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The Long, Bor­ing One About Gumbo

Da was sup­posed to be enjoy­ing some hot Gulf coast action right about now. Fate threw some wrenches and, well, he’s not. Under­stand­ably, he’s dis­ap­poin­ted. Oil balls and dead dol­phins don’t help.

On a side-note, I’ve been mak­ing some wicked gumbo lately. After last fall’s trip to NOLA, I had sworn off the stuff. Not off eat­ing it. Just off mak­ing it. I had noth­ing on the nat­ives. But as with all my inten­tions, time passes and resolve fades. That recent warm streak doesn’t help. So I’ve been mak­ing, again. Mak­ing good. Oh so good!

I was crow­ing about my most recent efforts to Da’s lovely bride, who sug­ges­ted that some kick-ass Father’s Day Gumbo may be just the thing to perk a cer­tain someone up.

Gumbo is regional cook­ing. Its fam­ily cook­ing. Every­body has their own “true ver­sion”, which is com­pletely dif­fer­ent for every­body else’s “true ver­sion” If you were to strip out all of the vari­able or optional bits, you would be left with:

1. First you make a roux.¹
2. …
3. Serve hot, over rice.

Which is the busi­ness plan for all good Cajun and Creole cooking.

That said, there are some gen­eral prin­ciple at work. Gumbo is a soup, thickened, seasoned, and bulked up in pre­dict­able ways.

Soup

Soup means a liquid base — veget­able, chicken, or sea­food stocks are all good, depend­ing on what’s going in to the gumbo. You could use water, but why would you want to? Beer, wine, or cider would just be weird. Wait. Beer might be good.

Make you’re own stock. Its worth it.

I like to poach a bird, and then use the poach­ing liquid plus the bones & skin to make the stock.

If you’re doing shrimp or crab, buy them whole, and make stock from the shells/heads/tails.

It doesn’t really mat­ter what your stock is, just so long as its good. If it turns into meat-flavoured Jell-o in the fridge, then you’re on the right track.²

Thick­en­ing

There are three ways to thicken gumbo, indi­vidu­ally or in combination:

1. Thickened with a roux
2. Thickened with okra
3. Thickened with filé

Roux is essen­tial to gumbo, for both tex­ture and fla­vour. A dark roux gives you a dark, smokey, bit­ter fla­vour, but little thick­en­ing power. A lighter roux has a brighter, lighter fla­vour, with more thick­en­ing power. The ideal bal­ance comes down to per­sonal pref­er­ence, and takes exper­i­ment­a­tion to get right. Any­where from pea­nut but­ter brown to dark chocol­ate will give you some­thing worth try­ing. Any lighter, and your gumbo will taste like flour paste. Any darker, and you risk burn­ing the roux.³

Okra thick­ens, cour­tesy of the vis­cous ooze which comes out of it when cooked. Its slimy, and gross. Many recipes call to “rope” the okra first — sauté it in a sep­ar­ate pan, until that ooze dries up⁴ — which tem­pers the thick­en­ing power a bit. Using frozen okra also reduces the ropi­ness, and thus avail­able thick­en­ing power. I prefer the mouth feel and thick­ness of fresh okra that hasn’t been sautéed first. YMMV.

Filé powder is ground sas­sa­fras leaves. Sas­sa­fras has a dis­tinct­ive, sweet fla­vour⁵, which many people asso­ci­ate with gumbo. Even if you thicken with okra, its not uncom­mon to add filé powder, strictly for fla­vour, at the end of cook­ing. Or to offer it as a con­di­ment at the table. If you’re using filé powder to thicken, add it earlier and let the gumbo come to a boil.

Season­ing

This is creole (or cajun — pick your camp) cook­ing at its most basic. Why wouldn’t you want to start with the trin­ity? The trin­ity is a mire­poix made in the bayou, and is used the same as in French cook­ing — aro­mat­ics sauteed in fat at the begin­ning of the recipe. Unlike a French mire­poix, the trin­ity con­sists of onion, cel­ery, and sweet pep­per. In the case of gumbo, roux counts as your fat. I sup­pose tech­nic­ally, its no longer sautéing.

Other season­ings that are at home with cajun or creole cook­ing: gar­lic, thyme, bay leaves, cay­enne, mus­tard seed, pars­ley. Or you can cheat, and grab some pre-mixed crab boil.⁶

Bulk

The rest is entirely up to you. Gumbo is often filled with meat or sea­food. But it can be made lighter, with sturdy greens — à la gumbo z’herbes.

Put­ting it All Together

Usu­ally, I make a chicken & keil­basa gumbo. The bits that mat­ter are:

1. Mak­ing a good chicken stock. Start with 6 litres of poach­ing liquid, and over 6 hours, cook it down to 2 litres of stock. Ser­i­ous yum.
2. Mak­ing a medium brown roux. I used to make a super-dark roux —  like 70% chocol­ate. Its a rush, get­ting so close to the edge without actu­ally burn­ing it. And it pulls out some pretty awe­some, com­plex fla­vours out of the flour. But it doesn’t thicken for shit. In my quest for a thicker gumbo, I star­ted using a lighter roux, and real­ized that I liked the fla­vour bet­ter. Darker than pea­nut but­ter. Lighter than milk chocol­ate. That’s my sweet spot. Yours will be different.
3. Fresh okra, and lots of it. Don’t rope it first. So, so good. And, aside from pickles, the only thing that okra is good for. There. I’ve said it.
4. Crab boil. Spe­cific­ally, Zatarain’s whole spice crab boil, which comes in a mesh bag. This is the spice blend I grew up with; its the spice blend all gumbo should use. Unfor­tu­nately, its being phased out for liquid and powdered ver­sions, which taste com­pletely dif­fer­ent. Also, no tact­ile pleas­ure of whole spices. I cry.

Mak­ing it Even Better

As this is a spe­cial, cel­eb­rat­ory and pick-me-up gumbo, we need to do bet­ter than chicken & saus­age. What’s bet­ter? Duck and oysters, of course.

We picked up 2 ducks to smoke, because– yum! And fired up the old weber for its first run of the sea­son. The wood was per­sim­mon, but my phil­istine taste couldn’t tell.

I took guid­ance from The Gumbo Shop Cook­book regard­ing how to deal with the duck:

• remove heads & feet⁷
• smoke ducks until cooked (~5 hours)
• remove skin & sub­cu­taneous fat⁸, and roast in the oven until fat is rendered and skin is crisp.⁹
• reserve fat for another use¹⁰
• remove meat from bones; reserve for later
• make stock with bones & crispy skin. We also added the duck feet, but not the heads, because brains taste like yuck.

And from there, we made gumbo as per usual:

• make a medium brown roux
• add the trin­ity and sauté
• add sliced okra
• add stock & addi­tional seasoning
• add shred­ded duck meat
• sim­mer for at least 20 minutes. A couple hours is fine, too.
• 5 minutes before serving, add shucked oysters & their liquor

C’est tout. Bön appétit.

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