Lavish Love on Your Guests with Shrimp and Okra Perloo

Perloo carries a long and complex history. It is one of many rice dishes planted firmly in the canon of Lowcountry cuisine by the Gullah Geechee people, descendants of enslaved West Africans brought to the southern Atlantic coast to work in rice cultivation.

Their labor resulted in a hugely successful rice crop in the region, as well as a long and storied culinary roster of rice dishes, from the hoppin’ John that many Southerners cook for good luck at the New Year to perloo.

To better understand perloo (sometimes spelled “purloo”; its name is derived from the same root as “pilau”), I turned to the wisdom of prominent Gullah Geechee chefs and elders. Their perspective helped breathe life into our recipe for this classic dish and helped me make sure it stood up to the established standard.

Okra perloo recipes range from simple and humble to complex and celebratory. Sally Washington’s somewhat spartan version (referenced in Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking [1976]) contained only rice, okra, bacon, and water and famously amounted to far more than the sum of its parts.

Toward the opposite end of the spectrum (and leaning fully into shrimp), there’s the take by Charlotte Jenkins, author of the cookbook Gullah Cuisine: By Land and Sea (2010). Jenkins, who published her shrimp purloo recipe online with the Charleston City Paper, handles the crustaceans with tenderness, stirring them raw into the hot rice to ensure that they are not overcooked; the residual heat of the rice is exactly right for gently steaming the shrimp.

For her okra pilau, Jenkins sautés the okra separately “until the slime dissipates,” then removes it while she cooks the rice in the stock, and finally fluffs the okra into the cooked rice at the end, ensuring that the okra “stands up in the rice.”

Prepared around the holidays for feasting, my own recipe brings together elements of both of Jenkins’ recipes as well as Washington’s, showcasing the abundance of the land (fresh okra and salty, rich bacon) and sea (sweet, succulent shrimp).

I also consulted Chef BJ Dennis, a self-described “Gullah cultural bearer” and prominent advocate for preserving his people’s foodways. In conversation, we talked about another Gullah culinary touchstone, red rice (or tomato purloo), and I’ve closely followed his social media channels, where he routinely posts footage of purloo-making in progress. He often speaks about the sweet little Lowcountry creek shrimp so lovingly that you can’t help but be convinced that they are worth the extra effort to peel, and claims “the smaller the better.”

My testing with medium to small wild Gulf shrimp has borne this advice out. And what better way to lavish love on your guests than to painstakingly peel the small, unfailingly tender shrimp?

I picked up a couple other gems from Dennis. First, he encouraged me not to compromise on the rice, always insisting on the importance of the Carolina Gold (see “Golden Grains”), a rice with such unparalleled flavor and texture that it built the reputation of the “Carolina Rice Kitchen” (as the cuisine of the coast and midlands of the Carolinas and Georgia is called).

For Dennis, “it’s the rice of the culture that we need to bring back, particularly people of Gullah Geechee heritage … because for years we weren’t able to celebrate that rice. We were just out there growing it to make these enslavers and planters rich.”

For sourcing the rice, Dennis pointed me to Rollen Chalmers of Rollen's Raw Grains, a Gullah Geechee farmer working to reconnect the cultivation and cooking of the storied grain with a communal feeling of celebration and pride.

Talking to me specifically about tomato perloo, Dennis also said “the rice should shine,” a poetic way of explaining that the perloo should be rich enough that the rendered pork fat imbues the rice with a glossy sheen. And so I start my recipe by rendering a generous amount of bacon fat for sautéing the okra, onion, and rice. I also adapt Dennis’s strategy of using a small amount of tomato paste in his shrimp and okra perloo, adding savory depth and an appetizing rust-red color.

Finally, not just for convenience but also to honor an expert Gullah palate, I borrow a favorite ingredient recommended by the late renowned chef and hostess Emily Meggett in her cookbook Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island (2022). Instead of reaching into the pantry for four or five seasonings, I follow Megget and grab her trusty seasoned salt.

Before I sit down to dig in, I sprinkle a little extra on my bowl, taking a moment to dwell on the meaning of such an ordinary act, savoring the excellence of the perloo and reflecting on its extraordinary story.