and knowing how to cook it are connected skills.
Wild Squirrel Is Regulated Wildlife
Traditional food history does not override modern wildlife law.
Squirrel hunting in Louisiana is regulated by LDWF through seasons, bag limits, licensing requirements, and location-specific rules. Public lands and wildlife management areas may have additional restrictions, and current regulations should always be checked before hunting.
The regulations also change.
That is why EatBayou should document squirrel’s culinary tradition without turning a food article into permanent hunting instructions.
A recipe from 1885 can still make interesting reading.
It cannot tell you whether hunting is legal next Saturday.
Squirrel Is Not Just “Chicken from a Tree”
People sometimes describe unfamiliar game meats by saying they taste like chicken.
That shortcut does squirrel no favors.
Squirrel is generally mild enough to work with familiar poultry-style cooking methods, but wild animals vary with age, habitat, diet, and preparation. The texture can also be considerably firmer than chicken, particularly in older squirrels.
Traditional Louisiana recipes acknowledge that difference through technique.
Young animals get fried.
Old animals get gravy.
That tells us more than the chicken comparison ever will.
What Goes with Squirrel?
The answer depends heavily on the preparation.
Squirrel gravy naturally wants rice.
Fried squirrel may come with biscuits and pan gravy.
Squirrel gumbo gets rice and whatever gumbo accompaniments the family prefers.
Sauce piquante goes over rice.
Smothered okra, potatoes, greens, field peas, beans, corn, salads, and bread can all appear beside the meal. One Louisiana opening-day squirrel-gravy recipe specifically mentions side dishes such as smothered okra and smothered potatoes with sausage.
There is no official squirrel side dish.
Gravy has already made most of the important decisions.
Why Squirrel Became Less Common on Louisiana Tables
Modern meat production changed the household kitchen.
Chicken became inexpensive and universally available.
Fewer people depend on small-game hunting for food.
Hunting itself shifted increasingly toward deer and other larger game in some communities, and Louisiana Sportsman has noted concerns that younger hunters may not have the same exposure to squirrel hunting that earlier generations did.
Cooking knowledge declined with hunting knowledge.
If nobody brings home squirrels, nobody needs to learn how long one takes to become tender in gravy.
That is one way a food tradition can fade without ever being formally abandoned.
Yet Squirrel Hunting Is Still Substantial
The tradition is smaller than it once was culturally, but it is far from extinct.
LDWF’s recent estimates of approximately 50,000 squirrel hunters and 750,000 squirrels harvested in a typical year show that squirrel remains one of Louisiana’s significant small-game resources.
The animal still enters freezers.
The old recipes still have work to do.
Some hunters fry young squirrels.
Some make gumbo.
Some cook gravy exactly the way their fathers did.
Others put squirrel into dishes their grandfathers never imagined.
That is how a tradition stays alive rather than becoming a museum display.
Why Squirrel Matters in Traditional Louisiana Cooking
Squirrel is useful because it takes us beyond the dishes Louisiana promotes most heavily to visitors.
It is not crawfish étouffée.
It is not jambalaya sold at a festival.
It is not a French Quarter restaurant classic.
Squirrel belongs more deeply to the story of people going into Louisiana woods, bringing small game home, and knowing how to turn it into a meal.
At the same time, historical New Orleans cookbooks and menus show that squirrel was never confined entirely to rural camps. It could become pie, ragout, soup, or another game entrée in older Creole cooking.
The tradition therefore reaches across Louisiana.
North and south.
Country and city.
Cajun and Creole.
Camp kitchen and home stove.
Rice bowl and biscuit plate.
From the Oak Woods to the Black Pot
Imagine the traditional sequence.
A hunter enters hardwood woods where gray and fox squirrels feed among mast-producing trees.
Maybe the hunter sits quietly.
Maybe a dog trees the squirrel.
Maybe a parent has brought a child along for one of their first hunts.
If the hunt is successful and legal, the squirrels are cleaned.
Then the kitchen makes a decision.
Are they young?
Maybe flour them and fry them.
Are they older and tougher?
Get the black pot.
Brown the pieces hard enough to leave something on the bottom.
Take them out.
Add onions.
Let the onions pick up everything the squirrel left behind.
Maybe add pepper and celery.
Maybe sausage.
Maybe flour.
Maybe a dark roux.
Add liquid.
Put the squirrel back.
Cover it.
Wait.
That final step may be the most traditional ingredient of all.
Eventually the meat softens and the liquid stops tasting like water and starts tasting like gravy.
Rice goes into a plate.
Or biscuits land on the table.
Maybe the squirrel is going into gumbo instead.
Maybe sauce piquante.
Maybe dumplings.
The exact recipe changes from parish to parish and family to family.
The logic stays remarkably consistent:
Do not rush a squirrel that needs time.
Give it browning.
Give it onions.
Give it moisture.
Give it a heavy pot.
And give the gravy somewhere to go.
That is squirrel in traditional Louisiana cooking.
A small animal with a surprisingly large place in the state’s hunting and food history—and one more reminder that some of Louisiana’s most revealing meals were never created for tourists.
They were created because somebody went hunting, came home hungry, and knew what to do next.
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