Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

For my first post in this blog, I’m sharing a chicken and Andouille sausage gumbo recipe I found here and modified because I don’t like to measure very precisely when I make soups and stews.

• Ingredients:
• 1/2 cup Olive Oil
• 2 1/3 cups All-Purpose Flour
• 1 vidalia onion (or large white onion)
• 1 green bell pepper
• 3 large stalks of celery
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups okra
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp cajun seasoning
• 8 oz. Andouille sausage (medium)
• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 5 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tbsp dried parsley (or 1 tbsp fresh)
• 2 tsp peppercorns
• 1/8 tsp crushed red pepper
• white rice

First of all, go to the grocery store and buy some fresh produce and meat, organic if you can afford it. I find that organic veggies and meats taste better and “fresher” than their non-organic counterparts; however, I am a graduate student living on a tight budget, so I can’t afford to buy organic all the time. For this recipe, I splurged on the veggies but bought non-organic meat (and it was STILL expensive!).

Now that you’re back home, make sure you have some counter space and a fairly clean and empty sink, because you’re going to make a big mess and fill your sink with dirty dishes from cooking and then having your friends over to eat because you made too much gumbo. Kitchen clean? Good. Now we can begin.

Start by getting out a cutting board and a large knife and rinsing all your vegetables, and have some bowls or plates handy to put the vegetables and meat on when you’re done chopping them. Start by dicing your onion; the size of the pieces doesn’t matter too much, but try not to make them too gigantic or it’ll take them forever to cook. If you have trouble with onions making your eyes water a lot, my mom recommends burning a tall candle near your work surface – the flame burns off some of the gas that makes your eyes water. I personally don’t have much of a problem with vidalias. Once you’re done with the onions, chop the green pepper and celery into small-ish pieces. I cut the bell pepper into fairly small pieces so it would cook faster and the celery into bigger pieces because I like to get big celery chunks when I eat soups and stews, but it’s really up to you. Put all the onions, peppers, and celery on one plate. Chop the okra into thin rings.

All done chopping the veggies.

Now that we’re done with the veggies, set them aside. Put the okra in the fridge because we won’t need it for a while. I covered my veggie dish with a paper towel so the onions wouldn’t bother me while I was working. Rinse off your cutting board and knife, as both will probably be sticky from the okra, and get ready to chop some meat!

I started with the sausage. Mine came in a 14 oz. package, so I cut it about 2 inches down from the halfway point and used the bigger piece. I didn’t want huge bites of the Andouille sausage because it has a bit of a kick, so I cut the sausage in little semicircles.

Chopping the sausage.

Sorry about the blurry picture. My hands were a little wet.

Now that you’re done with the sausage, get started on the chicken. Clean any remaining fat off the breasts and chop the chicken into cubes a bit larger than bite-sized; they will shrink a little as they cook.

Happy little chicken cubes.

Now we’re all set! Go ahead and clean your cutting board and knife, and quickly peel and chop your garlic into small pieces. Clean the countertop too – you’ll need the space. I got everything I would need for the next few steps out ahead of time because I knew I’d be rushing around, but you don’t have to.

I forgot the worcestershire!

Now get an average-sized soup pot out and start heating it on medium to medium-high. I used my grandmother’s old soup pot that was bequeathed to me when I got my first apartment – it’s about 20 years old, is missing one handle, and is the best pot ever. It’s probably about 8 quarts.

Making the roux:

Add the 1/2 cup olive oil and let it heat up for a minute or two – it doesn’t need to be sizzling, just warm. Then add the 2 1/3 cups flour; I added the full amount this time, but in the future I think I’ll bring it down to 2 cups. Whisk the flour and oil together thoroughly.

The roux at first mixing.

Continue to whisk, almost continuously, for about 15 minutes. You have to keep whisking because otherwise the roux will burn on the bottom and then you have to start over. Don’t burn the roux!

After 15 minutes ...

It’s been 15 minutes, and my roux hasn’t changed! My arm was tired, and I began to despair. I decided that I had used too much flour, and had to add a some more oil to compensate.

