re: Share Your Gumbo Tips?

Sausage, sausage, sausage. The sausage is the key. All the other ingredients are just plain and standard: Flour, water, oil, chicken. The sausage builds out the flavor profile and if the sausage sucks or if it's not the right kind (god help you if I see you putting kielbasa in a gumbo), your gumbo might end up sucking, too.

Also, YOU MUST USE THE BONES AND SKIN. Debone and skin the chicken if you wish. I do. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces? Awesome. Save that skin and bones. Make a cheesecloth bouquet out of that stuff and drop it in right at the beginning when you marry the roux and veggies to the water. Then just let that slowly simmer for a couple of hours (Saturdays and Sundays are good for this). You won't need to buy stock because you're making your own on the fly. You're also going to render out the schmaltz from the skin and that's going to get you more flavor. When you're ready to serve, just fish out the bouquet and toss it in the trash, skim any excess fat, and your gumbo is good to go with nice bite-sized chunks of chicken and sausage and no bones or skin.

That pretty much covers the three biggest mistakes I think people make with gumbos:
1) They don't use good sausage
2) They try to rush things. Yeah, you can get it done in an hour, but three is better.
3) They don't use the skin and bones and miss out on a lot of flavor and body

Now that that's out of the way, who's going to be the first to say something that turns this into a Gumbo Fight Thread(tm)?