Cajun food is fairly mainstream — and gumbo, jambalaya and bread pudding can be found on restaurant menus nationwide. 

But one dish – gravy – has remained something of a hidden gem of Louisiana. And the “Gravy Boys,” eight best friends from college, are dedicated to perfecting the dish and preserving their cultural heritage. 

The story of the Gravy Boys begins, technically, in the 1700s when Cajuns first arrived in Louisiana.

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“They were kicked out of France. They were kicked out of Nova Scotia. They ended up here,” Sullivan Zant, one of the Gravy Boys, told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview. (See the video at the top of this article.)

Zant is executive chef at Vestal, a restaurant in Lafayette, Louisiana. 

The Cajuns, Zant said, “were a people of much resource but definitely not a lot of money. Gravy, along with jambalaya and a lot of other dishes that are popular throughout Cajun cuisine, are, for lack of a better term, ‘poor people food.’” 

Gravy, Zant said, is “a way to take a little bit of meat and a little bit of vegetables, fortify them and truly give them not only the nutrients, but also [make them] filling.” 

He added, “So, it essentially consists of some type of protein, typically the Cajun holy trinity, which is going to be onions, bell pepper and celery and, almost always, but not always, it’s going to be served over rice.”

“From the ashes of ‘Taco Tuesday’ arose ‘Gravy Thursday.’”

The Gravy Boys met in college at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The group began a tradition of throwing gravy parties every Thursday.

“From the ashes of ‘Taco Tuesday’ arose ‘Gravy Thursday,’” Zant said with a laugh.

These parties attracted a crowd, and the group used them as an opportunity to finetune their cooking skills. They now have custom denim jackets, and some of the Gravy Boys compete together in Cajun cooking competitions. 

In addition to Zant, the Gravy Boys are Trey Delcambre, Tanner Dimmick, Samuel Frazier, Jacab Gibson, Jordon Konow, Joshua Mata and Derrick Savoie. Dimmick recently got married, and the other Gravy Boys served as his groomsmen.

The Gravy Boys have stayed close in the years since college and recently served as groomsmen at member Tanner Dimmick’s wedding. From left to right, Derrick Savoie, Jacab Gibson, Joshua Mata, Dimmick, Trey Delcambre, Sullivan Zant and Jordon Konow. Not pictured: Samuel Frazier. (Joseph Vidrine )

Most of the Gravy Boys grew up eating Cajun food, Mata, the “self-proclaimed CEO of Gravy Thursday,” told Fox News Digital. 

“Rice and gravy has always been part of my diet, at least,” he said. 

Delcambre has memories of watching his grandmother make gravy and other Cajun delicacies. 

“This is just stuff we grew up seeing and watching and observing our family members do,” he told Fox News Digital.

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For the Gravy Boys, gravy is more than just a way to feed delicious food to many people relatively cheaply. It’s a way to preserve their culture, their friendships and the community they’ve built.

“One of our good friends, who is also a very, very successful and fantastic musician from around here, has this thing where he likes to stop at shows and yell in the middle of it, ‘If you’re not living your culture, you’re killing it,’” Zant said. 

“And that’s something that really rang true to me at the moment, I think for all of us as well. That’s really all we do.”

“If you’re not living your culture, you’re killing it.”

Cajun culture “is unique and obviously very special to us,” Zant said, but he insists he’s “not gatekeeping it.” 

He said, “We just want you to come and have a good time to meet us and hang out. That’s how you get to break down barriers and really get to know somebody — whenever you actually sit down at a table and break bread with them.”

Zant said they “find more commonalities that way than almost anything. And I think that that’s really important to what we do and why we do it.”

The Gravy Boys shared a basic gravy recipe with Fox News Digital for those looking to start a tradition of their own. 

Gravy began as an easy and delicious way to create a filling dish for a relatively low cost, said Zant, one of the Gravy Boys. (Joshua Mata)

Part of the appeal of gravy is that there is no official recipe – the choice of meat, seasonings, vegetables and cooking time is different for each chef and is largely based on one’s personal taste or what is available at the time of cooking. 

This recipe, the Gravy Boys said, is more of a guideline and is meant to be adjusted. 

Basic Gravy Recipe from the Gravy Boys

Ingredients

Any cheap cuts of meat (7-bone steak, pork chops, “whatever is on sale”)

Cajun spice mix (salt, black pepper, cayenne, garlic powder, amounts to taste) 

Vegetable oil

Beer, wine or water (for deglazing)

1 onion 

1 bell pepper 

1 bunch celery 

Stock (chicken, beef “or even just water, if that’s all you have”) 

Long grain rice (for serving) 

Gravy is made best with cheap cuts of meat, the Gravy Boys said – whatever is available.  (Joshua Mata)

Directions

1. Pat dry meat and season with Cajun spice mix. Dice onion, bell pepper and celery or whatever vegetables you feel like. 

