| May. 21st, 2007 @ 01:03 pm Gumbo Cooking. FireHouse, TX |
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Van's Cajun Style Seafood Gumbeaux (Gumbo) Ingredients: 2 lbs. Ground Sausage ( Sage ) 2 Whole Chickens ( Take skin off chickens ) 2 lbs. Beef Linked Sausage ( Ekrich ) 1 Large Bundle of Celery 1 Bunch of fresh Parsley 1 Bunch of Green Onion Blades 1 Lg. Sweet Videlia Onion 1 Sm. Green Bell Pepper 1 tbls. of Minced Garlic 2 Lg. Bags of chopped Okra 1 14oz. can Stewed Tomatoes 1 Sm. can Tomato Sauce 2 lbs. Shrimp ( Hey--It is Seafood Gumbo ) De-shelled already cooked shrimp is fine. 1 lb. Crayfish meat 1 doz. fresh raw oysters ( optional ) -----SPICES---- 1 Can of green label "Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning" ( Don't get excited, you will not use the whole can. ) 1/2 tsp. Curry ** Salt (To Taste) ** Pepper (To Taste) 1 Tbls. Brown Sugar 1/2 Doz. Drops of Louisiana Red ( Tabasco Sauce, you can't beat it. ) How to gitter' dun. While cooking sausage in large cast iron black skillet over medium heat, bring to boil the chickens in large stock pot. Add about 2-3 tsps. of Tony's Seasoning, a couple pinches of salt, a shake or two of Black Pepper, Curry, and Tabasco, to the chicken broth in stock pot. After getting the broth boiling, back the heat down to medium, and cook for about another 45 minutes. Now, back to the sausage, don't burn the sausage, but cook it to the point of of past medium brown. Then take sausage and squeeze out excess grease, keeping as much grease in the skillet as possible, and set the sausage aside. The grease now becomes your base for your roux. This next step is the most important. The roux is the secret to a good flavored gumbo. Add flour ( All-Purpose or Self-Rising--I don't care which, remember I'm a fireman trying to cook a good meal before the next emergency comes over the firehouse speaker ) Also add a little salt, black pepper, and Tony's 3-4 good shakes. Add flour slowly stirring and blending the flour into the sausage grease, using low heat, you want this process to take a while. It takes at least 3 minutes to cook the flour taste out and I will cook roux for an hour maybe longer, You want the mixture to keep a liquid, but thick consistency. The color of a good roux will go from dark brown to a deep reddish brown, but don't keep the heat so hot the mixture will burn. While cooking slowly, I will be preparing the celery, parsley( a small amount ) Green onion blades, onion, bell pepper, and minced garlic to be placed in a food processor. Take the veggies to a liquefied state, and set aside. By now your chickens should be done so remove from broth and let chickens cool down ( because boning hot chickens want feel good to your fingers. ) While broth is still hot add okra and liquefied veggies along with stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce. Bring broth back to a boil, because after putting in thawed okra and cool veggies your broth temperature will drop. After reaching a boil again take heat down to a simmer. Taste your broth now for flavor check, you may need more salt and some more Tony's. Remember the roux! Now take a ladle, that's the 2-3 inch deep spoon in your utensil drawer that never gets used, and slowly add some of your broth mixture to your big skillet of roux. Stir in just one ladle full for now, I like to use a fork for stirring because I can scrape the skim off the bottom where the flavor is, repeat with another ladle full keeping a nice thick look to the roux, with your heat still low to medium under your roux, you will now start to add the roux back to your broth. Don't add the roux all at once, I like to thicken up the gumbo slowly. As your gumbo starts to thicken I will take more broth out and thin the roux down again, add back to the roux and make that roux increase again, then after several minutes and the roux re-thickens, back again I will go adding back to the gumbo, always leaving some roux in the skillet. This may sound like a lot of work, well it is, but it is worth it when someone says: This is the best gumbeaux I have ever had. Now that your gumbo has the thickness you like and the okra has cooked down ( You've probably simmered your gumbo a couple of hours by now ). While you are slowly simmering your gumbo, bring a 3 qt. pot of water to boil with a seasoning bag of good, Shrimp Boil, found in a yellow and blue box at the store. Add shrimp for just a few minutes, they will turn pink and float to the top, don't over cook. Take shrimp out of shrimp boil mixture and remove shells after the shrimp has cooled down. Then add to gumbo. If your using precooked shrimp don't cook it again just add to gumbo a few minutes before serving. Note: For extra flavor and thickness put a bottle of FILE ( Sassafras leafs ) on the table and let each person add to their individual serving of gumbo. |
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