There's a part of me that chuckles slightly when I see a "gumbo" without any roux. Funny thing is you make gumbo pretty much the same way you make Japanese curry from scratch- this is an area that is under development. Warning: this is even more labor intensive than the other dishes I make that people complain about, though if you have students with you a lot of the labor is unskilled.
Protein:
1 x whole chicken, about 6-ish lbs. prepared*
1 lbs andouille sausage or other smokey, cheap sausage
Roux:
Generous .5 cup APF, (or 75g)
Oil as necessary (will combine with sausage drippings: total should be .5c)
Other:
2 celery ribs
1 medium yellow onion
.5 green bell pepper
1-2 quart stock**
1 tsp dried thyme
.5 tsp dried basil
1 tsp cayenne
2 green onions sliced thin
Salt
Blackpepper
Chicken: *Preferably the day before: Brine the chicken. and poach OR pressure cook the thing until its done: breast should be at 155 final temp, so you want to pull out at 145. If you are pressure cooking, do under high pressure for about 15 minutes- the brine increases the internal heat transfer coefficients.
Once the chicken is cooked, reserve the skin and shred the meat (don't turn it into sawdust, just pull it apart so it's not giant bricks). If you get some undercooked pieces near the dark meat that's fine- just set them aside for now. If you like (I do), roast the bones and make chicken stock for the rest of the gumbo (if you're lazy use this). Take the skin and cook it under low heat to make chicken skin cracklings for garnish. Yes, you can use a Costco rotisserie chicken in a pinch and this dish becomes a lot more manageable, but it's not going to taste like mine.
Roux: Dice the onions, bell pepper, and celery (we're going to blend this gravy eventually so don't worry about making it look nice). Get your stock boiling. Slice the sausages into .25" discs and fry them under medium-low to render the delicious smoky fat. Reserve sausages. Add enough oil so that you will have .5c oil in the pan. Heat it until it smokes, then add the flour and whisk together. Cook while continuously whisking until you get a very dark roux: I prefer to take it off heat when it looks like melted chocolate so that the carry over cooking takes it to very, very dark red-brown. If you're not sure on this part you can look it up online somewhere- you can do it faster under higher heat but the risk of burning it is higher. BTW you should realize at this point that if you use teflon pans this dish isn't possible to make.
As soon as the roux is the right color, including carry over, add the onion and dried spices and return to medium heat until the onions caramelize. Add the bell pepper and celery and cook until everything is soft. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Use an immersion blender or food mill to puree the gravy. Add 1 quart of stock slowly while blending, (or whisking if you used a food mill) so that you get a nice smooth texture.
**Depending on whether you want a thick gumbo that's more like a sauce
or a thinner one more like a soup, add up to an additional quart of
stock.
Return the sausage to the gravy and heat through. Salt and pepper to taste.
To serve: put some steamed long grain rice in a bowl and then invert this bowl into a shallow dish to get a neat mound of rice in the middle. Pour the gumbo all around the rice. Add the shredded chicken all around the plate, mixing white and dark meat. Garnish with the sliced green onion and chicken skin cracklings. Serve with Tobasco or Frank's (or some other sour hot sauce- it's to offset the fat).
You can stretch this out further by adding a poached or fried egg on top of the rice sprinkled with some salt and/or a small pat of butter.
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