My Easy Gumbo Recipe

Hello, and welcome back to the blog! Today I wanted to share with you my gumbo recipe. I'm not a food blogger, but I am a Texan married to a Cajun, and I do spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so let's get cookin'.

I have two notes before I fork over the recipe: 

First, I'm including an easy, foolproof roux hack that means the difference between gumbo and no gumbo most days. 

Second, this recipe includes tomatoes. I've been told by multiple Cajuns that gumbo doesn't have tomatoes, but my husband likes tomatoes in his gumbo. Since I'm cooking for him and not for other Cajuns, the tomatoes are going to stay. Once upon a time, I heard New Orleans-style gumbo had tomatoes, so I did a quick Google search to get my facts straight before starting this post. Google tells me Cajun gumbo is tomato-less and Creole gumbo is tomato-full, so pick your poison, and let's put dinner on the table!

Ingredients:

• 1 stick of butter, I use unsalted
• ½ cup flour
• 1 diced onion (Yellow, sweet, whatever you have. Except maybe red, which might be off-putting.)
• 2 diced green bell peppers
• 1 diced bunch celery
• ⅓ cup minced garlic (yes really)
• 1-2 cans Rotel
• 2-3 Tbsp Tony Chachere's seasoning
• 1-2 Tbsp dried parsley
• 2-3 bay leaves
• ⅓ cup Worcestershire sauce 
• 1 lb sausage sliced into half-moons
• 3 lbs chicken
• 4 cups chicken broth
• Optional: gumbo filé

Instructions:

Welcome to the Wild West, where there aren't any real rules, you can substitute almost anything in the recipe, and it'll probably turn out fine. Don't overthink it, and enjoy your gumbo.

1. In a large dutch oven or other oven-safe pot, melt 1 stick of butter over medium-high heat. 

• You can substitute leftover bacon grease, oil, beef or sausage drippings, any kind of fat you have. It'll be fine. 

2. Stir in ½ cup flour until the butter and flour form an even mixture. 

• You'll want about equal parts flour and fat for your roux, so if you're making a bigger pot of gumbo, add a little more fat and a little more flour.

3. Enter the easy roux hack: Put your dutch oven in a 350° F oven. This is how you'll darken your roux without having to spend lots of time at the stove stirring a pot. Leave the roux in the oven for a long time, about 2-3 hours. Check on it occasionally, and when it's at least the color of a copper penny, remove it from the oven. It could be darker and it would only taste better. 

• Darkening your roux in the oven means you can fold laundry, tend to crying babies, do your work-from-home job, or any one of the million other things that call for your attention. 

• (P.S. You can do this ahead of time and stick it in the fridge for later if you need to. I've never tried it, but I bet you could even make a lot of roux, separate it into one-gumbo portions, and freeze it for later use.)

4. Remove your copper penny roux from the oven and place it back on the stove over medium-high heat. 

• Now that we're back on the stove, we'll need to worry about the roux sticking to the bottom of the pot and burning, so maybe chop all your veggies and open your seasoning jars ahead of time. Put everything on the counter at easy reach, don't burn your roux because you were shuffling through the pantry.

5. Add your onion, bell peppers, and celery to the roux and use the fat in the roux to cook the veggies until the onions are beginning to turn translucent about 5 minutes.

6. Stir in your minced garlic and cook for another 60 seconds. 

• Yes, I really add about ⅓ cup. I don't measure, I just take a big tablespoon from the silverware drawer and add 2-3 heaping spoonfuls to my pot. I measured so I could write this recipe, and it was ⅓ cup. I usually have the giant Costco-sized pre-minced jar of garlic on hand, and the back of the jar told me that ⅓ cup is equivalent to 32 cloves of garlic. You measure garlic with your heart, so if your heart says to use less garlic you should use less garlic. It'll be fine.

7. Add in your Rotel and stir to combine, scraping the pot for any delicious brown bits stuck on the bottom. 

• I usually add 2 cans, but if I'm feeling conservative I'll add 1. You can drain them or not drain them, the Rotel juice will only add more flavor if you want to add it to the pot. Or you can leave out the Rotel altogether if you don't want tomatoes in your gumbo. Again, it'll be fine.

8. Right after the Rotel, add in your Tony’s, parsley, bay leaves, and Worcestershire sauce and stir to combine.

• I don’t usually measure these either but go easy on Tony’s. You can always add more later if needed, but gumbo that is too spicy and too salty probably won’t be fine. It would take a lot of chicken broth to fix that problem.

• I put my bay leaves in a spice ball because I don’t like bay leaves floating around in my soups. Have them float free or trap them in a spice ball, either way, it’ll probably be fine.

• I don’t measure Worcestershire sauce. I just upend the bottle over the pot and shake in 10-12…glugs. (You know the way Worcestershire sauce comes out, would we call those glugs?) This is about ⅓ cup. 

9. Right after the seasonings, add your meats and stir to combine. 

• Andouille sausage is typically used in gumbo, but Andouille sausage usually isn’t on sale. I use whatever sausage is on sale, and you can use whichever you prefer. It’ll be fine.

• You can cook your chicken first or add it to the pot raw and let it cook low and slow while the gumbo simmers. Use any cut of chicken you want. Boneless skinless chicken breasts? Add ‘em in. Big ‘ol leg quarters? Sure. Leftover rotisserie chicken? It’ll be fine.

• I add about half a rotisserie chicken, 8 chicken thighs, or 4 leg quarters.

10. Right after the meat, add your chicken broth. Add enough to cover everything in the pot, usually about 4 cups for me. Stir to combine, scraping the bottom of the pot to make sure nothing is stuck.

• I save vegetable scraps and chicken bones to make my own broth. You can use bouillon cubes, powder, or broth in a carton. You can use vegetable or beef broth, chicken or seafood stock, whatever you have. Let’s say it together now, it’ll be fine.

11. Bring everything to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and let simmer until the chicken is falling off the bone (if it was on a bone to begin with), about 2 hours.

• If you feel like the liquid level is getting a little low as the gumbo simmers, add in more until it covers the contents of the pot.

12. Serve over cooked white rice and add in a bit of gumbo filé if you’ve got it.

That's it! Let me know in the comments below if you make this, and if it did, in fact, turn out fine. 😊

All the love,

Emily

Please feel free to contact me at admin@tulipsandbasil.com!