How to make gumbo?

Gumbo, you say? Let's get rolling.

Here's the veg

More veg.

Garlic & smoked garlic

Smash garlic

Cut up the rest of the veg. From left to right:
Celery, green pepper, onion, shallot.

Meats!
Chicken thigh
Boudin, Andoullie

Cut up chicken into bite-size pieces

Lard in the pot; get it good and hot.

Add chicken & brown

Remove chicken when it's golden brown

Cut up the andoullie sausage then brown it too.

Remove andoullie when it's browned and drain it, just like with the chicken. Set aside for later.

cut up boudin. No need to brown it, just save for later.

More ingredients. Clockwise from top left:
Parsley, tabasco sauce, Worcestershire, AP flour, chopped tomatoes, and 4 cups homemade beef stock.

Now the real cooking starts. Time to make roux.
Ideally I'd be using bacon drippings but I didn't have any so I'm using lard again. 1 cup lard + 1 cup AP flour.

Stir constantly so the flour doesn't stick and burn.

Keep cooking & stirring until it gets to be a nice dark brown. It's not done yet.

The roux is actually darker than it appears in this photo. I try and get it to look like an old tarnished copper penny.

Add the veg.

This part is critical. You want to sweat out the veggies in the roux. The veggies need to be thoroughly cooked, but you don't want it to stick and burn either.

Sorry to break chain, but why wouldn't you use the lard and fats from the chicken/sausage instead of fresh lard? And just eyeball the flour since you won't know exactly the volume

After the veggies are thoroughly cooked out--about 10 minutes or so--add the parsley and a half-cup of worcestershire.

>shallots
no

>t why wouldn't you use the lard and fats from the chicken/sausage instead of fresh lard?

you certainly could do that, but I didn't because after browning the chicken I had some residue stuck to the pot which forced me to clean the pot before continuing.

And you certainly can eyeball the flour/fat; the ratio isn't particularly critical.

Cook the parsley with the roux and veg for another few minutes

You're doing OK user
not great but OK

Meats in. tomatoes too; though that's contentious and some people don't like using tomatoes in gumbo.

Why no love for shallots? They're like extra-tasty onions. Onions++, if you like.

I forgot to mention that the stock is added at this stage as well; you can see it being poured in.

At this point I simmer it for about 20 min.

Meanwhile, cut some green onions for garnish.

I have no clue why I idiotically wrote "20 minutes" there. Should be more like an hour.

Anyway, green onions chopped up.

because I'm an actual cajun and im resisting the urge to scream at you, but the beauty of gumbo is that you can make it however you want

Almost ready, add the green onions for the last couple minutes.

If you were making seafood gumbo then you would add the fast-cooking items like shrimp or oysters at this point, but this time it's just chicken and sausage.

Note that the boudin has melted into the gumbo and thickened it. Commonly people use Okra or file powder for that, but I prefer this method.

>im resisting the urge to scream at you

I want to you explain yourself rationally, not get caught up on "muh traditions", which is silly because the whole thing is a bastardization of an African dish anyway.

Served!

>I'm an actual cajun
I'm curious what your thoughts are regarding meat and seafood. I know many cajuns and some of them like to combine both while others swear that it's one or the other, but never combined.

>No shrimp
>No crab
>No spice

Not him but my grandmother, mother and now sister used both seafood, sausage and chicken.

I normally use both shrimp and crab, but this time I was making it for someone who is allergic to shellfish so I just used chicken and sausage only.

>>spice
I didn't take a picture of it, but I did season with salt, pepper, and tabasco.
I normally leave a cajun style seasoning mix & hot sauce on the table so people can season it to taste if they want.

Cajun here

heres my recipe, kinda similar to anons

>make a thick chicken stock, i recommend using rotisserie chicken
>remove the bones and set the meat aside
>make a roux with butter and flour, once it becomes lumpy use a bit of oil to smoothe it out. let it sit in your pot on low heat stirring it often with a wooden spoon until its the color of a dirty old copper penny.
>finely chop your holy trinity. 2 parts onion, one part celery, one part green bell pepper, and some garlic too but that goes in first
>once your roux is ready, add your garlic, then your holy trinity. cook until your onions are translucent, then add a shitload of chopped okra(it will cook down a lot)
>cook your okra for at least 30 minutes. youll know its ready when it stops being slimy.
>sometime halfway through that, add one can of hot Rotel Tomatoes (or some spicy tomato-chili equivalent, this is where the heat comes from), and add a couple tablespoons of ground sassafrass(gumbo file). but not too much or youll turn it green
>once your veggies are cooked down into a sauce, add the chicken stock and a little water, youll need enough water to be able to boil it for a LONG time
>once your gumbo comes to a rolling boil, cover it and let it simmer on low heat for 2 hours. the time is the most important part because thats when the flavors develop. trust me it will taste awful until its done
>towards the end(your gumbo will start to get thick), slice and brown your sausage and throw it in. throw your pulled chicken in at the end.
>add your fresh parsley, Tony Chacheries(or slap ya mama or other cajun seasoning), and finish with a bit of tobasco or louisiana hot sauce
>THIS STEP IS CRUCIAL: take your gumbo off of heat and let it cool vented for a few hours. once its nearly room temperature, THEN transfer it to the fridge. the real flavor in gumbo doesnt develop until the next day, when its congealed.
>serve over a small service of rice, garnish with fresh parsley

