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As a boy, native Floridian Michael Anderson loved to sit at the end of the family kitchen table, patiently waiting and watching his grandmother create magic with her cooking. “I would just sit at the edge of the counter and wait for her to get finished cooking so I could eat the food,” reminisces the founder of Chilau Foods, the maker of a flavorful stew base line.
“I didn’t realize how much I was taking in as far as the way she cooked, the type of spices she used, the preparation…I was learning just by sitting and watching.”
The Story of Crab Chilau
One particular dish captivated Anderson the most: crab chilau (pronounced “shi-lah”), a dish that had a place of honor at every family celebration table (think graduations, weddings, birthdays and more). It is also one whose recipe Anderson’s grandmother, Minnie Hallback, crafted using a special blend of spices for her stew base.
So what is crab chilau? “It’s basically like the gumbo of Tampa,” describes Anderson. “It’s definitely one of those types of recipes where everyone has their own unique spin. But the core of it is a red sauce, it has blue crab in it and it’s served over spaghetti.”
Through the course of his research before launching the Chilau Foods stew base line, the businessman found crab chilau’s history began with the Cuban immigrants who settled in Florida, specifically in Ybor City and Tampa.
“I noticed there were families around Tampa that made crab chilau and I dug a little bit deeper. It actually began in the 1920s in Ybor City and Tampa, where my dad’s side of my family is from. They grew up in Ybor City,” notes Anderson about crab chilau’s popularity as a street food.
“Blue crabs were very plentiful in Tampa Bay around that time. So it was a cheap source of food for families. They would catch their own crabs and then make the chilau with the crabs that were plentiful there.”
A Family Recipe Revealed
In Anderson’s family, his grandmother admits she doesn’t quite remember where she got the crab chilau recipe originally, but it has evolved over the years. “Specifically in my family, bell pepper and onion (and sometimes celery) are at the very core of the flavor profile…and then we’re going to have a little bit of chili pepper, garlic powder. Those types of aromatic ingredients are the base that holds it together,” he shares.
While the stew base spices used in Anderson’s family chilau recipe made the dish well-loved, it also intimidated everyone from making the dish themselves because of the complexity of the spice blend their grandmother used.
“We had a family vacation in California and I went to my uncle’s house for dinner. He starts raving about how much he loves my grandmother’s crab chilau, and he’s like, ‘I can’t wait to get back to Florida so I can get it,’” relates Anderson.
“I was like, ‘Why don’t you just make it yourself?’ He says it’s too complicated, can’t make it. And that was my light bulb moment. He should be able to experience this type of flavor in California [and] not have to wait until the next time he goes to Florida to experience it. And that’s what planted the seed for the Chilau Foods brand.”
Creatively Blending Spices
As luck would have it, Anderson already had a small spice company, started in 2009, that sold spice blends at farmers’ markets. “I actually went to college for computer information systems, with a career working with software startups,” he shares, “And food was my outlet to express my creative side.”
Using that creativity and memories of his grandmother making the crab chilau in her kitchen, Anderson worked on identifying the flavor profiles found in her recipe for the iconic dish.
“Knowing that my grandmother, of course, used a lot of commercial spices, I noticed there were more opportunities to make this [product] healthier with less additives,” says Anderson about the ways he could adjust and elevate her spice recipe to bring a richer flavor profile, without commercial seasoning additives, for his version of the spice blend.
The result is a concentrated stew base that allows home cooks the versatility to add their own spin to their recipes. With a consistency between a paste and sauce, the Chilau Foods stew base can be spooned into liquid stock to create a richer flavor profile for stews, soups, gravies, toppings and, of course, crab chilau.
“What sets us apart and makes us different is we give you a southern flavor profile,” details Anderson about Chilau Foods. Currently, his stew base line offers four flavor-enhancing seasonings: Original Southern Style, Low-Country Citrus, Creole Trinity and Crab and Shrimp Boil.
The stew base flavors are available online as well as in select retail outlet stores, including Winn-Dixie, Meijer, United Supermarket, Jewel-Osco, Busch’s Fresh Food Market and Pete’s Fresh Market.
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A Stew Base with Accessible Packaging
In addition to the flavorful stew base that comes in a glass jar, Chilau Foods’ packaging is also super accessible thanks to the use of the EEASY Lid—a jar lid innovation that helps reduce the amount of effort needed to open the lid. By simply pressing a button on the lid, the jar’s vacuum seal is released and the lid easily twists off. The switch to the EEASY Lid for Chilau Foods was inspired by its customers.
Anderson shares, “I try to develop a deep relationship with the customers that we have….One thing I noticed is a lot of my customers skew older—with a lot of my customers between 55 and 75 years old. Knowing that I have a customer base that was skewing older, my jar lids were, depending on how much suction is on the vacuum lid, really hard to get off.”
As Chilau Foods products roll out with the EEASY Lid (as old stock sells out), Anderson is making his delicious stew base line accessible for all—including his 90-year-old grandmother.
“My previous jars, if someone isn’t there to help my grandmother open the jar, that would be an issue. But now with the EEASY Lid, I can send her jars in the mail and be confident that she can open the jar and not need any assistance,” he says.
Grandmother’s Seal of Approval
When asked what his grandmother thought about Chilau Foods’ stew base line, Anderson reports, “The blessing is she’s still with me and she uses the product today,” he points out.
“One thing I did before I even launched the product, after about a year of developing the flavor, I took it to her, and I had her cook the crab chilau recipe with it. When she tried it, she said, ‘You nailed it, you got it right.’ And from that point forward, she started using my base to make her dish over all the individual spices and seasonings that she typically used. So she definitely loves the product.”
Now, that’s a seal of approval that’s hard to beat.
For more information about the Chilau Foods stew base line, visit online. To join the “Chilau Heads” community of home cooks who love to share recipes, cooking tips and more featuring Chilau Foods stew bases, follow on social media.
