Anyone who has lived in Louisiana, been to a southern style restaurant or seen one of my favorite Disney princess movies, “The Princess and the Frog” , has heard about gumbo. It’s a spicy southern rice soup full of andouille sausage, vegetables, rice, and sometimes shrimp. African gumbo adds okra as a thickening agent. Beef and pork are not to be found. It’s usually on the side or a kick-in-the-pants topper for rice.
Some say that it can take up to a full day, (kind of like my grandma’s Christmas Eve sauce recipe) but SpicesInc has figured out how to cut that time to only an hour or so. Their recipe is HERE as well as a comparison to the closely related same-pan main event, jambalaya.
This is the recipe we used from Delish. One thing we found was that out of all we saw about gumbo, we kept seeing the holy trinity. Now let us make it clear: THIS IS NOT RELIGIOUS! The holy trinity of cooking is just onions, peppers and celery. These are a few basic components used in Cajun cooking. They add a pinch of heat and that hearty vegetable crunch. If you want to crank up the spice meter, try a New Mexican green pepper, or jalapeno. Be sure to check out this list before experimenting. Above all, DON’T RUB THE OIL ON YOURSELF, ANY CUTS OR IN YOUR EYES! If it happens by mistake, wash it out with soap and water. ~You’re welcome!
The roux was for sure the hardest part. Everything else was a simple step one- step two -step three and so on until step. This one wanted the roux to be super dark. 3/5 of the Famous Five French mother sauces: Bechamel, Veloute, and Espagnole use this method all the time. Usually, it relies on a 1:1 ratio of fat to flour. For Bechamel: Butter, a splash of milk and a quick whisk just to get rid of the flour taste if you’re going French style, Oil and/or lard for Cajun where you fry the flour and let it brown nice and dark in the milk to embrace the nuttiness of it. Veloute is more stock and oil. The Sun King’s court came up with the idea. As they said in the movie, “Perfect Sense” that’s the essence of it all, fat and flour. When Flour meets water, it clumps. The fat acts as a smooth buffer for the molecules to slide around nicely instead of bumping and clumping. You’ve all heard about oil and water, right?
As for the taste after we sauted and combined everything. As for the end result, we felt this was aces. Bold flavors, salty sausage and a nice pepper blend. The onions had a great caramelization to them. I’d gladly cook this one up again.