How do I make "real" NOLA Style Gumbo?

When I stayed in NOLA last year, I was having foodgasms at every meal. Three meals was not enough, since I was only there for five days.

BUT

BUT

BUT what made me go gaga was the fresh Gumbo. You know, the waiter gives you an empty bowl, and then pours in the contents of two smaller bowls, one containing the soup, the other the rice. And you get a baguette with it.

HOW DO I MAKE THAT STUFF????

Yeah, I can search the net, and try each one. Everyone claims to be authentic. But I've never been able to replicate that recipe.

So, any DU'ers there know how to make the REAL gumbo? Not the Campbells Chunky, but the honest-to-goodness, okra and all things bright and beautiful kind....

and try to get that recipe for you.

And how's that eye?

Take care!

learn the roux, you can cook gumbo!

Asking how you make gumbo is asking how you make authentic chili. No one way to do it. I started with this book ages ago and have let it evolve. One clue is you got to make a good roux.
http://www.amazon.com/Chef-Paul-Prudhommes-Louisiana-Kitchen/dp/0688028470

Melt butter in a pan and add some good cooking oil over low to medium heat. Then you stir in the flour. You gotta take it nice and dark (that is where some of the flavor comes from, BTW) and you need to NOT burn it. (If you do burn it you just need to throw the entire mess away and start over because it will make the entire pot taste nasty.) Have your broth handy and ready to pour in just as soon as you get the roux to the color you want--that way you stop the roux from getting any darker.

Make sure you use "the trinity." Yeah, Emeril talks about it all the time, but it IS a foundation for the cuisine. Onions, Celery and Green Pepper. Saute it off and add it to your pot. Don't forget some garlic as well. Use a liberal amount of fresh parsley all diced up, and if you can lay hands on Savory, use it too. I do not use tomatoes, personally, but I know a lot of folks who do. Add whatever heat you want to--me myself, I tend to favor some red pepper flakes, other people add hot sauce at the serve. Your call...

Dunno what KIND of gumbo you are making, and I probably should have asked that first. If it is chicken, then you need to brown that off and THEN make your roux. You add it back in after you add all the liquid so it can simmer down. If you are making seafood gumbo, I want to encourage you to not add chicken broth, but rather seafood broth made with the shells. Shrimp, crab, oysters--whatever makes you happy. My advice is NOT to add the oysters until late--they get rubbery if you cook them too long. You want bones of some sort in this (at least for a while) because the marrow makes your broth richer. (That is why you see a lot of gumbo with chicken in it along with seafood...) It is perfectly ok to find a crab claw or some other meat filled shell in your gumbo--this is NOT some delicate soup for sissified dinner parties.

If you are making gumbo with Okra, you need to slice your okra, brown it and add it to the pot. It helps thicken a bit, and it will impart a peppery flavor. If you are making File Gumbo, do NOT add the file until the end of your cook time. File will get "ropey" if you cook it too much--it can just be NASTY stuff unless you take care with how you use it.

Cook the rice in its OWN pot--NEVER add it to the gumbo until you serve it.

Happy eating! I want to warn you, however, that once you get hooked on gumbo, you WILL become sterile if you go longer than 6 months without eating any...


Laura

Also do I need real crawfish, or will regular shrimp do?

Thanks for the help on this, BTW!

You can use them both but don't over do it.

and you can use shrimp, goes well with andouille sausage

yah you can use both and many people do

however, to my mind, file gumbo is quite bitter, i no longer eat gumbo in restaurants because too often i can taste a bitter overcooked file

it's just my preference (and apparently NOT a pref shared by many) but i prefer a good okra gumbo

there is no way to spoil an okra gumbo and make it too bitter in the way a file gumbo can somehow turn out to bitter...

i think restaurants like file because okra, well, it looks not so nice sometimes, but at some point decide what's more important, looks or taste, it's GUMBO, gonna be kinda funky lookin whatever you do

Although deep fried is good too

But steamed okra, its awesome!

You just have to get over the consistency

this ain't japan, we're using the rice of the people here

use a walmartt/kmart rice cooker and cook it properly and you're fine

i often pay a whole 15 cent a pound for white rice here in louisiana, it's a staple, not like you're whipping up some fancy pants indian meal (that no one could afford in india) and paying $12 a pound for jasmine/ basmati or some such nonsense

the purpose of the rice in louisiana is to make sure the meal provides sufficient calories for human life and to soak up the juices/sauces -- it is not to intrude its own flavor

so the cheapest possible white rice is fine

get on a health kick and use brown rice if you must but please don't make it any more complicated than that!

Do you want long grain, or short grain...

You are talking to someone who learned to cook in his twenties while in Asia (Thailand.)

Rice is more important than you think!

Could you imagine, say, Paella with a mushy rice?

Or Sushi with a hard grain?

The kind that there are five or six different brands of the identical type rice at the supermarket. It should be cooked so it is not sticky and each grain should be separate.

also, use peanut oil--high flash point, tougher to burn. Don't use olive.

Sometimes, I use shallot in with the trinity, and I like to use a long-grain basmati that cooks up fairly dry and fluffy.

If you use hot sauce instead of flakes, remember that the vinegar in the sauce may affect the flavor.

Good tip on the okra--you must brown it, or it will be slimy. But it must be in gumbo. So must savory. And lots of pepper.

If you are using sausage, make sure you have not oversalted. I had great gumbo using, of all things, grilled Kielbasa.

nastily. It's really not a great cooking oil, but mixed with a little raspberry vinegar, it makes a great vinagrette from things like figs, pears, bleu cheese...

Grapeseed oil has a high flashpoint and a fairly neutral to light nut-like flavor, so I imagine it would be fine.

Butter is traditionally used in roux, but is a pain in the ass to keep from burning, getting nasty.

