Jackson Jambalaya

I have heard there are one or two people out there who do not like gumbo. I am so sorry for you. However, this is America. Good men and women have fought our enemies to assure you have the right to make your own decisions about what you eat, regardless of what the abolitionists might say.

Like you, I have also heard the story of a person (many years back) who did not like gumbo at all. The version of their demise I heard says they died a terrible death when they found themselves at Claude Leblatt's Cafe on Bayou Platt, just south of Dulac where sausage and chicken gumbo was the only dish the menu offered on the Thursday night they dropped by for dinner. I understand there is a historic marker just inside the door of Leblatt's commemorating this tragedy. At least they probably had a cold can of Jax to lessen their culinary pain as they took their last breath. We will now pause for a moment of silence for this poor soul.

On a more serious note, I know there many different styles of gumbo and that everyone has a preferred recipe for making this popular Cajun dish. Your recipe is likely the one you got from your Maw Maw and (yes, I understand) there is none that comes close to it – anywhere or ever.

Please allow me to upset you right away by saying there is not enough space in the comments section below or sufficient internet bandwidth anywhere to get into a discussion on yea/nay concerning the use of tomatoes in a gumbo.

Hopefully we can agree there is no perfect way to make a gumbo, other than your way. Whatever recipe we use, our goal is to wind up with the perfect bowl of this popular Louisiana dish. I bet most of us agree whenever we think about the dish a certain taste profile and visual appearance stands out.

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

I make chicken and sausage gumbo as often as I like, which is a lot, and I make it twenty different ways. I drop the chicken into the pot raw and cook it with the gumbo. I fry my chicken and add that to the gumbo, I use leftover Popeye's or gas station fried chicken, I buy a rotisserie chicken and use that. It is my gumbo and to me, there is tremendous satisfaction in the fact that I don't have to do it any way other than what I want at that moment. I make my gumbo using chicken, sausage, shrimp, crab, whatever I want. You can do it your way too. After all, it will be your gumbo when you finish.

To make your chicken and sausage gumbo this way, you will need:

- A roux
- The cajun trinity (onion, bell pepper, and celery)
- chicken, raw, fried, rotessary, whatever
- sausage - andouille or your brand
- minced garlic, or garlic powder, or garlic salt
- Chicken broth is nice
- Some type of Cajun or Creole seasoning

At my house, gumbo is served with rice or potato salad, or not, and crusty bread

Nowadays, gumbo is a common menu offering at many restaurants. At one time, it was more limited to the deep south (as in Louisiana). Now it is a fairly common offering. CAUTION - Some of them are not all that good and sometimes really bad, for anyone who has had classic Cajun or Creole gumbo.

Gumbo thoughts, actually more than you ever wanted to know about making gumbo:

Making a Roux: 

- This is a cooked mixture of flour and oil. Mine uses one part AP flour and a little less than one part of some sort of fat (Lard, shortening, vegetable oil, bacon fat, butter, whatever). I usually cook my roux to a brown shoe or chocolate bar darkness. I do mine on the stove top or in the oven with flour and slightly less oil, cooking it slowly, over medium heat with constant stirring until it reaches the color of brown shoes, or a Hershey's chocolate bar. The darkness of roux is a hugely personal thing, and someone will always criticize your roux as being too light or too dark.

There are a few roux rules you might want to remember, because they will determine the consistency, color and taste of your gumbo.

(1) The darker the roux, the more "nutty" the flavor will be. Light roux will have a gravy taste. Darker roux will have more of a roasted nut taste. Burnt roux will always taste burnt and should be thrown away and started again.

(2) The darker the roux, the less thickening ability it will have - in fact, I think you can get a really dark roux that will not thicken the gumbo at all. I like my gumbo slightly thickened and usually stop before reaching the "Really Dark Roux" stage.

(3) Using more oil might make it easier to make a roux but it can make your gumbo very oily. You can skim it off with a spoon - I like to use a paper towel, placed flat on top of the surface of my gumbo and then removed and thrown away after it absorbs some of the oil that floats on the top of oily gumbo. Done, enough times, and you can pretty much take away all of the oil from the top of oily gumbo.

4) A roux, cooking in a skillet on top of the stove is a lot like molten lava. It can burn the H--- out of you and leave permanent scars like the one on my left forearm. Be careful as you constantly stir your roux.

(5) If you don't stir your roux, you will likely burn it.

Having said all of this, I have learned to cook my roux in the oven at 350 - 400 degrees F, in a cast iron skillet, with a little less oil than flour. Start it cooking in the oven then stir it at 5-10 minutes and then every 15 minutes until it gets as dark as you like. Mine takes about 30 minutes to get chocolate dark in the oven. That's longer than on the stove top, but nearly failure-proof and allows it to cook without needing constant stirring. I will foolishly tell you it is almost impossible to burn a roux cooked at 350 in the oven. You might be able to burn it at 400 so start off at a lower temp and modify your method to suit your skill.

