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You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Cooking / Thursday Night Recipe Swap – Mardi Gras (Gumbo!)

Thursday Night Recipe Swap – Mardi Gras (Gumbo!)

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From our Food Goddess, TaMara:

I’m getting ready to travel again, so I’m swamped with getting everything done at work and home. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still celebrate Fat Tuesday with some New Orleans style food and drink. Bring on your party recipes. And next week let’s go vegetarian.
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I wanted to do gumbo, but didn’t have time to recipe test anything this week, except a death-by-chocolate Texas Sheet Cake, and I find my own gumbo recipes lacking. Luckily when it comes to gumbo, JeffreyW runs circles around me. Here’s his take on a shrimp gumbo:

I was rummaging about in the big freezer and turned up a stick of Andouille sausage. That put me of a mind to make a pot of gumbo. I noticed that Alton Brown was touting a method of making a brown roux in the oven that seemed to be foolproof, and didn’t require one to stand over the stove stirring for a half hour and more:

Place the vegetable oil and flour into a 5 to 6-quart cast iron Dutch oven and whisk together to combine. Place on the middle shelf of the oven, uncovered, and bake for 1 1/2 hours, whisking 2 to 3 times throughout the cooking process.

Seemed to work pretty well:

This was after 90 minutes. It could have spent a little longer and been a bit more brown but I went with it as you see it. More or less following Alton’s recipe, I put it over a medium flame on the cooktop and stirred in diced celery, green peppers, and onion. The roux turned right away into thick mud but I kept stirring it until the veggies softened a bit, about ten minutes. Next was several cups (4-5?) of the stock the chicken I used was cooked in, fortified with some Creole seasoning, along with the canned tomato bits I used in lieu of fresh. I did have fresh thyme and even grow my own bay leaves now. That simmered for a half hour before I added the cooked chicken, thawed pre-cooked shrimp, and the sliced and browned Andouille sausage.
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Serve over rice, and be sure to have a bottle of hot sauce on the table lest you be taunted.

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  6. 6.

    Raven

    @jeffreyw:

    Well, I thought I’d go out to Tulsa
    And ride in a rodeo
    Red beans and rice sure would be nice
    Back where the Mississippi River flows

    And it’s a long way back to Vicksburg
    Mississippi River is muddy and wide
    But it don’t seem like much
    When sweet Louisiana’s waitin’ on the other side

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m more of a jambalaya maker, but I haven’t done it in a very long time. I usually get lazy and use a Zatarain’s mix.

    My only other New Orleans connection is that I’m in charge of getting king cakes from our local Cuban bakery every year. No, I’m not sure why the Cuban bakery makes king cakes, but they’re damn good.

  13. 13.

    TaMara (BHF)

    Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here working.

    @Elie: I’m pretty sure that sheet cake almost killed everyone. No one could stop eating it and it was rich. I’m pretty sure I won’t need chocolate for at least…a week.

  15. 15.

    lamh35

    U basically can’t go wrong with gumbo. I’ll be back home in NOLA for 3 days just in time for Mardi Gras.. I wasn’t gonna go this year, but I blame Harry Connick Jr. He was on jimmy Fallon last week and I caught his segment & he got up and played “It Ain’t My Fault” a mardi gras staple. Made me so homesick that I bought my tickets the next day (didn’t hurt that southwest had one way ticket either to r from NOLA for only $69, round trip total…$157). So now in 2 more days ill be back in NOLA

  18. 18.

    Yutsano

    My dad went to a conference in New Orleans for a week and my mom tagged along. While she was down there she took a Cajun cooking class. For the next six months she showed off everything she learned. Our bellies were very happy.

    I don’t have access to any of her recipes unfortunately.

  19. 19.

    Jess

    Anyone want to post a recipe for uninitiated? I’m not much of a cook, but I’m trying to learn, starting with soup-type stuff that’s hard to screw up. Just bought my first slow cooker (inspired by last week’s post)–can I make gumbo in it?

  20. 20.

    Yutsano

    @Jess: How uninitiated? I’m pretty good at going through things one step at a time. You can start with an easy thing like a soup then start to challenge yourself.

  21. 21.

    J.W. Hamner

    @Jess:

    Just bought my first slow cooker (inspired by last week’s post)—can I make gumbo in it?

