Thicken your gumbo and stews the traditional way, with filé powder.

History:
Sassafras is a classic Appalachian plant with medicinal, culinary, and other practical uses. The leaves of sassafras have a mucilaginous quality that makes them useful as a thickener soups and stews.
The Choctaw people–of the southeastern woodlands of what is not the United States–are believed to have been the first to use dried, ground sassafras leaves (or filé powder) in cuisine. The Choctaw taught French colonizers in Louisiana how to dry and pulverize sassafras leaves to use to add texture to gumbo and other soups and stews. The French gave filé powder its modern name.

How it’s made:
Vernal Vibe Rise filé powder is made by harvesting fresh leaves from the beyond-organic sassafras trees that grow wild in the abundant edge of the farm’s mature oak forest. Once per year, in early Autumn, I hand-harvest, air-dry, sort, and grind the leaves, then sieve the filé powder before packing it in jars.

How to use:
In Creole traditions, Filé powder is traditionally used to thicken gumbo, but may be used with stews or beans-and-rice dishes–any hot food that needs thickening. Important to note: filé powder is to used tableside—added ONLY after the dish has finished cooking and has been removed from the heat source. I keep mine on the table, near my salt and pepper.

What about safrole? Isn’t sassafras a carcinogen?
“Unlike sassafras roots and bark, the tree’s leaves (from which filé is produced), do not contain a detectable amount of safrole. This is significant because in 1960, the FDA banned the use of sassafras oil and safrole in commercially mass-produced foods (such as root beer) and drugs based on the animal studies and human case reports suggesting safrole is a carcinogen.” -Wikipedia