Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation What's for Supper Tonight?

First off I "cheat" and use dark roux from a jar. The producers down here are pretty good at making dark roux in quantity without burning it. Here's the one I use most of the time:



If you make your own, that's the color you want to achieve. But if you burn even one speck, throw it out and start again unless you like ashtray flavored gumbo.

You'll need a good sized pot. The usual gumbo I make uses a half jar of roux in about five quarts of water. Plus a chicken, plus a pound or more of andouille, plus a 3/4 pound hunk of tasso, plus vegetables, and you need some headroom to boil, stir, and so on.

I get the water boiling and add three Knorr bouillon cubes (cheat number two), one vegetable, one chicken, one beef. Once they dissolve I lower the heat and add the roux to the water. Stir, stir, stir. You must thoroughly dissolve the roux. One way to tell you're there is being able to maintain a decent boil without the liquid foaming up and climbing out of the pot.

Put a half dozen or so good shakes of Tabasco in the pot.

Put about a teaspoon of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce in the pot. (Other brands won't do.)

Cut your tasso into approx. half inch cubes and add to the pot.

Cut the andouille into 1/4" (or a bit thinner) slices. Brown these slices in a large skillet. Add them to the pot.

Here's cheat number three: I don't hone my knife skills cutting up vegetables. I just use about 2/3 of a two pound bag of fresh frozen seasoning blend.



Put the seasoning blend into the skillet and sweat it a while. The fond from browning the andouille will release from the skillet and stick to the vegetables, and they will carry it into the pot. Add them to the pot now.

Add about 3/4 cup of diced green onions to the pot, along with a good palm full of finely cut parsley.

Mince a half dozen large toes of garlic and add to the pot.

Cut up a chicken and add it to the pot.

Cook on a low boil about two hours. Check on the chicken. I want the chicken tender of course, but I don't want it falling apart in the pot.

Remove the chicken from the pot. Once it has cooled enough to handle, debone it and set aside.

With the chicken out of the pot, increase the heat so the pot is boiling a bit faster. We want to reduce and intensify the liquid a bit.

While that's going on, cook a few cups of rice. Once the rice is cooked and the gumbo "juice" has reduced a bit, taste the juice and adjust the seasoning if necessary. We waited this long to do it because the sausage and tasso will gradually season the juice, and if you get the salt and pepper just right earlier in the process it won't be right later.

With the salty meats and bouillon cubes I usually find little need to add salt. Maybe a teaspoon at most of something like Tony Chachere's.

Serve the chicken, andouille, tasso and juice over rice. Add some fine chopped green onion and/or parsley on top if you like.

Looks about like so:




I hope I haven't left something out, but I don't have any of this written down other than here now. I've done it enough that I don't think about it too hard, I make it on autopilot.