re: Help the idiot make a great Cajun style gumbo

I read where you have a jar of roux. Follow this recipe except for the roux. Cook your trinity in a touch of oil, then add the roux to that.

Sausage and Chicken Gumbo

Need

Roux - use 1 cup flour and follow the stove top or oven roux recipe to make a dark roux
1 to 1 1/2 pounds chicken, for this one, rotisserie chicken
2 cups onion, chopped
2 cups green bell pepper, diced
2 cups celery, diced
2 pounds smoked pork sausage, cut into 1-inch pieces.
3-5 cups chicken broth.
Slap Ya Momma Creole seasoning 2 teaspoons, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon Red cayenne pepper, plus more to taste
1 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Black pepper
2 teaspoons Lawry's Garlic Salt
1 Bay leaf
1 teaspoon Louisiana Hot Sauce, LA Gold Hot Sauce or Tabasco, plus more to taste
1/2 cup green onion tops, sliced in 1/4 inch pieces
1 cup dry measure Cooked rice

Directions

Make roux in a heavy skillet on the stove top or in the oven, (method below). Cook until the roux is as dark as brown shoe leather (noticeably darker than peanut butter).

Pull chicken from bones and remove skin.

Set the chicken aside. Use the skin and bones with a chicken bouillon cube, 4 cans of chicken broth, a stalk of celery, Slap Ya Momma, garlic salt and 1/4 of a medium onion to make chicken broth for the gumbo. Cook the broth at a low boil for at least 30 minutes, then strain and discard the bones, skin, celery and onion. You can add a little water if you notice much of the water cooking away while making the broth.

In the pot which will be used to make the gumbo, lightly brown the sausage and pull it from the pot, then add the onion, bell peppers, and celery to the pot and sauté the vegetables until they are translucent. Toward the end of the vegetable sauté, return the sausage to the pot. When the vegetables are translucent, add the chicken stock to the pot with the bay leaf, Slap Ya Momma, Lawry's, and Black Pepper. As the pot begins to boil, slowly add the hot roux, stirring as you add to keep the roux from breaking.

Cook over medium/low heat for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally during the cook. Add the chicken at the end, so that it is less likely to break apart. Reduce the heat to low and simmer the gumbo for an additional 30 minutes. Stir gently, occasionally, to keep the gumbo from sticking. Taste for seasoning and add additional salt, cayenne, LA Gold pepper sauce, Slap Ya Momma and hot sauce as desired. Skim away excess oil from the top of the gumbo if needed.
Serve over cooked rice. Use additional hot sauce if desired. As with all soups and stews, the taste of gumbo will improve overnight.

Roux – Stove Top Method

Need

1 Cup AP flour
1 Cup vegetable oil

Directions

Heat the oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add flour. Stir flour briskly as it begins to brown. If flour is browning so rapidly that brisk stirring won’t keep the flour consistent as it browns, reduce the heat. Cooking time for the roux should be 20 or 30 minutes, as required, to give the flour time to cook thoroughly and for the color and nutty characteristic of a good roux to develop.

A Roux may be light to dark brown – to your preference. The darker a roux becomes, the more danger there will be of burning the flour. Taste the roux before using it. If it has a burnt taste, discard it and do over. There is no way to recover a burnt roux

Darker roux has more flavor but thickens less. Lighter roux thickens better but has less flavor.

Oven method (my preferred method of making a roux)

Directions

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Use the same measures of flour and oil in a heavy skillet and cook in the oven, stirring after 30 minutes and then every 15 minutes until it reaches the level of brown you desire.