This should help.

A roux is supposed to be much wetter than this. Adding oil should make it all better. By the way, you also use a similar roux process to make gravy, except you use the fat from whatever meat you just made instead of olive oil. Now whisk in the added oil….

Tragedy!

Oh, no! My loose and wobbly whisk that I’ve had since my freshman year of college finally broke! Oh, well, guess I’ll have to use my trusty wooden spatula. (I saved the head and grabbed it with a paper towel to use in the roux’s final stages.)

Ahh, now that's more like it.

Now that the roux is the right consistency, keep whisking (or spatula-ing) until the roux turns the color of caramel (or light milk chocolate if you want your gumbo to be browner, but be careful not to burn it!).

The roux is complete!

The roux will begin to sizzle and the parts that touch the bottom of the pot will start to brown. That’s how you can tell it’s done. You’ll have to start whisking again pretty fast at this point or it will start to burn.

Once your roux is finished, turn the heat down to medium and add the onions, green peppers, celery, garlic, cajun seasoning, peppercorns, crushed red pepper,and parsely. I didn’t actually measure the parsely – I just threw it in until I thought it was enough – but I tried to approximate a measurement above. If you don’t have peppercorns, replace them with about a teaspoon of ground black pepper. Mix all of this stuff in with the roux (it will be hard to stir) and cook the veggies until the onions start to go translucent around the edges, stirring occasionally. It’ll be about 5-10 minutes.

It looks weird now, but trust me.

While this stuff is cooking, prepare the chicken stock. I used 4 cups of organic chicken stock from the store and supplemented it with almost 2 cups of chicken bouillon. Whatever you use, get about 2 cups of it nice and hot in the microwave once the veggies are almost done.

Do some reading for class while you wait.

Then, once the veggies are ready, add the hot broth and mix well. Since it’s hot, the roux that’s coating the veggies should dissolve easily and you shouldn’t have many lumps. Keep mixing until it’s lump-free; it will get amazingly thick. This is normal. Turn the heat down to medium-low. Add the rest of the broth once the roux is dissolved, then add the worcestershire sauce and bay leaves. Stir well; it’ll be very thick and resemble the thickest stew in the world.

This is what it will look like.

While this mixture is heating up and the ingredients are getting friendly, get out a frying pan and start cooking the meat. Once it’s warmed up, partially browned, and not looking so pitiful and raw, we’ll add it to the gumbo.

My frying pan is a bit too small.

Once the chicken cubes are white on all the edges, toss the meat into the pot. Or pour it if you’re not a daredevil. It doesn’t have to be fully cooked because it will finish cooking inside the gumbo; we just wanted to get it up to the same temperature as the rest of the gumbo and make it look pretty. Take the okra out of the fridge so it has some time to get up to room temperature.

Now your work is all done! Keep it on low, uncovered, for at least an hour. You can push it to 2 hours but I wouldn’t cook it much longer than that. Stir it about every 15 minutes to prevent it from burning on the bottom of the pot. About 20 minutes before you intend to eat, add the okra. Mix it in well and cook it for no more than 30 minutes; we don’t want it to overcook because it might turn to mush. If you wanted to add shrimp, it would need to be added at the same time as the okra. I myself am too poor for shrimp.

This is what it should look like.

Congratulations! Your gumbo is complete! Turn the burner off, put a lid on it to prevent bugs from flying in, make some white rice to serve it over, and enjoy! My fiance and I live together, but this pot of gumbo was too much for us to eat alone. We invited some friends over and shared the joy. I still have leftovers.

Yummy!

Notice the fork. This gumbo was thick enough that no spoons were necessary.

I made this gumbo with minimal spice, because I don’t always care to have my mouth burned off and because the people I was planning on serving this to have widely different tastes when it comes to degree of spiciness in food. I have one friend who can’t handle hot food at all. So keep your audience in mind when you add the cayenne pepper; if you and your buddies all love hot food, go ahead and add more, but be careful. It’s always better to need to add some red pepper or tabasco sauce than to not be able to enjoy your gumbo because it’s too hot.