Transplanted Yankee searching for recommended gumbo recipe

Look in the Recipe Thread above. Also, google the Paul Prudhomme recipe.

Paul Prudhomme's recipe below is a sure thing. Read it. It's easy. You can prepare the chicken the day before if you like.

LINK

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Emeril has a great chicken and gumbo recipe

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Yup. I use this one...says it's an Emeril's recipe. Very good and easy to make. Make sure you buy good smoked andouille too.

Gumbo Recipe

I have a question about Prudhomme's recipe.

"While the gumbo is simmering, bone the cooked chicken and cut the
meat into 1/2-inch dice. When the gumbo is cooked, stir in the chicken"

Do you leave the skin on the chicken?

You gotta lot of good cooks here so all good advice.

I'll add I cook my sausage separately in a pan and remove and add chicken to same pan and then remove. When ready add to gumbo pot. Leads to less oil in the gumbo.

Also sometimes substitute a stout for one of the cups of broth.

Isaac Toups recipe w/ beer: utube

Here's a real easy recipe:

Kary's Roux
Chicken Stock
Creole Seasoning
Seasoning Blend Vegetables
Chicken
Sausage
Diced Green Onions
Dried Parsley

Place roux in large stock pot, add chicken stock.
Bring to a boil, but watch it, it will boil over.
Season chicken with creole seasoning, cut sausage into 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick pieces, set aside.
Boil roux and stock mixture for an hour to 90 minutes. Add seasoning blend vegetables, chicken and sausage. Cook until chicken is done. Add greens onion tops and parsley. Serve with rice.
Enjoy!

I have never gone off a recipe, just a mixture of what I was taught by both my grandmothers. There are different "types" of gumbos out there, but I obviously like the one I grew up on. I tend to make it a bit darker and thicker (not like an okra gumbo or anything, just not as watery) than what they did as I tweaked it over time. I've never had a complaint other than my wife, but that woman just likes hot sausage water .

It's really simple from an overall steps perspective. 1) make a roux. 2) stir in the trinity (onions, bell peppers, celery). 3) put in chicken stock, chicken, and sausage. 4) season to taste.

I actually start off boiling the chicken with bouillon cubes (You can season on your own, but the cubes are just easy) while chopping onions, bell peppers, and celery (I eye it up to fill up a little less than half the pot....it'll cook down over a couple hours). Don't have exact quantities, but usually about 2-1-1 onion, bell pepper, celery, plus some finely chopped garlic. Boil the chicken until I can break up the meat with a cooking spoon (you can use a whole chicken, but I often use just breasts, which I admit my grandmothers would never have done, but it's just easier).

Making a roux is simple, but tough. 1 to 1 ratio vegetable oil to flour lining the bottom of a black iron pot about 1/4". stir on medium heat until a bit darker than a penny (I personally go a bit darker than some here). You don't want it to smoke or start browning unevenly. Medium heat and time is the only way to get there. It could take 30-45 minutes depending on size.

Mix in those veggies and watch the roux turn tar black (it will turn lighter again when you mix in stock). The roux should cover all the veggies and there shouldn't be too much excess roux. I let my veggies sweat a bit right here and soften. Mostly because I just like the smell.

Slowly mix in the stock from the chicken you boiled (I pull the chicken out to break up on a chopping board, skim the fat off the top the stock, then pour in the stock). I do a just a bit at a time until I reach my desired consistency. It does take a bit of stirring to get the roux to combine with the stock (it is oil and water). Once I have consistency, mix in the chicken and sliced sausage. I typically buy a spicy Cajun sausage. It will give a lot of the flavor to the gumbo. I let that cook for a bit (cover on at a very slow boil) then start seasoning to taste. I like to know how the ingredients I used seasoned it before I start throwing salt and spices in there. Sometimes, the right sausage will give it enough kick that I barely have to put anything in there (from a spicy perspective, you will have to salt to taste).

I let it roll until the chicken gets a bit stringy and the veggies are so soft I really cant even tell they are there from a consistency perspective. Total cook time might be about 2 hours or so (including boiling chicken and making roux). There's a good bit of time to adjust the taste while everything is cooking down in the end.

make some rice and eat

Major things I've screwed up over time
-cook roux too hot and get black flakes in it from the bottom burning in the pot
-put too much oil in roux and end up with a oily film on top. I say one to one ratio, but you can adjust as to what you see while stirring. You should drag the spoon on the bottom of the put and there should be a trail where the thick consistency takes a bit to fill in where the spoon passed. But it should not be chalky or anything.
-not used a black iron pot. I've made a gumbo once not using a black iron pot. It was awful. It probably goes back to the roux. The consistent heat makes it so much easier. Magnalite is also acceptable, but still not as good as black iron.

