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I want to start off talking about gumbo first. I just want to be sure everybody knows what I'm talking about. What is a gumbo? A gumbo is a food and a social event. We'll be talking about the food here, but FYI a gumbo can also be a social event. You might hear an announcement in church Sunday morning like this: "We're having a gumbo this afternoon to raise money for the Fontenot family who lost everything in a fire last night". OK, let's get on with it. It's a couple of main kinds of gumbo that we normally make. Usually it's chicken gumbo or seafood gumbo. Now see, that's why we need to talk a little bit first. Chicken gumbo is usually made with some kind of smoked sausage in it. Then again some people like to put dried shrimp and sometimes seafood in their chicken gumbo. When you get to the seafood gumbo, it's no telling what you might end up with. You're definitely going to have some shrimp, crabs, oysters, and fish. What else you put in is up to you. And wait, don't forget about the gumbo you gotta make with the leftover turkey, goose or duck from Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Gumbo sure is good in cold weather. When adding fresh shrimp to chicken gumbo, be careful not to add too much or the gumbo will take on the seafood taste. If you like the seafood taste, make a seafood gumbo. Add andouille or some other spicy smoked sausage to chicken gumbo. I have never made a chicken gumbo without adding sausage to it, unless I just didn't have any good sausage. I said "good sausage" because the sausage flavor spices up a good chicken gumbo. Just chicken tends to "taste like chicken". It's best to find a pure pork or pork and beef mix sausage. When I say "best" I mean what has been best for me. I do believe in everybody doing their own thing, and find their own groove if they want to. It don't bother me none. As a matter of fact, you should experiment. Just don't experiment when you have folks coming over and you already bragged on your gumbo. You don't want to have no surprises. |
Ingredients:
Season the chicken with the seasoning listed, and cut up the onions. Remove the ingredients from the pot with a slotted spoon, and set aside. Don't worry about what's stuck to the bottom of the pot. This too will add to the gumbo's flavor. Add about 2½ gallons of water to the pot and place on a high heat. Bring the pot to a full boil and begin adding roux. Keeping the pot boiling, add a couple of tablespoons of roux at a time and stir until the roux is dissolved. Keep adding roux and stirring to dissolve it until the desired thickness is reached. Be careful not to make the gumbo as thick as say, beef stew. That will be too thick and the gumbo will taste like roux.
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Lower the temperature to a medium heat and add the meat and onions back into the pot. Now season the gumbo mixture to taste with salt and pepper. Add 1 whole bay leaf. Cook for about 30 minutes. Adjust heat to low and simmer gumbo loosely covered for another 30 minutes. Add the shrimp in the last 15 minutes. They cook extremely fast. Gumbo is normally served over a large bowl of fluffy white rice. Crackers are served on the side. Baked sweet potatoes make a good side with gumbo also. Tip: Make the gumbo the night before your dinner party. You will find that gumbo tends to taste better the day after it's made. The flavors seem to come together better. Of course you can enjoy it as soon as it's made. It's the same with the rice you eat with the gumbo. I rather rice that was cooked the day before. Its grainer than hot rice. As y'all know already, this is just the way I like things. Everybody has his/her own taste. Always experiment and find what's best for your taste buds. When making a 2½-2¾ gallon pot of gumbo, I normally use about half a pint jar of roux. That comes out to about a cup (8ozs) in 2½-2¾ gallons of water. You can put cool roux in the fridge and keep it a long time. I like to put mine into pint (16oz) jars like a canning jar or small clean mayonnaise jar. It keeps a long time. Put the jars in the icebox and you'll be roux ready.
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