Share Your Gumbo Tips?

Now that’s a damned fine idea.

Cook it...

Seriously, allow the gravy to cook for several hours before adding the chicken back in. People are always in a hurray.

Also, fry the shite out of the chicken skin on...

Agree x 1000 with frying the chicken first then using the grease for roux. Place whole peices skin and all in the pot and remove skin and bones when it's falling apart.

Several here will recommend making your roux in the oven (350 degrees with equal oil and flour, or slightly more flour than oil), stirring every 20-30 minutes after the first 30, and bring it to the level of brown shoe brown that you like.

This method works great and allows you to get the roux where you want it without burning the roux.

Burned roux must be thrown away. There is no salvaging it.

I like to approach my roux slowly. Paul Prudhomme made roux with as hot a fire as he could generate and fast stirring of that molten lava concoction. Paul supposedly completed his roux in 1 or 2 minutes! I have never come close to his level of expertise and never will. I do my roux slowly with much stirring, except when I do the oven method, which is more and more these days, especially when it received the official Gris Gris recommendation.

Sauté the trinity in roux or separate pot and add the roux later. Either seems to work fine. If cooking trinity in roux, do not do it at screaming hot temperature. I like to lower the heat and sauté the vegetables slowly. Add the liquid (chicken broth, seafood broth, whatever to the roux n small portions and stir in each addition until it is incorporated.

I like to brown my sausage in the pot before sautéing the vegetables and remove it before the sauté. I like to fry my chicken. When making chicken broth, Broiled bones are nice along with using onion, garlic, carrots and seasoning in the broth for flavor. Shrimp shells, onion, garlic and seasoning make great seafood broth.

I like to skim any excess oil off of the top of my gumbo when it is finished (with a spoon and a paper towel) as I never get proper oil content.

You will hear both support and violent opposition to the use of tomatoes and okra in gumbo. Normally, offensive name calling will also occur.

I like rice with my gumbo. Others will recommend potato salad, boiled eggs, whatever. If their Grandmother did it, you need to be kind and not put down their suggestion just because it sounds crazy.

Oh - gumbo is not soup. Never make that suggestion.

I might add more when I remember the things I forgot.

quote:

---

get your hands on a friend turkey

---

This. Much safer than an enemy turkey.

quote:

---

I like to approach my roux slowly. Paul Prudhomme made roux with as hot a fire as he could generate and fast stirring of that molten lava concoction. Paul supposedly completed his roux in 1 or 2 minutes! I have never come close to his level of expertise and never will. I do my roux slowly with much stirring, except when I do the oven method, which is more and more these days, especially when it received the official Gris Gris recommendation.

---

I use the Prudhomme approach and it works fine but you have to stay right on top of it. I don't know about 1-2 minutes but it's significantly faster. I have never tried the oven method but I might start doing that.

Another of Prudhomme's recommendations is use light roux for dark meats and dark roux for light meats. As dark as you can get it without scorching for seafood.

Teets pure pork sausage

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)?

If you happen to fry a turkey over the holiday s, make stock from that carcass. Makes really great gumbo