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I have a question about Prudhomme's recipe.

"While the gumbo is simmering, bone the cooked chicken and cut the
meat into 1/2-inch dice. When the gumbo is cooked, stir in the chicken"

Do you leave the skin on the chicken?

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The chicken is fried without the skin. You have to read the recipe to find that out and it would be better if he had it in the description of the chicken. The first line of instructions says "Remove excess fat from the chicken pieces.".

I love fried chicken skin as bad as it is for you, but if I don't buy skinless bone in chicken pieces, I sometimes remove the skin, flour it and fry it before I fry the chicken. Adds additional flavor to the oil used for the roux and I simmer the fried skin with the chicken stock, removing it before adding the other ingredients. Gives it a bump in flavor.

By the way, his recipe doubles, triples easily. You can adjust the texture of the gumbo to your taste after you make it. He uses 7-10 cups of liquid to 1/2 cup oil-1/2 cup flour for the roux. 7 cups would result in a thick gumbo. 10 cups still gives it good body. With his gumbo, keep in mind that the flour on the fried chicken will dissolve into the gumbo when it's added and simmers a bit, so that adds to the texture, as well.

This one's DAMN GOOD and they end up with pretty much the method I use. But that's probably just because all gumbo recipes are PRETTY much the same. Make roux. Chop up a trinity of 2:1:1 onions, bell pepper, and celery. Sweat the veggies down in the roux. Marry the roux and your stock/broth until you get the desired consistency. Add meats and simmer while you tweak to desired final consistency and flavor.

A couple of thoughts, though, that I think are important.

1) The sausage. The sausage is key. Bad sausage, bad gumbo. Also, don't buy boneless skinless chicken. That's where the flavor is. I debone and skin my chicken myself and I make a cheesecloth bouquet with the bones and skin. That way, I can just fish them out when the gumbo's done and all the edible parts stay in the pool. The good news is that gumbo's like pizza or sex and when it's bad it's still pretty good.

2) Jarred roux is passable, but handmade is better. IF YOU'RE DOING IT ON THE STOVETOP, DO NOT TRY TO RUSH THE ROUX. Do not cook it on high. Do not EVER walk away from a cooking roux. Do not do anything other than sit there for the 30-45 minutes stirring. DO NOT STOP STIRRING. EVER. The roux is watching you and will kill itself if it senses inattention on your part. If you see smoke or you see ANY speck of black in the roux, throw it out and start over. DO NOT TRY TO PICK THE BLACK SPECKS OUT. That roux is ruined and if any of it touches your broth, your gumbo is ruined. The roux's a pain in the arse, but once you have the process down, you can try speeding it up with higher heat. I know people that can cook a roux in ten to fifteen minutes, but that's living dangerously for me. There are also oven methods that I'm not a fan of, but they exist.

3) Always start off with twice as much roux as you think you'll need. Roux is cheap. Ruining a gumbo because you got cute with the amount of roux you made and didn't have enough is stupid. Roux also freezes, so make a big batch while you're at it.

4) Do not try to season anything for a good half hour after you introduce the meats. You want that sausage to leak out its seasonings into the liquid before you start trying to tweak anything. Besides, right after you introduce the roux, it's going to taste horrible no matter what, so if you try to "fix" it then, you're gonna have a bad time. The flavors in gumbo really do need some time in the jacuzzi to mingle before you can start to decide what it needs.

5) It's a simple process that takes a lifetime to master. You're boiling meat. That's pretty much it. Tweak it, play with it, and don't be disappointed if it doesn't come out how you wanted it. Just figure out what went wrong and don't do that again. If you ask us, we'll all have different things we do and we'll fight about it, but that's the beauty of gumbo.

DAMN GOOD

If you prefer not to fry the chicken, look at other folks recipes, but you can still use the measurements in PP's recipe for a rotisserie chicken or smoked chicken. I've been making it a lot with smoked chicken lately. I don't use a recipe any longer. I just sort of do it, but PP's is a good base recipe, regardless of the type of chicken or even turkey you use.