Chicken and sausage gumbo to me is a peak of the Garbage Gourmet ethos - the bulk of important ingredients are things that most people throw in the trash and in fact wind up generating two important ingredients - rather than just simply using one thing you have on hand as is. It's almost like a realization of the mediaeval principle of "Spontaneous Generation."
But the basic ingredients are pretty basic and you should have em around the house or can purchase on the cheap; they'd be
left over chicken on the bone
1 green pepper
1 onion
2 stalks celery
some flour
salt
hot red pepper
garlic powder
a bay leaf
cooking oil
optional - andouille sausage, kielbasa, smoked sausage etc.
oregano
This looks long and involved but really all you're doing is
boiling up some chicken bones and pulling the meat off the bones (which can easily be done a day or two, or even a week or two, beforehand)
and then sauteeing some flour,
chopping and adding some veggies,
stirring in some chicken stock
dumping in pre-cooked chickenv
(and maybe adding some sausage if you'd like)
The process starts by saving up leftover chicken including various bones that have already been eaten offa and the "Carcass" - i.e. rib cage etc. I always have a bag going in the freezer that leftovers go into after making dinner. If you roast a chicken, dine and then put away leftovers you'll likely disarticulate 'em i.e. take apart and stash" drumsticks, wings, thighs, breasts etc. You'll be left with the carcass and that's the first thing to go into the freezer; if you roast a chicken and aren't making immediate use of the pan drippings, I highly recommend you pour those off into a container and freeze. If you're boning a chicken to prepare a dish like Southern Fried Chicken, you're also left with the carcass. On subsequent occasions when you make meals out of the thighs etc. - when you're cleaning the table put those bones and any meat scraps into your freezer bag. Frankly, I do this even when we're eating out - i.e. ask for a go-box for all the leftovers - even if we're talking Buffalo wings. (and while you're at it, take any leftover celery too! It'll come in handy - and otherwise it's becoming landfill). So here's a little mindfulness -- that you've finished a nice dinner out and you're now thinking about issues like ecology, world hunger, gratitude for being prosperous enough to eat out, blah de blah blah blah.
Chicken Stock - this takes about 10 minutes labor to get going and probably 20 minutes labor after a couple hours of untended cooking
ingredients:
Ziploc bag fulla chicken bones and meat scraps
1 coarsely chopped onion (med. to large; doesn't really matter)
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon oregano
optionally:
1 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
(you could add more vegetables for added flavor or if you've got some that are one step away from composting in order to use 'em up - but it's not really necessary for the recipe)
directions:
*Once you've got a bag (I used the Ziplocs that are about 10" x 12" - sorry I can't quote the quart size - but it's one size up from what you'd stash a sandwich in) full, it all gets dumped into a pot fulla water - no defrosting necessary. This would be a pot you'd normally make soup, boil spaghetti in, etc. - yr standard large cooking pot.
*Turn the heat up high
*and add vegetables and spices
*Bring this to a boil and then lower heat and simmer about 2 hours, covered.
*After 2 hours, turn the heat off and let it sit and cool off at half hour.
*Next, strain all this shiz through a collander or big strainer, reserving the liquid.
I'd recommend letting the solid stuff sit for another half hour or so to cool off.
*After which y'all pick all the meat off the bones and collect that in some sorta container; I typically separate the solids into several piles - one would be the edible meat, one would be the bones, skin, gristley bits and the last would be the vegetables. The bones and scrapcs go outside into a bowl for the local fauna (possums, racoons, feral cats, crows) to partake of (clearly you don't do this if you've got coyotes or bears in the general vicinity as ya don't want them to adopt your house as their default buffet -- and wind up eating yr cats or dogs when you don't stock said buffet). The vegetables go into compost - tho if you were gonna use this stock for soup you could chop or puree them and put em back into the stock.
This gig can happen any time you've got free time. Me, I work a 12 hour day Mon - Fri with lotsa weekend activities. So if I've got a full bag, and about 30 minutes to spare that day, I'll undertake this part of the process and freeze it.
