10 Louisiana Foods You've Never Heard Of But Need to Try

The little red bottle of hot sauce on tables in more than a hundred and eighty countries was born on a single dome of salt rising out of a Louisiana marsh, made by one family from aged peppers and their own ground since eighteen sixty-eight — and it has never once moved somewhere cheaper or easier. The overstuffed sandwich on crackly New Orleans French bread got its name on a picket line. Two brothers, former streetcar men themselves, promised to feed every striking worker who came to their door for free in nineteen twenty-nine — and every time another one walked up, the kitchen would call out, "here comes another poor boy." And the oldest family-run restaurant in America invented a dish in eighteen ninety-nine so rich they named it after the wealthiest man alive. More than a hundred and twenty years later, the real recipe has still never been released — which means the "oysters Rockefeller" you've eaten almost certainly wasn't the real thing. Louisiana has been quietly handing America some of its most famous food for two hundred years — beignets, gumbo, the muffuletta, bananas Foster, crawfish étouffée, the Sazerac, the praline — and letting the rest of the country eat all of it without ever learning where it came from. Here are ten foods invented in Louisiana, and the New Orleans and Cajun food history behind them that most people were never told. 👇 Which of these did you grow up with? And if you're from Louisiana — which one surprised you most? Drop it in the comments. 🔔 New here? Subscribe for Southern food history told the way it deserves to be told. #louisiana #NewOrleans #SouthernFood #FoodHistory #CajunFood #CreoleFood #NOLA #Tabasco #BananasFoster #Beignet #Muffuletta #Praline #PutSomeSouthInYourMouth