Cajun Chicken and Sausage Gumbo Recipe - Food.com (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to good gumbo? ›

Great gumbo starts with roux, a flavorful thickening agent made from equal parts fat and flour. Once the roux is a deep golden color, add diced veggies and sausage to the mix. Then, incorporate beef bouillon, hot sauce, tomatoes, and seasonings to intensify the flavor.

Thou Shalt Always Use a Bowl. If you use a plate, it is not gumbo it is rice and gravy! Thou Shalt Only Use a Wooden Spoon. There is only one kind of spoon that can enter a gumbo pot and that is a wooden one.

For the most flavor, use stock or broth in your gumbo instead of water. Whether you use chicken or vegetable stock, homemade or boxed, the stock will give your gumbo more depth and complexity.

While simmering, saute sausage in a large skillet over medium-high heat until browned on all sides. Add sausage to gumbo. Taste gumbo and season lightly with salt. Simmer for 2 hours.

Filé powder – Filé powder, also known as gumbo filé, is an herbal powder made of ground-up sassafras leaves, a common herb found in Southern cooking. It has a tea-like, earthy smell that balances out the rich flavors of gumbo while also adding a natural thickener.

There are three ways to thicken gumbo, but the most commonly used method is to add roux. Roux, which is made with equal parts flour and butter and slowly cooked over low heat, is added to hot gumbo stock. The starch in the flour breaks down to become gelatinous, and gives heft to the stock without altering the flavor.

Gumbo is almost always served with rice, but it was at the winery that I learned that some Cajuns serve potato salad with it. Some even put the potato salad in the bowl WITH the gumbo. Sounds weird but trust me it is DELISH!! The potato salad is not a normal Southern style one.

VEGETABLES FOR NEW ORLEANS STYLE GUMBO

Once the roux is perfect, adding in the green pepper, onions, celery, garlic and okra will naturally cause the roux to thicken even more. This is what yours should look like after you add the vegetables. The roux really thickens up at this stage.

Proteins that cook fast and shouldn't be overcooked (shrimp or scallops, for example) should be added during the last 5 minutes of cooking. One final opportunity to taste for seasoning. At this point, I generally find that a bit of acid will brighten the gumbo. Stir in 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar and taste again.

Do tomatoes go in gumbo? ›

Turns out, your preference for tomatoes in gumbo comes down to whether you learned your skills from a Cajun cook or a Creole cook. (Learn about the difference here.) Cajun gumbo does not include tomatoes in the base, but Creole gumbo (typically shellfish or seafood gumbo) does call for tomatoes.

A: By all means use chicken broth instead of water. You get a more complex and richer Gumbo. If no chicken broth use chicken upper bullion.

For purposes of this discussion, we will limit our focus to plain old polished white rice. Even then, it comes in different sizes — short, long and medium grain. I prefer medium grain rice in a gumbo, because the grains puff up, the perfect medium for a gumbo. The thick gumbo juice sticks to the grains just right.

Turn down the heat, cover and simmer for an hour and a half. 7. Add the okra and sausage, stir, replace the lid and simmer for a further 45 minutes.

Turns out, your preference for tomatoes in gumbo comes down to whether you learned your skills from a Cajun cook or a Creole cook. (Learn about the difference here.) Cajun gumbo does not include tomatoes in the base, but Creole gumbo (typically shellfish or seafood gumbo) does call for tomatoes.

Creole gumbo is usually made with okra, tomato, and often a combination of meat and seafood, while the Cajun version contains meat or seafood, and is typically okra-free and made with a darker roux.