The Divine Secrets of the Gumbo Brotherhood - Apologies to Sandra Bullock, Charlize Theron, et al.

Gumbo! I wrote a post previously about jambalaya, but this time we're going to tackle gumbo - just in time for the annual chant of, "What the hell do I do with this turkey carcass?"

So, what IS gumbo? Well, it's soup, basically. Or is it stew? Or is it chowder? Or is it all of the above? The answer? Yes.

What it is not is that crap you get in a can from Campbell's, with the rice swimming in the broth, which is loaded with tomatoes.

The three keys to gumbo, as with almost all Cajun/Creole dishes, are the Trinity (equal parts of onion, bell pepper and celery - the Cajun version of mirepoix), the stock and roux. The Trinity is a simple matter of chopping the vegetables and the stock I've discussed elsewhere, so let's tackle the roux.

Heat a cup of vegetable oil over medium heat until it's shimmering, preferably in a cast-iron pan as I've done here, but almost any skillet will do as long as it's not thin, stamped steel. Sprinkle a cup of flour into it, whisking constantly. Continue to whisk continuously, and if you're using a non-stick skillet (not really recommended because of the heat and the potential for not only damaging the pan but leaching the chemicals into the roux) use a silicone spatula or whisk instead - as long as it's one that's approved for 600 degrees or above. The roux will change color gradually and you need to pay attention or you'll burn it.

Don't rush, though. This whole process will take 20 to 30 minutes or even longer, so be patient. Sure, the real experts can whip up a good roux in a few minutes (I once did it in 5 minutes as a class demo) but there's no point in pushing your luck, and I don't. You'll also want to be very careful about splattering as you whisk or stir. The stuff isn't called Cajun napalm for nothing. If you get it on your skin it will stick and you'll have a second or third degree burn. OUCH!

The first color change will turn the roux from white to a sort of beige color. Next will be something that resembles peanut butter. The picture doesn't really do justice to the color because the light is too intense, but I hope you'll get the idea. After that, the roux will darken and eventually you'll get to the stage where it resembles mahogany - a sort of deep, reddish brown. This is where you really need to pay attention.

This is the mahogany stage. Unfortunately I didn't frame this picture too well. Oops.

The next stage is a deep chocolate color, slightly darker than milk chocolate. When you get close to this stage, IMMEDIATELY turn off the heat, remove the pan from the burner if you're one of the unfortunate souls who's cooking with electricity and dump the Trinity into the pan. The roux will continue to cook and turn darker from the retained heat in the skillet and, if you're using cast iron which retains heat longer, you'll have to add some stock, preferably chilled, otherwise it will burn for certain and you'll have to throw it out and start over. When the mixture has cooled a bit, toss in a couple of cloves of minced garlic and let the whole thing cook for a couple of minutes.

This picture doesn't really show the color, partly because of the lighting and partly because I'd added some stock and diluted the roux. What it does show is the Trinity in the roux.

The next step is to put this mixture into a stock pot or a Dutch oven and add some stock. In this case, I used about a quart of stock with a half recipe of roux and a Trinity made from half a cup each of onion, celery and bell pepper, but only because I didn't want to make a whole batch. Simmer the mixture for two hours, partially covered. It won't be as thick as you might imagine because the dark roux loses its thickening power, but it's not supposed to be thick like library paste, anyway. Many recipes call for okra to be cooked with the stock, roux and Trinity, but I can't stand the stuff, so I don't use it.

After two hours, brown some chicken pieces (I used thighs) that have been seasoned with salt, pepper and cayenne and some andouille (I used about 6 or 8 ounces sliced into 1/2-inch pieces on the bias), then add them to the pot with some dried thyme and a bay leaf or two, and simmer for another hour or more. If you're using leftover turkey (and brown turkey stock you've made from the carcass, remember), just cut it into bite-sized pieces and simmer them. This is a great way to use all those little bits next to the bone that are hard to carve at the Thanksgiving table.

You'll want to be pretty aggressive in skimming the fat off the surface because the chicken (if you're using it) and the andouille will render quite a bit. Refrigerating helps, but the chicken fat won't really congeal like beef or pork fat will, so just work at it a bit. This is what the dish will look like when it's getting close to serving.

At this point, all that's left to do is to remove the chicken from the bone and either cut it into bite-sized pieces or shred it. Of course, if you're using leftover turkey you won't need to do this. Now, if you like, and it depends on my mood, you can add some shelled and de-veined shrimp, cooked crawfish tails or crab meat. Or, if you're fortunate enough to find them, raw crawfish tails. A really rustic gumbo can have blue crabs broken in half, but whatever you do, only add the seafood long enough before serving to either cook it through or heat it if it's already cooked.

Taste the gumbo and adjust the seasoning if necessary, then ladle it into bowls over a mound of cooked, long-grain rice and sprinkle with sliced scallion tops. If you'd like, you can stir in a little file powder to thicken the broth, but I reserve this for gumbo made strictly from seafood - and that's another recipe and another post.

