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.

Next time I order from LA I will get me some canned roux

If you buy a jar of roux from Kary's, Richard's, Savoie's or the like they usually have a serviceable, easy gumbo recipe on the label. When I started cooking I pretty much followed them, and the results were good. Over time I've developed my own tweaks that result in a richer result without introducing a lot of prep time overhead.

Tonight's dinner will consist of grilled moose sirloin steak (m/r of course), jasmine rice, and fresh steamed spinach.

Grilled cheese sandwich, potato chips, and two slices of dill pickle.

Bacon weaved veal meatloaf mixed with diced hot pepper and cheese

Dis what dey got

http://www.cajungrocer.com/food/prepared-mixes/roux.html?limit=all

tag

Please explain why members here do that instead of just adding to their watch list? I am simply curious as the watch list makes it easier to find rather than going through posts.

I can not help there, but let's get back to passionate debates on food, and cooking!
That's the entertaining part of all this.

There's some nice lookin' roux here. Got a little Cajun restaurant opening up right down the street shortly. Can't wait!

That's a nice looking gumbo!

But damn.....I can kinda maybe understand a pre-made roux, but buying a bag of mirepoix is like ice in scotch, only worse

Feel free to chop your own. I've done it both ways for gumbo, and they're both fine. But don't ice the sipping whiskey!

Also with bell pepper instead of carrots it's not quite mirepoix.

Ah! I see the reddish orange bits are indeed peppers! The trinity!

As to the whiskey...I buy mine premixed with water. Just add ice

Earlier this week was 'street tacos'.

Couldn't find any skirt steak, but flank steak is fine. Marinated in a diced and crushed up mix of jalapeño, onion, garlic, cilantro, coarse salt, coarse pepper and some oil. After mashing that together in goes a couple cups if orange juice and some lime juice. Marinated fur two days instead if my normal one day, turned out better.

Prior to submersion


The sauce to drizzle lightly over the finished product. Onion jalapeño cilantro salt pepper oil oj.


Grilled some corn tortillas lightly, topped with the grilled, chopped flank steak. Top with raw cilantro, onion, and drizzle the sauce. Beats Taco Bell by a bit

Saturday night, big size.

Montreal Smoked Meat on Rye with deli mustard, coleslaw, pepperoni/green olive pizza, and bacon pizza, green salad.

A variety of foods for a variety of people.

Lynn, how did the hootenanny you were worried about last week go over?

fried some yard bird legs

Chicken tetrazzini.........Bride and daughter were most pleased.