Authentic Louisiana Gumbo
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 cup oil (I use canola)
1 cup flour
1/2 pound sausage (your favorite variety), sliced into “coins”
(I used Elgin in this batch, but you can use linguica, boudin, etc.)
15 large shrimp, precooked, tail-off
1 large white onion, diced
1 cup diced celery
1 large green bell pepper, diced
1/2 pound (8 ounces) frozen okra
2 bay leaves
3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press
1 1/2 quarts (6 cups) HOT chicken stock
salt and and pepper to taste
approximately 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper (to taste)
Tabasco to taste
about 1 Tbsp. Emeril’s Baby Bam seasoning
1 tsp. gumbo file seasoning (sassafras)
chopped Italian parsley, for garnish
White rice (about 3 cups uncooked or 6 cups cooked)
enough chicken stock to cook rice in
Toss chicken pieces with Baby Bam seasoning. Saute sausage slices in a large, flat pan until lightly browned. Remove from pan (leave sausage fat in pan) and set aside in a large bowl. Add seasoned chicken pieces to hot sausage fat in pan and saute until browned. Remove chicken from pan and set aside in bowl with sausage. Add onion, garlic, bay leaves, green bell peppers, celery and okra to pan. Saute until veggies are softened and onions are translucent. Remove from pan, leaving any remaining fat in pan, and set veggies aside in bowl with cooked meats.
Add enough canola oil to pan to make 1 cup of grease/fat. Heat oil/fat mixture until very hot, but not smoking. Carefully add flour to pan, quickly whisking to get rid of lumps, to make a smooth roux. Cook roux over medium heat, stirring frequently, until roux is a dark chocolate brown. This may take some time, a half-hour or more.
This roux is maybe a hair past what is called “blonde roux”, which can be used in making sauces, but for gumbo, it’s not quite there yet!
NOTE: If you cook on low enough heat, and stir frequently enough, it is VERY hard to burn or scorch your roux. Every time that I have thought that my roux was too dark or that I burned it, it turned out, once the gumbo was finished, that it was not too done, and was maybe even underdone. It is OK for it to be DARK. I used to even have a black cat named Roux, because if it is made properly, it really is almost black. Paul Prudhomme says that it should be the color of a Hershey bar.
This is JUST about right…..
Once your roux is dark enough, gently stir in sauteed chicken, sausage, veggies and hot chicken stock. Be careful not to splash any of the hot roux on yourself – Paul Prudhomme (rightfully) calls this stuff kitchen napalm – ouch! Stir well to thoroughly combine. Increase heat and bring to a boil. When gumbo reaches a boil, lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Gently drop in frozen shrimp and simmer for another 15 minutes.
Put rice in to cook, using chicken stock for cooking liquid.
NOTE: I use brown rice for almost everything else, but for gumbo, I MUST have plain-old white rice. Again, I suppose it’s a matter of what you’re familiar with. For me, brown rice would just not be right for gumbo.
Season gumbo with salt, pepper, cayenne and/or Tabasco to taste and serve over rice.
You can remove the bay leaves, if you can find them, but I don’t think it’s necessary. In my family, we always said that it was good luck to get the bay leaf, cherry pit, etc. in your portion of a dish. Of course, this could be something that my mother and grandmother (eternal “glass half full” types, both of them) “cooked up” to convince us that their cooking errors were “special surprises”.