    I’m sure there are, but you’d have to make the roux separately… and I’d go chicken instead of shrimp unless they are cooked separately and added at the end. I think you could do it, but it wouldn’t be the “dump everything in and turn it on” type meal a slow cooker excels at.

    There are tons and tons of slow cooker stews, but as I don’t own one I can’t recommend any recipes… though I’m sure many here will.

  22. 22.

    Montysano

    @Jess:

    Just bought my first slow cooker (inspired by last week’s post)—can I make gumbo in it?

    Yes, but you’ll still have to make your roux and saute your onion/garlic/celery/whatever in a skillet of some sort.

    With a really good roux, it’s easy to make good gumbo. I’m suspicious of the Alton Brown method above, so I’ll continue to make it low and slow. Also, I always do the saute separately, i.e. not in the roux. IMHO there has to be okra, and if it’s a seafood gumbo, there has to be oysters. File’ powder adds a lot.

  24. 24.

    Origuy

    @Mnemosyne:

    No, I’m not sure why the Cuban bakery makes king cakes, but they’re damn good.

    In Hispanic cultures, a king cake, rosca de reyes, is eaten at Epiphany, 6 January. Whoever gets the Christ child doll baked inside hosts the Candlemas party on February 2.

  26. 26.

    kth

    Don’t tell your guests, but you can totally make gumbo roux in a microwave. Mix the oil and the flour in a 1-quart Pyrex measuring cup, and cook on high for two minutes. Whisk and repeat. After 10 minutes or so (in 2 minute increments), you should have a dark chocolate colored roux. I usually just mix in the trinity (onions, bell pepper, celery) right then and there, cause I’m a little lazy.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    @Origuy:

    These are definitely marketed as Mardi Gras King Cakes since they put the purple, green and yellow sugar on top. Does the rosca de reyes also have a cream cheese filling?

  28. 28.

    Jess

    Thanks for the tips, everyone. I’m going to start experimenting with both gumbo and the slow cooker, but I guess not at the same time. I’ll make sure I have a frozen pizza as plan b…

  29. 29.

    Bill H.

    The idea of making a roux in the oven is utterly appalling, almost as bad as making it in a microwave. Good God. And that roux you pictured is entirely too light. I’ve made a roux hundreds of times, and I’ve never “stood over the stove a half hour or more.” A good cast iron skillet and a high gas heat, 10-15 minutes max and I’ve got a nice dark roux. Yes, you have to stir constantly, but if you don’t want to cook go to a restaruant.

  31. 31.

    dirge

    A few gumbo notes…

    Personally, I’m not a big fan of okra, and find that it’s just not really gumbo without filé. Matter of personal taste I suppose. I like the sassafras flavor of filé. I just eyeball the quantity, adding a teaspoon or so at a time just as I’m finishing ’till I get a nice silky texture.

    Tomato? Really? Guess it couldn’t hurt too much.

    I’ve always used a butter based roux. I’ll have to see if the oven technique works for that.

    Your gumbo is mostly but not quite done when you can no longer identify pieces of onion or celery because they’ve completely disintegrated.

    Fresh chilies work nicely if you roast, peel, seed and work them in early or in stages the way you would for a southwestern green chili. Otherwise you can rely on your sausage and/or chili powders.

    You can go two ways with shrimp: you can toss them in just a few minutes before the end for nice, fresh, crisp shrimp, or you can give them at least 40 minutes and they’ll get this incredible soft texture and exchange flavors with the rest of the gumbo in a beautiful way. In between, they’re awful. This is pretty much true about chicken as well.

    Chorizo actually works pretty well, though you get a different flavor profile than you do with andouille. I like a good dry, hot chorizo for the the punch it packs and the amount of fat it renders — see below.

    Duck is worth a shot as a gumbo ingredient if it’s not hard or expensive for you to get. Honestly, I didn’t love it myself, but I could see how it’d be to other people’s taste. Also, it can come in really handy with the next point…

    This is really labor-intensive, but coat all your meats in salt, pepper and flour, then fry them ’till brown in rendered fat from browning sausage or other fatty ingredients. You’ll have to cycle a lot of batches through: sausage, half you chicken, sausage, rest of you chicken, sausage, half your shrimp, etc. A gigantic cast iron pan is a huge help here.

