Gumbo

I'm not at all a football fan so this Sunday being Superbowl means little to me.  However, I do enjoy making a nice pot of chili for Superbowl parties but since I already made chili a few weeks ago thought it would be insufficient for me to put up another chili recipe. Brian suggested I make gumbo given that the Saints are playing. I tried to think of a some Indianapolis inspired soup and came up with nothing (MD's suggestion of horse soup in honor of the Colts seems a little too gross) so I stuck with gumbo.  Before you gumbo purists heckle this post, I do not like shrimp and therefore do not put shrimp or any of its gross crustacean cousins in my soup. If you like that sort of nastiness, put it in your soup but don't look for it in mine.

For my version of gumbo you will need: 3 cloves of garlic, 1 green bell pepper, 1 red bell pepper, 1 jalapeno pepper, 2-3 small onions, 3 stalks of celery, 2 handfuls of okra, chicken, andouille sausage, chicken broth, butter, flour, cayenne pepper, cumin, salt, black pepper and rice. (Kindly notice the lovely tin tiles on the wall, we've progressed with kitchen renovations and there's no more ugly wall in the background.)

I like my chicken shredded, but you can't shred raw chicken. I used about a pound of chicken tenderloins.  Boil the chicken in enough chicken broth and water to cover until its cooked, probably around 15 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, get to chopping. First, mince 3 garlic cloves.

Then, dice one green bell pepper.

At this time, the adorable puppy who just had his 7th birthday smelled the chicken and started his begging in the kitchen. He didn't know I was only chopping vegetables.

After ignoring the puppy, dice one red bell pepper.

Then, chop 3 small white onions.

Next slice 3 stalks of celery. I've learned the hard way that I don't like huge celery chunks in my soup, so I've taken to splitting the celery stalks in half if not in quarters before slicing them up.

Then, I donned latex gloves to avoid a burning eye incident later while taking out my contacts (another lesson learned the hard way). If you have latex gloves (I'm not entirely certain why the Blivmore pantry contains them), put them on. If not, carefully mince 3/4 of a large jalapeno pepper. If you don't like heat, you probably shouldn't be making gumbo, so I'm not going to suggest that you leave this out.

Now, the magic ingredient, the okra.  I had to go on an okra hunt today because its a summer vegetable and I wasn't certain my local slightly sketchy grocery stores would have it in stock. Never fear, the Whole Foods on Ponce came through, though they were charging $3.59 a pound for a vegetable that usually costs us Georgians about $0.99 a pound in the summer. Alas, there was okra there and much to my delight I wasn't the only one buying it and got to have a nice conversation with an elderly man about our gumbo recipes. This made me happy, as does okra, as evidence by my smiling face while I was chopping.

Okra is a very special vegetable. It has this wonderful property of excreting some goo when you cut it and cook it. For more about this goo, watch Alton Brown's Good Eats 'Okraphobia' episode. For anyone who has never experienced this goo, see below.  Remove stems and pointy little tails and chop the okra into rounds. You can actually eat the pointy little okra tails, but I find them to be hard to chew and not very tasty.

Now for meat prep. By now, your chicken should be cooked. Remove it from the liquid, but don't discard the liquid, you can use it later.

Using two forks, shred the chicken until its broken into pieces of a size you like. Since I used tenderloins, I had to hunt out that gross tendon and make sure I pulled it out.

Now, dice up the andouille sausage. If you don't like or can't eat pork, you can often find chicken andouille at places like Whole Foods. I'm sure there's some sort of soy andouille product out there too. The flavor of the sausage really defines gumbo, so definitely don't scrimp here.

Now its finally time to get cooking. I make gumbo in a coated cast iron dutch oven (I can't even type it without laughing). First, melt 4 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

Then, add 4 tablespoons of flour to make a roux. Stir this constantly for about 10 minutes.

You'll notice the color darken a bit and the consistency of the roux to smoothen. I don't like my gumbo to be terribly thick, but if you know you want a thicker gumbo, just make a thicker roux.

Next, add the miced garlic and cook for 3-5 minutes

Now, add the peppers, onions and celery, also known as the 'holy trinity'.

Stir these up to coat in the roux and cook for about 5 minutes.

Add the chicken broth. You'll want to add the reserved liquid from boiling the chicken and about another four cups. Cook for 5-10 minutes.

Add the andouille.

Then add the chicken, stir this up, increase the heat to high and bring to a boil.

Once the gumbo boils, give the broth a taste and add any additional seasoning you'd like. I put in about  a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, tablespoon of cumin, and pinch each of salt and pepper

Once you like the broth flavor, reduce heat to low and add the okra. Stir this up and cook for about 5 minutes.

Gumbo is usually served over rice, as in the rice is made separately and the gumbo goes over it, but I wanted to cut out a step, so I added 1/2 a cup of minute rice.

Simmer for another 15 minutes or so. Give the broth one final taste to be sure its delicious. (Kindly notice the lovely new cook top, Brian installed our fantastic new 5-burner range last weekend, and its wonderful.)

Now, if all went well, you now have a deliciously spicy gumbo in your kitchen. Enjoy!

No more nutrition facts on this blog. I realized that I was totally obsessed with calorie counts and decided to quit it. I have better things to spend my energy on than making sure everything I make and eat is under 400 calories.