Other options: Some folks cook/brown their flour with no oil in the oven. Some folks cook their roux in the microwave. Famed chef Paul Prudhomme cooked his roux using a wide open flame as hot as he could get it and made a perfect flour and oil dark roux in a heavy skillet in 5-10 minutes, never burning it. All I can say, is I never claimed to be able to make a Paul Prudhomme style roux but I was always pretty good at burning it if I attempted his method.

Trinity – Please excuse me for saying this. Some gumbo cooks call this the “Holy Trinity” but to me, there is no Holy Trinity other than the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so I never call it Holy. The vegetable trinity used in gumbo is some combination of chopped onion, celery, and green bell pepper. I like a little more onion and a little less celery and bell pepper in my trinity. Sometimes I will throw in a little red bell pepper, but it is not needed. The trinity is normally sauteed in the cooked roux just before adding the liquid to cool it off and keep the vegetables from burning. Oh, lots of trinity in your gumbo is a good thing.

Meat: The gumbo I am making here uses chicken and sausage. There are many other meat combinations that work well in a gumbo. There are seafood gumbos, with shrimp, fish, oysters, whatever. Classic Cajun and Creole folks would make a gumbo with either chicken and sausage, or seafood and sausage, or just seafood. Many will say their gumbo must have sausage, regardless. Depending on circumstance, they might also use rabbit or squirrel, quail, doves, or whatever fish, fowl, or meat they had at the moment. Author James Lee Burke's crime novel character "Dave Robicheaux" often mentions cooking blackbird gumbo. There is also a vegetable only gumbo called Gumbo Z'Herbes, usually served during Lent, that traditionally uses seven different leafy green vegetables with ho meat added. What do I think? It is your gumbo, and I would most likely eat it with the gusto of a Hound Dog.

Let's get to the important stuff.

In this recipe I used rotisserie precooked chicken for the meat. It has good chicken flavor, it's fairly cheap at Sams or Costco, and it saves a lot of time if I feel lazy. I also used the carcass (water, bones and skin plus some onion, celery, salt, and black pepper) to make the chicken stock

Stock - The stock I used was made using the chicken carcass, with some celery and onion to add flavor. For my rotisserie chicken gumbo, I stripped the meat from the bird, set it aside, and threw everything else, including the skin into the pot to boil with the water and vegetables to pull as much flavor as I could from the bones and skin. Some will roast their chicken carcass, preferring the flavor that comes from roasted bones in their stock. Some will simply add a can or two of chicken broth, better than bouillon paste, or a couple or four chicken bouillon cubes. Some will use ham stock, or (if making seafood gumbo) seafood or shrimp stock. I have had pretty good gumbo that used mixed chicken and beef stock.

-Seasoning usually includes salt, black pepper, and Cajun or Creole seasoning with whatever you use, added to season to taste.

- Cooked rice is normally added for serving. Some folks serve their gumbo with potato salad and that is an interesting alternative to using rice. I had some once with a baked sweet potato. It was tasty. Of course, it is perfectly acceptable to serve gumbo with no rice or anything else, but most folks use a big spoonful of rice or potato salad.

- Other ingredients - Some folks will use okra in their gumbo for flavor and as a thickening. Eventually I will post an okra gumbo recipe because I like okra. It is a highly controversial subject, but some add tomato. That is fine with me - Sometimes I do. Some folks will add a boiled egg or cook an egg in their gumbo. Some will thicken the gumbo with gumbo file (ground dried sassafras leaves). I may have read where the FDA has classified file as a potential carcinogen. Some folks add other spices, garlic, wine, whatever.

Ingredients for making 4 quarts of gumbo, which will serve somewhere between 4 and 10 folks:

Roux:

1 heaping cup AP flour
1/2 cup oil
1 teaspoon salt

Trinity:

1 Large onion, chopped (2 cups)
2 medium bell peppers, chopped (1 1/2 cup)
3 stalks celery, chopped (1 1/2 cup)

Chicken:

3 cups rotisserie chicken

Sausage:

3 cups Andouille sausage, or your brand

Chicken stock: 8 Cups

Seasoning:

1 - 2 Tablespoons Cajun or Creole Seasoning - to taste 
1/2 teaspoon red cayenne pepper - to taste
2 Tablespoons Lawry's Garlic Salt, or 2-3 cloves minced fresh garlic
1 teaspoon LA Gold Pepper sauce or your brand - to taste
salt and black pepper - to taste

My dish uses a brown shoe or chocolate dark roux. The one shown here was cooked on the stove top. It could have just as easily been done in the oven. When completed, I added my sausage, followed by the onion, quickly followed with celery and bell pepper. and pretty quickly after that I added the stock and cook it for +- 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, I added the chicken, the seasonings, and cooked that for a while. I like to make my gumbo early in the day and let it sit for a while to allow the flavors to settle in before serving it. It always tastes better the next day.

This gumbo freezes well. We always keep some in the freezer for lazy meals.

I serve my gumbo with cooked long grain rice and garnish it with a little chopped green onion if I want it to be pretty. Crusty bread is a nice accompaniment.

A future post teaser - yes, I used tomatoes and chicken and okra:

Thanks for looking at my long-long post.

God Bless you