I have eaten a lot of gumbo, most of it not very good. Gumbo is one of those things that can be incredible but very rarely is even tasty outside of its native habitat (the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana side).
The very best gumbo I have eaten outside of the Gulf was the remarkable seafood gumbo at Blazin’ Cajun in Seattle. It’s closed now. It morphed from a shack into a sit-down restaurant called Southern Hospitality that the neighborhood was unable utterly to support.
I had never made gumbo until yesterday.
Thanks to my wife, I have a good Creole cookbook. It is put together by John Besh, a well-regarded chef in New Orleans. I have yet to visit his restaurant August, but I like his style. He stresses the basics and takes a building-block approach to the recipes, which are easy to follow if time-consuming.
I needed chicken stock and chicken. I cheated on the chicken and bought rotisseries. I didn’t cheat on the stock and made it from scratch, using the carcasses from the rotisserie birds. Made it the day before I made the gumbo proper.
The base of any gumbo is roux. Roux is flour cooked in fat. One part flour, one part fat. Chef Besh says chicken fat is the ticket, but canola oil works fine. I skimmed the fat off the cold stock, heated it in a skillet, and dumped in the flour. The ‘fat’ was too watery, so we had to improvise and dump in some canola oil. No big deal, just extended the cooking time.
The roux got to a light chocolate color. It can go much darker, but we didn’t for whatever reason.
Threw in the chicken bits, dusted in celery salt, garlic powder, some other stuff. Threw in some uncooked andouille. Threw in the minced green onions. Dumped in a bunch of stock, at which point I realized I had not put in the minced tomato or garlic. I seared them up in a pan and dumped them in.
Sliced smoked Italian sausage, dumped it in. Crumbled more Italian sausage and more andouille into a skillet, skimmed chicken fat off the gumbo, dumped it in the skillet to get the sausage bits crisp. Dumped it in. Ground up a leftover grilled strip steak and fried it in more chicken fat. Dumped it in.
V made the rice, which was started in chicken fat and butter before being cooked in chicken broth.
Cooked the gumbo for an hour and a half more, or so. Stir, skim fat.
It is really pretty great, despite some half-assedry on my part. There’s a huge amount of it left.