Gold Outta Straw Gumbo
music recommended: Rebirth Brass Band "Kickin It Live" and "Take It To The Streets"
ingredients
7 cups of chicken stock
all the meat scraps you picked off de bones
1/2 cooking oil or chicken fat - or a mixture of the two
1 1/4 cups flour (honestly use any kind you favor -- yes, spelt and whole wheat and white will all taste different -- VIVA LA DIFFERENCE - use rice flour or something if yr gluten intolerant)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon ground hot red pepper (I've got all this fancy-ass red pepper that Sam Phillips sent me from the Spice Station in Silver Lake that's right groovy - but if you wanna keep it down-low Bahia brand will do nicely)
2 stalks celery
1 medium onion
1 medium bell pepper
OPTIONAL - a ring of andouille sausage or kielbasa (I don't eat pork and use chicken or turkey sausage)
directions:
WHEN I've got time to do some real cooking (or need to make the time to center my fevered brain) I'll take the meat and stock out de freezer whilst I'm making my morning coffee. After lunch, this shizz is normally defrosted and ready to go. If you have pan drippings in the freezer, bust those out too. Once the stock is defrosted you wanna measure out 7 cups' worth - if you're short, just add water and perhaps 1 chicken or veggie bullion cube for each cup of water you add (in a pinch you can just use water and bullion cubes)
Now the second part of the process begins.
I'll state up front, that this recipe is adapted from one that appears in Chef Paul Prudhomme's "Louisiana Kitchen." This version is less labor intensive, has been mutated to fit with my own dietary peculiarities and uses ingredients easily found anywhere.
*You start by heating up a big pot (I love cast iron myself but heavy aluminum should work as well) and adding a 1/2 cup of vegetable oil - OR if you have reserved pan drippings from roasting a chicken skim the fat off the top ("Schmaltz"!) and use that INSTEAD of oil (you probably want to measure the chicken fat and top it off with oil to make a 1/2 cup). ONce you've measured out yr oil/fat turn heat down to medium high.
* Then measure mix flour and spices
* and throw that into the oil/fat and mix well into the oil/fat with a big old spoon. You wanna make sure and mix this thoroughly so that all the oi/fat is absorbed and the consistency of the roux if uniform. Continue cooking at medium high heat. You wanna keep an eye on this, stirring it a every couple minutes. The bottom part likely to brown up quick and you wanna keep scraping the bottom and mixing it into the roux proper. Finally, you want this to wind up a dark brown WITHOUT burning it.
Here's an aside -- Chef Paul actually starts this recipe by having you make Southern Fried Chicken, then cutting it up and throwing it into the liquid and having the coating dissolve somewhat...which has gotta be cool if you got the time; I don't. So in effect I'm using pre-cooked chicken and the amount of flour that'd bread the chicken + the quantity he has you use in your roux ALL goes into the roux.
*Next you FINELY CHOP celery, onion, bell pepper and as you chop each ingredient add it to the roux and mix it in THOROUGHLY. You add ingredients in this order so that the toughest shizz winds up cooking the longest. Give the bell pepper 2-3 minutes to cook.
By this time you def wanna keep an eye on the pot and stir this stuff thoroughly and if it's getting black or you smell it burning - just take it off the heat and let it sit a couple minutes - the pot and ingredients are hot enough to finish the cooking without being on the burner.
Another aside - you'll note there's no cooking times given so far - basically each activity done in sequence takes about the right amount of time for the stuff already in the pot to cook sufficiently. So fug the timer!
*Now you take a cup of stock and pour a aplash into the roux and stir it with a big spoon until it's all aborbed. Pour in another splash and stir until absorbed. Continue this process till you use up the first cup, then start with the second cup.
*Once the mixture goes from being solid, to pastey to a thick liquid you can pour in the stock one cup at a time, and whisk it until it's utterly smooth (helps to do this with an actual wire whisk but a big fork or even spoon will work - it'll just take more work).
* Once all the stock has been added and you've whisked yr mixture into smooth submission (consistency should be of a thick soup), dump in your chicken (if any of it is still frozen, not to worry -- it'll thaw quick enough.
*Put this on low heat and let it simmer 45 minutes.
OPTIONALLY - you can slice up a ring of sausage, and brown it on both sides and throw that in after the chicken. Browning seals in the flavor, seals OUT liquid from the soup/stew you're dumping it in (otherwise it gets soggy and indisinct tasting). Since I'm into multi tasking, I start this going after I've chopped and added all the vegetables.
*While the whole thing is cooking be sure to scrape the bottom of the pot occasionally coz stuff WILL cake up and eventually burn. But if you check on it every 10-15 minutes you should be fine. And frankly you WANT it to cake up and cook a little more thoroughly than the rest of your stew -- actually adds interesting and delicious flavor!
Traditionally you serve this with rice. I suppose white is preferred but I usually keep brown on hand and it works fine. I've even served it with leftover basamati rice - which works, but doesn't jibe quite as well as standard white or brown rice.
You could also serve this with some veggies - you put em on a plate with a couple ladles of gumbo and the juices will quickly run into 'em - YUM.
No okra?
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