Tonight I'm going to put shrimp in my gumbo, so I'll take a picture when I serve it and post it right here. In the meantime, think about gumbo for Saturday or Sunday this week. You'll be happy.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

PS - Thanks to Chuck Taggart's The Gumbo Pages, a website that's been a valuable resource for me for several years.

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh. Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou. My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh. Son of a gun, we'll have good fun on the bayou!

Do you like Cajun food? Hank Williams did and I do, too. Everyone does, I think. I remember promising I'd eat my way through New Orleans if I ever got there and sure enough, I did. Four days of non-stop gluttony.

Do you worry about making gumbo because of the roux? I don't, but it's only because I've done it a few dozen times. Ditto crawfish étoufée, especially when you consider the difficulty most of us have in obtaining decent crawfish tails except in huge, frozen lumps. Do you want to have something Cajun without contracting the heebie-jeebies over the roux, and using the skills you already have? Great, me too. Let's have some Jambalaya!

Jambalaya is, according to legend, a real melting pot - and that's just the name. Supposedly it's a contraction of the French word for ham, jambón (or the Spanish word, jamón), the French term for "in the style of", á la, and an African name for rice, "ya". Hence, jambalaya, or "ham in the style of rice".

There are other stories and I don't know which to believe, but the major point is this. Jambalaya, like many other dishes, is related to something else in technique. Just as a stew is a stew in construction whether it's made from beef, lamb, chicken or pork (cog au vin and boeuf bourguignon are essentially the same thing with different meats), a meat/poultry and rice dish is the same in terms of technique whether it's called jambalaya, paella or arroz con pollo - cousins all.

Jambalaya can be made from most anything including chicken, shrimp, ham, crawfish, alligator and duck, but we'll skip the more exotic ingredients here and concentrate on what's easily found. The one constant is sausage and I recommend you find a good brand of andouille, the highly-seasoned and smoked Cajun sausage (Bruce Aidell's is readily available), though any good smoked pork sausage such as Hillshire Farms' Polska Kielbasa is a reasonable substitute.

The base for jambalaya is, like many Cajun and Creole dishes, the "holy trinity" - equal parts of diced onion, celery and green bell pepper. This is the Louisiana version of the French mirepoix, which is onion, celery and carrot. The other critical item is good stock. Canned or boxed stock is okay, but it's so much better made fresh. I make stock all the time, freezing it in Best Foods (Hellman's) mayonnaise jars, and it's easy.

I won't go into detail on how to make stock when there are so many good sources on the Interwebz, but I'm partial to (gasp) Emeril Lagasse's recipes on his website. Chicken stock, which you're going to need for jambalaya, is especially simple to make and you'll be shocked how easy it is if you've never done it before. I do have a personal quirk. I like to poach a whole chicken as though making stock, then remove the meat from the bones to use later for chicken salad or enchiladas and return the bones to the pot to concentrate the flavors. That said, if you want to resort to Swanson's I won't turn you in to the food police, but it's a little salty, so be careful with your seasonings.


You're going to need a large dutch oven, preferably enameled cast iron. I'm using a 7-quart Martha Stewart (gasp again!) version here, mostly because it was about 1/3 the price of an equivalent Le Creuset, a fine if expensive product.

The first step is to brown some chicken pieces. I'm partial to thighs for this, but use what you like. Many recipes call for boneless breasts cut into bite-sized chunks, but aside from the fact that boneless and skinless breasts are boring, I'm not convinced the old-timers who concocted this dish knew a boneless-skinless breast of
chicken from a personal computer. Season them on both sides with salt and pepper and brown them over medium to medium-high heat in a little vegetable oil then set them aside.

This separate cooking is actually critical. You'd be surprised how much difference it makes.

The next step is to brown (lightly) the andouille and the ham, about a half pound each. Ham can be most anything. Tradition calls for Tasso, which is a highly-seasoned Cajun hame, but Hormel Cure 81 works really well.  Or, if you like, you can eliminate the ham altogether.

Remove the sausage and/or ham from the pot and add the trinity over low heat and sweat (cook over very low heat) it until the vegetables are tender.  Add 2-3 minced cloves of garlic and sweat that until it's fragrant, then add 1 cup of long-grain rice. Saute the rice over medium heat with the vegetables until it turns opaque, then add one 14.5-ounce can of diced tomatoes (this technically makes the dish Creole instead of Cajun but I like it this way), 2 1/2 cups of homemade chicken stock, a bay leaf, about a teaspoon of dried thyme, some salt, about 20 grinds of black pepper and about a 1/2 teaspoon each of white pepper and cayenne.

Bring this concoction to a boil, stir, and turn the heat down to very low and simmer for about 25 minutes, covered. For an even better flavor, add 1/2 pound of shelled, raw shrimp just before you cover the pot. Uncover, toss the jambalaya with a fork (it should be a little moist) and re-cover off the heat for another 10 minutes or so, then plate with a garnish of sliced green onion tops and enjoy. BTW, a great resource on Cajun and Creole cooking is here, at Chuck Taggart's Gumbo Pages.

Wine match: Something Rhone-ish.  Syrah, grenache, mourvedre or, if you prefer, zinfandel. Or beer.