Cook Time: 1-4 hours
Serves: 6-8
History
Living in the south, you tend to pick up some classic southern recipes. This recipe is something my wife and I have been tinkering with for a long time. This is the recipe we have settled upon and we think it’s pretty damn delicious. This recipe is great for left overs. Have a lot of random left over veggies and protein? Brew up a batch of delicious gumbo! Anything that crawly, flys, or swims can be tossed into a gumbo.
Ingredients
4 oz. Vegetable oil
4 oz. All-purpose flour
1 Medium onion diced
3 Stalks of celery diced
1 Green bell pepper diced
3 Cloves minced
2 qt. Low Sodium chicken stock (if using shrimp or crawfish stock, use 1 qt chicken and 1 qt other)
2 Chicken bouillon cubes
1 Can seeded and chopped tomato (not drained)
½ tsp. Black pepper
¼ tsp. Cayenne pepper
3 Bay leaves
2 tsp. 30% Less sodium old bay
¼ tsp. Smoked paprika
1 lb. Andouille sausage
1 tsp. File powder
1 lb. of peeled and deveined shrimp
Salt
Pepper
Cooking Instructions
- Place a Dutch oven over medium heat.
- Add the oil and flour and mixing using a whisk.
- Cook the roux until the roux reaches a peanut butter or red brick color. If any black flecks are formed during thi
s stage, throw the roux out and start over. The roux has burned.
- Add the onions, celery, and green bell peppers.
- Sauté the vegetables until they are translucent.
- Add the garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds.
- Slowly add the chicken broth while whisking.
- Add the bouillon cubes, tomatoes, black pepper, cayenne, bay leaves, old bay, and smoked paprika.
- Cut the andouille sausage into ¼ inch thick disks.
- Brown the sausage in a separate pan.
- Add the sausage to the gumbo.
- Simmer the gumbo for 30 min to 3 hours over low heat. The longer the better.
- 30 minutes before serving, add the shrimp.
- Taste for salt and pepper.
- Serve your gumbo over white rice.
Notes
This recipe is just so damn delicious. Serve it over white rice or do like in some places in Louisiana and serve your gumbo over grits. There are also a lot of parts of this recipe that can be tinkered with.
First, the roux is the hardest part of this recipe, but is the keystone to this recipe turning out. I personally like the very dark roux (brick in color), but it is very difficult to pull off without burning it. However, starting the roux on the stove top and then finishing it in the oven makes things a little easier.
Make the roux as directed in steps 1 and 2. After the roux has been started, toss the uncovered Dutch oven into a 350º F oven. Stir the roux every 15 minutes or so. Pull the roux out of the oven when it has reached your desired level of doneness. Alton Brown has a very good video describing this method, so I recommend checking it out.
Gumbo’s can be cooked with a large variety of different proteins. You can put chicken, beef, duck, crab, or any meat you can think of into a gumbo. A gumbo can contain anything that “walks, crawls, swims, or flies.” You’ll want to brown any protein that isn’t seafood before you add it to the gumbo.
You also may have noticed my recipe does not include okra. That’s because I don’t like okra, so we use the file powder instead. However, if you like okra, feel free to toss it in. However, you might want to back off on the file powder to keep the gumbo from getting too thick.
Choose your Stocks
You can also supplement the chicken stick with other stocks. Shrimp or crawfish stocks are great. Crawfish stock is my personal favorite.
To make shrimp stock, start with 2 lbs. of whole head-on shrimp. Use a medium sized shrimp. Peel and devein the shrimp. Toss the heads and shells into a sauce pan large enough to hold all of the heads and shells. Add enough water to cover the heads. Simmer for about an hour and you have shrimp stock.
Crawfish stock is bit different from a shrimp stock and requires a bit more work, but it’s totally worth it. Crawfish yields very little meat per pound of crawfish. You can get a lb. of tail meat from 5 lbs. of crawfish if you are lucky. So for this recipe, you’ll need at a minimum of 5 lbs. of crawfish.
At this point in the recipe, I am going to assume your crawfish have already gone through a boiling process or are left over from a crawfish boil. You can buy frozen boiled whole crawfish sometimes at the grocery store. Frozen crawfish work fine. Just a note, crawfish from a left over crawfish boil are the best option for this gumbo recipe. The juices from the heads and meat just can’t be beat.
Remove the head and shell of the crawfish. Place the shells and heads into a stock pot. I would use the heads and shells from about 3 lbs. of crawfish. I would discard the rest of the shells and heads.
Add enough water to the stock pot to cover all of the heads and shells. Simmer on low until the liquid reduces to about a quart and your crawfish stock is done.
If you are not in the south and can’t find crawfish, you may need to look online for a vender who will ship you live crawfish. Also, even if you are in the south, you will only find crawfish during the spring and the very beginning of summer. Crawfish is seasonal, but you still might be able to find some in the freezer section.
