Art Lieberman's List: gumbo

Chicken Gumbo: Birthday/ New Year's 2010

Make a stock by boiling left over Turkey frame and 2 whole chickens.  Add 2 onions, a few cloves of garlic and some salt to the stock as it.  Bring pot to boil and simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  Check your chicken when you are finished to make sure you aren't getting any red juice.  If you are boil for another 1/2 hour or so. 

While you are waiting for the chicken to cook, cut up veggies which has to be onions, bell pepper, and celery.  3 or 4 onions, a full bunch of celery and 2 or more bell peppers would be good. 

Also you can add carrots, garlic, and serrano peppers.  The peppers should be halved. 

Okra is nice too.  I like the okra cut up as small as you can so that it all but disappears in the gumbo.

Debone the chickens and what meat might be left on the turkey frame.  Discard onions and garlic cloves.

Put the stock to the side.

Make a roux.  I did it this year by cooking in a cast iron skillet italian sausage, a couple pounds of fatty bacon, and adding bacon grease as needed.  

Put the cooked bacon and sausage to the side.

By then, the grease is plenty hot enough.

You want about 1:1 oil to flour.  We used whole wheat flour this year.  You can use different kinds of flour like rice flour etc.  Of course most use white flour.  My wife doesn't cook with white flour so we didn't have any.  Go more heavy on the flour and you brown up faster.  Go heavy on the oil and you have more control over the browning of the roux. 

When the roux looks good and brown put it the pot in which you are going to mix all the ingrediants. 

Start with roux, then chicken stock, get it hot.  Put your veggies and seasoning in.

seasoning:  thyme - 2 tsps, black pepper - 2 tsps, 2 or 3 bay leaves, you can salt to taste later.

Get the veggies cooking up in the mix of roux and stock and add the cooked meat. 

Add in 1 bottle of pale ale.

At some point taste for spicyness.  If you think it's plenty spicy, take out the serranos. 

I would have used more flour in the roux and let it get browner.  Also I would have left the serranos in longer.