Louisiana-Style Cajun Chicken & Sausage Gumbo

Hey, what's going on everybody? Today we are making gumbo in the Chili Pepper Madness Kitchen. Gumbo is one of my absolute favorites. I learned how to make gumbo many years ago in Louisiana. I've been making gumbo for over 20 years and this is like a classic way to make it. You got lots of chicken, some smoked andouille sausage all cooked up in a dark, rich roux. So delicious. This is one of my favorite ways to make it. It's so comforting, big, bold flavor and this is how I like to make mine. All right, let's do it. All right my friends, gumbo time. This is probably my thousandth gumbo, maybe more, I'm not really sure. But first thing we're going to do, I got a pan heated up to a good medium heat, a medium high heat. Add a little oil, a little cooking oil. And we're going to sear the chicken, season with salt and pepper. You want to get a good sear on the chicken. It's going to add some extra flavor for us here. And I have a pound of chicken and I'm using chicken thigh, which I think is best for this awesome gumbo. But you can use chicken breast if you want to or a mix, chicken thigh and breast works well, boneless. Add a little salt and pepper here. I like a lot of black pepper. A lot of times I like to cut the chicken up before I cook it in the pan and I write that up that way in the recipe, cook it with the andouille. But this is just another way you can do it. Get an extra nice sear on the chicken. Look at that, listen to that. You can already smell it. All right, I'm going to go ahead and flip it. Good color on that chicken. All right, chicken's mostly cooked through, so I'm going to go ahead and set this onto a cutting board for now. Setting it aside here. All right, and I'm going to go ahead and deglaze the pan here. I'm using a little bit of white wine. You can use some beer. Beer is really awesome here. Going to scrape up all those delicious brown bits from the bottom of the pan. And you can use stock if you want to, or even just water. Then we'll quickly chop the chicken. Just going to chop it into some bite-sized pieces. All right, I'm going to put this back into the pot really quick, just to finish it cooking through. And I'm going to set this to the side and we're going to add the andouille. And I have 12 ounces of andouille sausage. Any smoked sausage is going to work for this. So really use your favorite. Andouille is the most common delicious smoked sausage. But really I'm just going to let some of the fat render out of the sausage. And it's only probably about a few minutes. All right, going to go ahead and move this over to a bowl. Going to add it back in later. And you can deglaze one more time if you want to. If you've got any more brown bits down there, just make sure your pot's nice and clean for the next step. Going to cook off that alcohol. All right, into the bowl. All right, next step is making the roux. The roux is pretty much one of the most important steps in this particular gumbo. So I've got my pan cleaned up on my rendered goodness over here. Got a medium heat. And I have a half a cup of neutral oil. You can use something like peanut oil or vegetable oil. Olive oil is not the best here. And a half cup of flour. And we're going to stir it together to form a slurry. And this is what roux is. Roux, it's basically a combination of fat and flour. It's a technique that adds lots of flavor and body and thickness to soup or stew or gravies, sauces, all sorts of wonderful things. But you can use different kinds of fat. The bacon grease is great. Butter, you can do it with butter. A lot of times I'll use butter for something like a seafood gumbo maybe or certain dishes. But really a neutral oil is really just one of the best ways to do it. You get lots of flavor. Olive oil is not the best because it has a higher burn point, smoke point, and it'll burn much more easily. So the thing is, what you want to do with the roux, you want to continually stir. You can't let it sit at the bottom of the pot or it starts to burn. And you'll start to smell it. It smells a bit like burnt popcorn kind of. And it's not pleasant. It'll be acrid tasting and that translates to your gumbo. And you just don't want to eat it. The amount of time it takes to make the roux really depends on how dark you want your roux. You can spend just a few minutes and make a light blonde roux and some people enjoy that. But you really want a good dark roux to add lots of delicious flavor. I like to go more of a rich dark chocolate brown. But some people like to go even darker, more like the color of dark chocolate or coffee. And if you do that, it's a thinner roux. It will have more flavor, but it won't be as thick. And it really depends on how thick you want your final gumbo. All right, check it out guys. This has only been a few minutes. And make sure you're stirring constantly. Stir constantly. But one important note is, it's best to go by color, not by amount of time. I had somebody recently complain that I said it could take 20-30 minutes to become a color of peanut butter. It really just depends on your kitchen. She said, hey, mine turned in 11 minutes. She was using very high heat. But it could go quickly in your kitchen. Just depends on the amount of experience you have, the amount of heat. Just the main thing is, go by color and don't burn it. All right, check it out. It's been a few more minutes here. And you can see it's roughly the color of peanut butter, a good medium colored roux. And you can stop at this point if you wanted to. You're going to get a delicious gumbo. But I definitely want to go darker because I want more flavor, more richness. But funny story, one of the early classes I took down in New Orleans, learned how to make gumbo and etouffee and a number of dishes. The chef teaching the class was talking about making the roux and talking about the heat and how long a roux can take. And as he was cooking, I'm like, oh, yeah, you can tell he burned the roux. It was kind of funny. But also, not so much because you don't want to burn your roux. Again, go by color, not time. You want to get the color of the roux that you prefer. And it's totally up to you. It's your kitchen. If you want to stop now, you can stop now. Somebody's