Bacon grease? Again, as long as it has a high flashpoint, great. But I wouldn't use it because I would not want it to overpower anything else.

... not an ingredient. Just use cayenne and black pepper. Andouille is the best sausage to use in gumbo, because it is spicy and holds up well. I have never used savory in gumbo and don't know anyone who ever has. If you don't have access to file', find a shop that sells sassafrass leaves and put them in a blender until they turn into a powder. It's another condiment.

And roux doesn't need to take 20 minutes. An easy way to cheat is to get a very thick smaller pot, crank up the temperature to high, and add the oil, then add the flour when the oil is heated and whisk quickly. You can make a peanut butter colored roux in less than 5 minutes and it is perfect for seafood gumbos.

I forgot to ask the cooking gods if it was okay to put my Crystal in food rather than on *top* of it.

As for not using savory, well, anyone who thinks a good roux is made is five minutes*** probably does not appreciate that savory, a mainstay of Herbes de Provence, was always used historically in soups and stews by slaves who could not afford pepper. It is in some of the earliest gombo/gumbo recipies--see, here, from 1904:

http://www.foodreference.com/html/oyster-gum-12807.html

Savory gives the gumbo an herby-spicy taste. You use it with thyme.

Try it in bean dishes. You'll like it.


***So the laws of physics do not apply in your kitchen? Seriously, you cannot get the proper cooked-flour taste in 5 minutes. True, you get the brown, and the thickening, but you do not get the taste you should.

Watch this video. Just as no self-respecting Southerner makes grits in less than 20 minutes....neither is a roux made in less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxpoYxrn73Y

I have not seen it, but it'd have to be better than Chunky. All I could find (sort of) near me was the jambalaya. No doubt you live nearer a better-stocked store than I do. If you find some, let me know. :hi:

Zatarains is a "I'm in a hurry" option - but we can find the option here if we give it time

Sometimes you may need to head to some obscure market - but guaranteed it will be there, and near to you

You have moved to foodie heaven, my friend!

:thumbsup:

served by VTA once an hour, whether it needs it or not. :(

And in Berkeley Bowl's case, the are easier to get to by bus than by car...

Maybe if I'm up there for a meeting. :eyes:

this is an extended-stay hotel. Any suggestions from the floor in terms of more permanent housing are welcome; bear in mind that I am transit-dependent and work at a nonprofit (I just discovered to my astonishment that I qualify for some low-income housing! :scared: )

Prices are affordable there too. Not sure which bus you'd take, but its not far

FRESH FRESH veggies and fruits, Prime quality beef, and all kinds of cool foodstuff

the other two are across town. Silly me. I thought this was part of the transit-friendly Bay Area. :eyes:

The rest is about as transit friendly as, well, LA...

There's also Molly Stone's downtown (if its still there)

I get the feeling you knew the answer to your question as you asked. ;)

:*

The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine.

http://www.jfolse.com/encyclopedia.htm

Or find a recipe here:

http://www.jfolse.com/fr_soups.htm#seafood

John is a cousin of mine and many of the recipes in this book are recipes I enjoy on a weekly basis. You can find it for cheaper on Amazon or get one of those Borders or Barnes and Noble coupons. It is one of the best cookbooks on the planet for the non-recipe content alone. There are a number of photos of places and people in the book who are near and dear to my heart (even though my great grandfather, his uncle Paul, didn't add apples to his recipe... dat is a yankee thing). Try the dirty rice recipe too. A bit of work, but it is absolutely killer.

When I lived in Dallas, I made 10 gallons of seafood gumbo each Saturday morning and sold it to friends. Easy way to cover rent. :)

The main question is: what kind of gumbo did you have? There are dozens of varieties.

Once you get the basics down, you can feel free to add ingredients that you can get locally. Just remember that the stronger the meat, the darker the roux. I tend to make a gumbo with shrimp, crab, crawfish tails, anndouille, and I'll toss in some fresh oysters at the last second... but you could also substitute whatever local seafood you can find, and a flaky fish would probably go great in there.

Just remember that there are as many gumbo recipes as there are people. Find the one that fills your stomach and your soul. (except for this one crazy lady on a food network show with bobby flay who cooked a courtbouillion and told him that it was gumbo)

And I'll toss this one in for giggles off the top of my head:

Shrimp and Egg Gumbo

10 hard boiled eggs, halved
1 lb shrimp
1 lb crab meat
1 lb andouille sausage, chopped (smoked sausage will do)
6 small gumbo crabs, top shell removed, cut in halves
3 quarts shellfish stock (or chicken stock)
1 cup diced onions
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced bell pepper
2 cups green onions
1 cup minced parsley
1/4 cup minced garlic
1 cup flour
1 cup peanut oil
cayenne, salt, black pepper to taste
file' and hot sauce for condiments
cooked long grain white rice



Heat up a skillet full with your oil to high heat. When the oil is hot, whisk in your flour, making sure you don't get any clumps in there (presift if possible). When the roux becomes a light peanut butter color, reduce heat to medium and toss in onions, celery, bell pepper, and garlic. When the celery is soft, remove from heat. In another pot, have the stock bubbling, and then whisk in the roux. When you bring dat to a boil, add the gumbo crabs and boil for 10 minutes. Then toss in your andouille and green onions and parsley, cook for another 10 minutes. Then add your crab meat and hard boiled eggs and cook for another 5 minutes. Then add your shrimp and cook for another 5 minutes.

Turn the heat off, wait for it to cool a bit, season to taste (I usually add enough cayenne until I can just feel a tingle in the back of the throat, and enough black pepper that I can taste it). Serve over rice. The egg yolks will have partially dissolved into the gumbo and will have also soaked up a lot of the seafood flavors.