cont'd

TIPS:
>skim the tip of your gumbo while its simmering to get rid of all that frothy scum, it will give you wicked heart burn
>more roux = thicker gumbo. you can add water to reach your desired thickness. bear in mind how thick/watery it becomes at different temperatures
>seafood gumbo is an entirely different recipe than poultry gumbo
>gumbo combines fat, flour, and water into one element so it gets VERY HOT do not burn yourself with roux its basically fucking napalm.
>adding bone-in chicken instead of pre-making stock makes for a lot more flavor, but not everyone is into food with bones

we generally keep seafood gumbo and poultry gumbo seperate because they use different types of stock. seafood gumbo is MUCH harder to make, usually uses terragon instead of parsley, and is served much thicker. also seafood cooks much more quickly so you dont throw in your proteins until the soup is done

Am I the only one that in addition to other ingredients adds boiled egg to their gumbo? It's so wonderful. The eggs take on the flavor.

Anybody else top their homemade gumbo with homemade potato salad?

I've never heard of the egg thing before, but I have heard about the potato salad. One of my friends does that and says it was typical "back home". I tried it and I didn't really like it, but then again I'm not a fan of potato salad in general.

Ok cool pics but what's with all the white edges you double cajun?

Why go through all the effort just to ruin it with saltines?

I didn't have access to the original photos I took at this time, but I did have access to a Powerpoint I had made of it. I was too lazy to manually extract each photo one at a time, so I just saved the PPT as images which added the white boarders.

Because I don't think the saltines ruin it at all. I like some crunchy texture with the gumbo. If you don't like 'em then don't eat 'em.

Ok user, thanks for the dump

And what's wrong with saltines?

I eat them by themselves sometimes

Thanks for the recipe user. I've never tried Gumbo (I'm Australian), but it looks tasty.

That's not even a picture of gumbo you scum

Will smoked turkey stock instead of beef? Also can I skip the boudin? Don't know where to source it in central VA.

DO NOT
Do fucking not put tomatoes is gumbo you do not need to ruin a perfectly good gumbo with tomatoes

Sure you can use the turkey stock Gumbo is a very flexible dish. There are countless variations.

>>boudin
Yeah, you can leave that out. In fact my understanding is that it's fairly rare to add boudin. That's how I was taught to make it by a little old lady in St. Amant, LA. But most gumbo that I have had at friend's houses and restaurants use either Okra or file instead.

See what I mean? Some people love the idea of putting tomatoes in, other people think that's sacrilege.

A good indicator of when the roux is ready is when it's been reduced to roughly 3/5 of the original volume.

>roux
>reduced

You what now?

While I appreciate the 3/5 joke, it's kinda silly since roux doesn't reduce.

I make roux different sometimes. I used to just brown my flour in the pan without oil to save on some calories but it gets everywhere from all of the particles. Now I just brown my flour in the oven in bulk and always put some back. This way when I don't feel like making traditional roux I can save some time.

>which is silly because the whole thing is a bastardization of an African dish anyway.

When will this meme stop.

We do this and it's awesome. You gotta make the potato salad right though or it fucks it all up. Mayo, Not to heavy on the mustard, mostly smooth, with black olive, egg, finely minced celery and onion.

When we give Black people their Reparation check, i.e. never.

Is there any good substitute for Andoullie sausage? Can't get it here in europe.

Any kind of spicy sausage will work, user, and if it's not spicy, that's fine too.

Gumbo is a country folks food, and they used whatever they had on hand at the time.

>chicken over shrimp and hot links

cuck/10

Andoullie is sometimes spicy, but that's not really important since you can always make the gumbo more spicy by seasoning it directly.

The key point about the andoullie is that it is smoked.; the smoky flavor is more important than the spicyness. Also the fact that it's already cooked means you can cut it up into pieces which then stay together in the finished dish.

Ideally you'd substitute another kind of smoked pork sausage. If you can't get smoked sausage then just get something similar to bratwurst and cook it whole before you cut it up for the gumbo.

>The key point about the andoullie is that it is smoked

Good catch, user.