going to come along and say, that roux's not dark enough, man. There's always going to be somebody like that. And just tell them, hey, man, it's my kitchen. All right, take a look. You can see it's getting much darker. I'm going to go a little bit darker. I still prefer a darker roux here. But you can stop at this point if you wanted to. All right, guys, I have a nice, rich, dark chocolate brown color that I like. And this took me about 20 minutes or so. So next, we're going to add vegetables. This is the Holy Trinity. I've got onion, a medium-sized onion, or about a cup of chopped onion, and a bell pepper, green bell pepper, chopped, and a couple celery stalks, roughly a cup or so. And we're going to go ahead and stir this in. And this is the Cajun Holy Trinity of vegetables, kind of like the mirepoix in French cooking. It's going to add a big flavor base. So we're going to get this stirred together. And I'm just going to cook this down a few minutes to soften up the vegetables. And then we will continue. If you want to add a little extra heat, this is the time to do it. You can add some jalapeno along with the green bell pepper, and it'll add a little extra. All right, got this cooked down a bit. And next, we're going to add some garlic, some smashed or chopped garlic. I have about five large cloves, because I like a lot of garlic. But use as much as you like. And you don't need a lot of time, just 30 seconds or so to, of course, let the gorgeous garlic bloom, as Patty makes fun of me over there. She knows I like my blooming, gorgeous garlic. I do love it. All right, and Cajun seasoning. So this is my own personal Cajun seasoning blend. I have a recipe on the website and here on YouTube. Very easy to make, amazing. And I'm going to add a couple tablespoons. And this is really one of those things to taste. If you want a little more, you can. It's not meant to be a hot seasoning. It's just a powerful, big flavor seasoning. Although, I do like to add extra cayenne to mine. And even sometimes a little ghost chili flake, just to add that extra. But you don't have to go that crazy. And you can add other spices at this time, if you want a little chili flake, a little extra cayenne. But I got everything right there for me. Oh, don't forget your salt. You could add salt to your blend if you want to. But a lot of times I make my blends without salt, so that I can add salt. Salt to taste. And now I have six cups of chicken broth. And we're going to stir it in slowly, so that it gets nicely incorporated. All right, stir it all together here. And I'm going to go ahead and add back our cooked chicken and rendered sausage. All right, stir it all together. And it's not very thick right now. But as it simmers, it's going to get nice and thick for you. It's going to be nice and delicious. All right, I got this stirred together. I want to bring it to a quick boil. All right, while I'm waiting for this to come to a boil, I did forget to mention, you can also add okra when you add the Cajun seasoning blend. Add a cup of chopped okra. Okra is very popular with gumbos. It's kind of polarizing. Some people love it. Some people hate it. That's really up to you. It's totally a personal choice. We actually like it a lot. And I put it as an optional ingredient in our recipe. But it's up to you. It thickens the gumbo a little bit more. And it's delicious. All right, it's starting to good simmer here, some good activity. So go ahead and reduce the heat. And we're going to add three bay leaves. And I'm going to go ahead and cover. We're going to partially cover it to let a little bit of steam escape if it needs to. And we're going to simmer it for at least one hour. You can definitely go longer. Probably a good one and a half, two hours. Even longer, up to three hours. Gumbo just gets better as it simmers and goes. If it starts to dry out a little too much, you can add a little more liquid or stock to it. But I like to go a good couple hours. We'll check it, taste it, see if it needs longer. But all right, we'll come back in a couple hours and check it out. All right, it's been a couple hours. Check it out, guys. Oh, yes. Seriously, I'm going to turn it off heat here. Gumbo. Smells amazing in here. Look at this. Oh, yeah, it's beautiful. Beautiful gumbo. So at this point, you can serve it up, or it's even better the next day if you wanted to cool it off, put it in the fridge, and reheat it for the next day. All those flavors meld even more, but it's good to go. I can smell it. But first, let's talk about serving. You can serve your gumbo into a bowl all by itself, and it's absolutely delicious. I really love it over rice. Patty loves it over rice. It's a really great combination. In some parts of Louisiana, they serve with potato salad on the side. So that's actually a really interesting matchup with your gumbo. But hey, I hope you love the gumbo. So let's talk about storage. Gumbo will last for up to five days in the refrigerator in a sealed container. Just cool it off enough, transfer it to the container, seal it up, refrigerate. When you want to enjoy it again, just reheat it gently on the stovetop. Comes out perfect. It also freezes perfectly. I often will make big batches for me and Patty. We'll have the meal that night, and then I freeze the rest, so we can enjoy it again in a month or two. Just put it into a nice freezer container, and you can thaw it. When you're ready to enjoy it again, heat it up, and boom, gumbo. All right, definitely time for the taste. I'm going to give you some sausage. It's hot, hot. It is absolute perfection every single time. Gumbo, baby. I love it. That's it, my friends. That's how you make this amazing chicken and sausage gumbo. You can stir in a little filet powder if you want to thicken it off a little bit. You can stir in some fresh herbs. I mean, there's a few ways you can play. Extra hot sauce, please, for me. You know you got to have that. So hey, I'd love to hear what you think of the recipe in the comments below. And I definitely hope you'll come check me out at chilipeppermadness.com, where I've got more than 1,000 more spicy recipes waiting just for you. So all right, I hope to see you in the kitchen next time. Mike from Chili Pepper Madness. Bye.