    Set all that aside ’till you’re ready to throw it in the pot (remember that different meats should probably go in at different times). If you didn’t fry in the bottom of the crock pot you’re making the gumbo in, deglaze the pan you used and pour that hideous slurry into the pot. This adds tons of dark roux flavor from the flour with no danger of clumping, incorporates the sausage fat without making things greasy, plus gets you good caramelized meat flavors. It also provides bowls full of tasty snacks while you’re making gumbo, which can take a while if you’re doing it this way.

    If you’re on the Chesapeake or the Gulf or some place you can get cheap crab, or if you can afford expensive crab, it’s a great thing to add maybe 20 or 30 minutes before you’re done. If not, I suggest adding some flaky white fish like flounder, sole or trout early on so it breaks down for a nice background texture and flavor.

    Most important by a long shot: make a seafood stock. My freezer is full of shrimp shells and fish bones, and yours should be too. If your fishmonger is selling you cleaned shrimp, ask them where the shells went. Ask your fishmonger about fish heads, as they’re probably dirt cheap. Crab and lobster shells are awesome. If you don’t have a fishmonger, track down the manager of the seafood section of your supermarket and offer a bribe. Fry or roast all the awful bits ’till not quite burned, deglaze, then leave on to boil all Saturday or Sunday. There is no way I can emphasize this enough. I’d rather drink this stuff straight than eat a gumbo without it. Also comes in handy for seafood chowders, southeast Asian curries, and lots of other stuff.

    When you go to make the rice, replace some of the water with a ladle full of your not quite finished gumbo. When you’re fixing up leftovers, try following a risotto recipe, replacing pretty much everything but the rice with gumbo. Doesn’t make a big difference, but it’s nice.

  32. 32.

    dirge

    @Bill H.: I think it’s not the amount of time it takes to make a roux that throws people, it’s the unreliability. I haven’t had much trouble with it in a while, but back when I was trying to figure things out the experience alternated between waiting ages for anything at all to happen and watching my flour burn in an instant.

    Even now that I can pull it off consistently, I’m happy to hear about ideas to make it easy and reliable.

    That said, microwave? Maybe for a light roux, but even then…

  33. 33.

    dirge

    Oh, and speaking of clever roux ideas… A line-cook I know would make roux really short on oil so that it’d form into a thin dough-like mass. You could wrap it in plastic, and later just pinch off a bit and throw it into whatever you were making so it’d dissolve into a thickener. A little light on flavor, but a handy thing to have around.

  34. 34.

    Origuy

    @Mnemosyne:

    Does the rosca de reyes also have a cream cheese filling?

    From what I can find out, it depends on the location. Catalans use marzipan. Probably the Cuban bakery had the molds already and figured out they didn’t need to wait for Epiphany to use them again.

  36. 36.

    Schlemizel

    Has nobody here ever heard of Justin Wilson? That would be very sad. Justin was the real deal Cajun, he could look at a rice field and tell you to within a tablespoon how much gravy you would need to cover that much rice.

    I learned Cajun cooking from JOO-stan he was on TV long before the days of TV chefs and I GA-ron-tee if you find one of his cookbooks you will enjoy some good foods and good times.

  38. 38.

    SteveinSC

    @Schlemizel: I went to high school on the Gulf Coast (Mobile and Ocean Springs) with Cajuns and gumbo, po’boys, remoulades, jambalaya, etc. were what people ate. Justin Wilson rekindled those times after I got older and I went back to Cajun cooking through him. I think know there are two kinds of gumbo: with and without okra. In fact I kind of think that the okra gumbo is cracker gumbo and file/dark roux is real Cajun. they are both good, but different. Also the picture on this post doesn’t even look like cracker gumbo. No gumbo I ever saw had unpeeled shrimp tails in it. Seafood gumbo has shrimp and/or oysters and okra gumbo is thick, file’ not so much. Anyone who’s ever eaten at PeTe’s, in an old gas station, in Clear Lake/Houston, will know what I mean.

  39. 39.

    Bill H.

    @dirge:
    Well, yeah. It’s “easy and reliable” for me now because I’ve done it hundreds of times. I can do it on autopilot and barely glance at it from time to time as I’m chatting with someone else, for instance. But when I was learning it I certainly set off the smoke alarm a few times, yes. So I take your point.

    But doing it the way my beloved Grandmother taught me to do it, and having the unique result, is well worth the time and effort it took to learn the art. That is true, I think, of many things in this life.

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