2. Heat pot (preferably a cast-iron dutch oven) over medium high heat. Add vegetable oil. Once oil is hot, add seasoned meat and sear for about four to five minutes on each side, “so you get some nice fond going on in there.” 

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3. Remove meat after browning and deglaze pot with “beer, wine or water – whatever is on hand,” and scrape up fond.

4. Add veggies to the pot, cook for about 10 minutes, until soft. Add additional seasoning if desired. 

5. Add stock (or water), enough to cover all meat. Bring to a boil, then add meat back to the pot and reduce to a simmer. Put the lid on the pot. 

6. Simmer for about an hour and a half, stirring occasionally. Afterward, remove lid to let the gravy reduce. 

7. Once meat is tender, serve over long grain rice.

FIRST ON FOX: A pro-Trump former Florida prison warden who oversaw executions is urging President Biden to commute all federal and military death sentences before leaving office.

“I voted for President Trump in all of his campaigns, and I agree with him on most of his positions, but not the death penalty,” Ron McAndrew, former warden of the Florida State Penitentiary, wrote in a letter to the outgoing president. “I have written to President Trump personally to ask him to stop calling for more executions.”

McAndrew, a self-described “law-and-order guy,” Air Force veteran and pro-life Catholic, said that after overseeing three electric chair executions and witnessing five lethal injections, he grew to oppose the death penalty. 

While he had reservations from the start, he told Fox News Digital that he saw a burst of flames from the head of Pedro Medina during his execution in 1997 on the electric chair. That incident became a watershed moment in Florida and other parts of the country that marked the beginning of the end of electrocution. 

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“A plume of smoke and then a flame that came down underneath the helmet and out right in front of my face, had it come a few inches further, it would have actually burned me,” he said. 

Later, he said the stench was so overpowering that, “it was like we had gone to a human barbecue.”

State investigators found that Medina, a convicted murderer and Cuban refugee, had died instantly – but the incident traumatized McAndrew and at least two dozen other witnesses, he said.

The incident led Florida to adopt lethal injections instead, but he said that form of execution was no less disturbing for the prison workers who carried it out.

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Pedro Medina, a convicted killer, was sentenced to death and went to the electric chair on March 25, 1997. He was one of the last inmates electrocuted in this manner after his head burst into flames, filling the chamber with smoke and horrifying onlookers. (Archive PL / Alamy Stock Photo)

“The heaving of the chest is an example,” he told Fox News Digital. “You can see it if you’re up close, and you’re the executioner or a member of the team. You can see that they’re trying to break out of their own body, so to speak. But the witnesses don’t see this. They see it as, like, a clean, a sanitary form of killing someone.”

At one point, he said, he began seeing executed inmates in his sleep and drinking heavily – half a bottle of Johnnie Walker a night – as a result. Eventually, he was diagnosed with severe stress. Now he is a staunch supporter of abolishing the death penalty.

Read the letter here:

“I feel compelled to say there is one thing in particular that I agree about with President Biden,” McAndrew wrote in his letter. “We share a strong opposition to the death penalty. President Biden has the power to show mercy through the process of executive clemency, and I urge that he do so expeditiously for everyone on the federal and military death rows.”

When asked why the worst of the worst killers on death row, including Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Pittsburgh synagogue gunman Robert Bowers, should have their lives spared, he questioned where we should draw the line and suggested incarcerating them all with no possibility of parole instead.

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“If this same inmate was doing life without possibility of parole, he’d be working between 40 and 60 hours per week whether he liked it or not,” he said. “He would be making a contribution…rather than being a burden on the taxpayers, sitting in a cell getting room service for 25 years.”

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Abraham Bonowitz, who co-founded the group Death Penalty Action with McAndrew, told Fox News Digital that capital punishment should not be a partisan issue.

“Capital punishment is government overreach at its worst,” he said. “Anyone who does not trust the government to tax us fairly or come up with a safe vaccine should have a hard time trusting government with the power to execute its citizens.”

He also extended the appeal to Elon Musk, the future co-head of a new Department of Government Efficiency, if Biden rejects the letter.

President Biden, not pictured, meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“We’re excited to have a cabinet level official focused on government efficiency, because this is the first time anyone in the federal government is positioned to eliminate the death penalty by executive order,” Bonowitz said. “There is no current government program more wasteful, ineffective and inefficient than capital punishment.”

