I felt a little bit like a trophy wife
My boyfriend and I just reached our six-month anniversary, and I decided to don attire similar to trophy wife-dom and make a really nice dinner to celebrate–and what better way to celebrate than delicious chicken and smoked sausage Gumbo with white rice?
I didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked, but you’ll still get to see a lot of the steps.
I got the recipe from foodnetwork.com and it was a lovely recipe for Mr. Emeril Lagasse. Check it out here. However, I didn’t follow every explicit detail; I made it a little easier on myself and I’ll walk you through the instructions to make it easier on yourself, too.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon plus 1/2 cup vegetable oil: I used butter. The reason why it called for vegetable oil is because vegetable oil is pretty much tastless–but I had this amazing Amish butter on hand that I’m in love with, and I like the taste of the butter, so that’s what I used. Feel free to use whatever fat you wish, vegetable oil, butter (you’ll get the taste of butter in the gumbo) or olive oil (you’ll get the taste of olive oil in the gumbo) or canola, etc. It just depends on how you want it to taste.
1 pound smoked sausage, such as andouille sausage or kielbasa cut crosswise 1/2-inch thick pieces: I used andouille sausage, you can easily find it at your grocery store. Andouille sausage is spicier than kielbasa so it adds a really nice kick when you take a bite with the sausage. Also, the sausage isn’t cooked at all so I found it easier to cook the sausage whole and then slice it into pieces, I’ll explain that later in the steps of the recipe.
4 pounds chicken thighs, skin removed: I used chicken breasts because my boyfriend and I prefer white meat more than dark meat. Thighs have more fat, and therefore more flavor, than white meat. You can use whatever cut of chicken you like, but be sure that the bone is in and keep the skin on–if you remove the skin the chicken has a tendency to dry out and the skin adds a lot of good flavor.
1 tablespoon Essence or Creole seasoning: This is Emeril’s special blend of seasonings he makes himself and sells in grocery stores, you can also make it yourself. This is merely used to season the chicken so I used what I had in my cupboard of the Essence mix to season the chicken. You can just use salt and pepper or chicken seasoning or whatever you like.
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups chopped onions
1 cup chopped bell peppers
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
3 bay leaves
9 cups chicken stock or canned low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup chopped green onions
2 tablespoons chopped parsley leaves
1 tablespoon file powder: File powder is essentially saffron strands ground up real fine. It’s a staple in Cajun and New Orleans cooking, but it’s also very expensive. I just used a little extra cayenne and Cajun seasoning instead.
Cooking Instructions
The first step is to cook the sausage, and I couldn’t cut the raw sausage very well without it falling apart on me, so I just threw the whole one-pound link into my pot with my melted butter and let it brown on both sides. I then pulled it out according to the recipe and let it cool for a few minutes before I sliced it up. You always let meat cool for a few minutes after you take it off the heat so the juices settle and stay in the meat. Otherwise, the juices will just run out all over your cutting board and you’ll have dry meat.
I then seasoned the chicken and browned it on all sides in my big pot. Your chicken isn’t going to cook all the way through and that’s OK. You’re going to later add the pieces of chicken whole into the big pot of gumbo and let it simmer for an hour and a half and there it will be cooked all the way through and be safe and delicious to eat. But while you’re waiting, make sure you keep the chicken in the refrigerator so bacteria doesn’t start to grow.
You then need to add your 1/2 cup of fat (whether it’s butter or oil) and stir in your flour. This is making what’s called a roux, which is a mixture of fat and flour. A roux thickens whatever you’re making, but it has to be just fat and flour. If you were to have a stew or gravy and try and mix in flour when the liquid is already in, you’re going to have big flour clumps.
Make sure you constantly keep stirring your roux otherwise you’ll get clumps. You need to let it cook for about 20 minutes until it turns a dark, chocolaty brown. This is cooking the flour and give the gumbo a nice nutty flavor, which you’ll also smell. This step will seem tedious, but it’s totally worth it.
Then add your chopped onions, celery and bell peppers. I also added three small (or two large) cloves of garlic. I just love the taste of garlic and it added more depth to the gumbo. Add the vegetables and let them wilt. Then add the sausage, bay leaves, cayenne and salt and your gumbo should look like this.
Gumbo
Let it all cook and hang out for a few minutes, then slowly add your chicken stock–this way your roux won’t clump up. It’ll then look like this:
Gumbo
Bring your gumbo up to a boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer uncovered for an hour. Make sure you visit it every 15 minutes and stir it so nothing sticks to the bottom. After an hour, pull the chicken from the refrigerator and add it to the pot. You’ll probably have to find a creative way to make sure all the chicken is covered by the broth, but it’s totally do-able. Then let that simmer for an hour and a half. Remember to visit it every 15 minutes to remove the fat from the top (it’ll come to the top in an orange skin-like form) and stir it up a little bit.
When the hour and a half is up, pull the chicken from the gumbo and let it sit for a few minutes. Then remove the skin and shred the meat from the bones. It should look like this:
Chicken for Gumbo
After simmering in the pot for an hour and a half, the chicken will be so tender and full of deliciousness that it will practically shred itself. Go ahead and throw away the skin and bones and toss the chicken back into the pot. While it’s simmering away, add your chopped green onions:
Gumbo with green onions
and then add your parsley:
Gumbo with parsley
Toss in your file powder or Cajun seasoning and then, my friends, you’ll have the most AMAZING gumbo. The best way to describe the finished product is what my boyfriend said: “It looks like God threw up in our pot.”
Gumbo
Just serve this over white rice and you’ll be set. It isn’t a hard recipe, it just takes a lot of time to make and simmer, but it’s totally worth it and is even better the next day. Make sure you check out Emeril’s recipe on foodnetwork.com and try it for yourself!
Sharp Knives and Open Flames 