The letter comes as Trump has vowed to not only end Biden’s moratorium on capital punishment, but also to expand the list of crimes that can be punishable with execution to include child rape, human trafficking and the murder of U.S. citizens by illegal immigrants.

There are currently 40 inmates on federal death row, and they include domestic terrorists, drug kingpins and criminals who had witnesses against them killed.

Tsarnaev, who killed four and wounded hundreds; Roof, who killed nine at a Bible study; Bowers, who killed 11 at the Tree of Life Synagogue; and Kaboni Savage, a Philadelphia drug lord who killed 12 people – including four children linked to an informant – would all see clemency under the proposal.

President Biden listens as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on April 15, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The U.S. government has executed 50 inmates since 1927, according to the Bureau of Prisons, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Cold War spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. That is far fewer than the individual states, which have executed more than 1,500 condemned inmates in the last 50 years.

McAndrew also took issue with the special treatment death row inmates receive. Unlike other prisoners, they do not have to work a job behind bars and contribute, in some way, to their own “upkeep.” They have a TV, a private cell and are kept separate from the general population.

In places like California, where death row inmates are safe from execution due to a moratorium against capital punishment, they also have access to elite attorneys and all the time in the world to try and fight their circumstances.

The feds carried out death sentences for 13 federal prisoners during Trump’s first term, the most under any president in a century. Biden declared a moratorium on federal executions after taking office in 2021.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

EXCLUSIVE: A Republican lawmaker has launched a new congressional caucus aimed at working hand-in-hand with President-elect Trump’s soon-to-be DOGE – Department of Government Efficiency.

Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., said he dispatched a “Dear Colleague” letter overnight Tuesday seeking other lawmakers to join him. The practice is standard for members seeking co-sponsors of legislation.

“Taking on Crazytown is no easy task,” Bean said. Thus far, Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Ralph Norman of South Carolina have joined the caucus. Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas also filed to join as a caucus co-chair.

“Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will need partners in Congress to accomplish many of the cuts necessary to rein in the unelected bureaucrats who have had unchecked power for far too long.”

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Bean said the national debt’s $36 trillion level “should be a wakeup call for all Americans.”

“We must take action to avoid diving headfirst off the cliff of fiscal ruin… Our DOGE Caucus, will work closely with the Department of Government Efficiency to help rein in reckless spending and stop the abuse of taxpayer dollars.” 

Earlier this month, Trump tapped Musk and Ramaswamy to lead the “DOGE,” which the Tesla CEO has widely touted and begun soliciting civilian help for.

Trump said last week he hopes DOGE will become the “Manhattan Project of our time” – in reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s secretive atom bomb endeavor during World War II.

“Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time,” Trump said.

In his letter to colleagues, Bean lamented the $6 billion per day the U.S. has borrowed during the Biden-Harris administration, and added that interest accruals on the debt currently exceed the nation’s entire Defense Department budget.

“Republicans must live up to our principle of fiscal responsibility by reining in the spending that is driving both inflation and our unsustainable debt. The DOGE Caucus will bring together members from across our conference who are ready to rein-in unelected bureaucrats and end the over-regulation that has crippled American Main Street.

“When Republicans stick together, we win,” Bean said. “Join us in reclaiming our country and Making America Great Again.”

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In the immediate aftermath of his solicitation being circulated, a representative for Bean’s office said they are still waiting for other lawmakers to take part.

Musk continued sharing examples of government waste he would like to see his new department take on, captioning “Drop the DOGE hammer” on X, formerly Twitter, above a retweet of a Washington Post headline reading “New report estimates U.S. fraud losses exceed $233 billion annually.”

Musk also shared a clip Monday of Sen. Rand Paul, R–Ky., speaking about government waste and describing a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism study that reportedly fed different types of booze to fish, captioned with a furrowed-brow emoji:

“Gin to a sunfish versus tequila – which would make the sunfish more aggressive?”

“Nearly a million dollars spent studying whether or not Japanese Quail, if you give ‘em cocaine… are more sexually promiscuous,” Paul added.

Elon Musk takes the stage during a campaign rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27, 2024, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

“Sounds like a job for DOGE!” the future department head said over the weekend of a report the Pentagon failed its seventh audit and was unable to account for part of its $824 billion budget.

Trump recently said Musk and Ramaswamy’s work will help the next generation have a solvent future.

“They will work together to liberate our Economy, and make the U.S. Government accountable to ‘We The People’,” he said on Nov. 12.

Trump added at the time that his aspiration is for the department’s collaborative efforts to culminate on July 4, 2026, in concert with the celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

Fox News Digital reached out to Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy via the transition team for additional comment.