eke out fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Aug 24, 2023

Discussion Quorum fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Aug 24, 2023

• Water - Easy but about what you'd expect. Lacking in dimension and flavor. Watery, salty gumbo. But always there. So if you need to add some volume to your gumbo, it works. But don't overdo it.
  
• Knorr's bouillon - Lasts forever. You can get shrimp or fish cubes from Asian or Latin markets if you can't find it at your supermarket. Again, pretty one-dimensional but better than plain water.
  
• Boxed or canned stock - Good workhorse and easy to find. Two boxes of this will make a good base for gumbo. Use stock, not broth--broth is usually saltier. "Bone broth" has come on the market in the last few years and is very good, but it's also stupid expensive. Just make your own.
  

• Three carcasses chicken bones and meat
  
• One or two onions, cut in 1/8ths
  
• A few celery ribs, chopped up. Use the leafy parts if you have them
  
• 2 carrots chopped up
  
• Green onions
  
• 1 head garlic cut in half
  
• 10-12 black peppercorns
  
• Bunch thyme
  
• Handful of parsley
  
• Couple bay leaves
  

• about a gallon bag filled with bones/shells/heads
  
• One or two onions, cut in 1/8ths
  
• A few celery ribs, chopped up. Use the leafy parts if you have them
  
• 2 carrots chopped up
  
• Green onions
  
• 1 head garlic, cut in half
  
• 10-12 black peppercorns
  
• Bunch thyme
  
• Handful of parsley
  
• Couple bay leaves
  
• about a cup dry white wine
  
• 2 lemons sliced up
  

• Shrimp and andouille—this is the go to for me, especially with okra. They all go great together. Stick with two proteins and you’ll never go wrong.
  
• Chicken, andouille, sausage—I like this too. I use a whole chicken for this, but usually debone it and take off the skin, otherwise you get a ton of fat you have to skim off the top. Heartier gumbo but less sweet without shrimp. You can swap out turkey or dock for the chicken.
  
• Shrimp, crab, andouille—When I make “seafood gumbo” it’s usually this. I put gumbo crabs in while it cooks and pull them out before eating, and add crabmeat separately. Claw meat is the best value for this. Lump is luxury. Either way, add crabmeat toward the very end so it doesn’t just disintegrate (assuming it’s cooked). I’ve also used softshell crabs, and they added flavor to the liquid but weren’t great to eat.
  
• Shrimp, chicken, andouille – getting crowded but still manageable. The mix of seafood and chicken is fine but I usually like to keep them separate.
  
• Seafood (shrimp, crab, oyster, bay scallops, sometimes even fish)—just too much going on here in my opinion. I won’t turn my nose up at it of course.
  
• Shrimp, chicken, andouille/sausage, crab—I think things get confused. The chicken and sausage overpower the crabmeat. If you use shellfish stock, you don’t really taste it. If you use chicken stock, it makes the crabmeat taste like chicken.

• Butter - Don't use this. It'll burn. Only use butter for blonde roux.
  
• Lard - This works great if you can find it. It liquefies and is easy to work with. Probably want to avoid using high heat--medium only.
  
• Bacon grease - you can filter out rendered fat from bacon and use that. It's flavorful and works okay. I find it more likely to burn or otherwise act weird, so I've stopped using it.
  
• Olive oil – Apparently refined olive oil has a high smoke point but virgin olive oil isn’t good for this. I know Justin Wilson uses it in some of his videos but his gumbo looks like poo poo and I've never heard of anyone else ever doing this. Don't bother.
  
• Vegetable oil - Works fine. High smoke point better. Grapeseed, canola. Basic vegetable oil work fine.
  

• At moderately high heat, it should take you about 20 minutes to get to a decent brown. If you do a lower/medium heat, 30-45. Have a couple beers.
  
• You can always adjust the heat as you go. If you need to take a break from stirring or you think it’s getting close to done, turn it down. There’s a tight window between perfect and burned, and if you slow down the heat you can open the window up a bit.
  
• If you think you burned the roux, start over before you add the stock. Oil and flour are cheap and you probably have a bunch of it. Stock is valuable and limited.
  
• Popcorn smell is normal.
  
• A silicone spatula is a nice tool to get roux down off the sides of the pot. Depending on how much flour you use, the texture will be anywhere from a thick viscous liquid to kind of like wet sand. Regardless, once you add the vegetables their water will thicken things up.
  
• Roux keeps cooking in a hot pan even after you turn it off, so don’t be shy about stopping before you get too dark.
  
• Many recipes for chicken gumbo will have you brown the chicken and render its fat in the same pan you then use for roux. These recipes almost always have you season the chicken with creole seasoning or salt & pepper beforehand. This is well and good but when you go to make the roux it will be full of the browned bits and seasoning, which tend to burn in the roux. So I will brown the chicken, deglaze it, and reserve the fond to add to the gumbo later. I find making the roux much easier to manage when it’s just flour and fat.
  
• Temperature of stock and roux—for best results, just make sure everything is the same temperature. If your roux is lava, stock must be at a rolling boil. If you add cold or even room temp stock to hot roux, results will be underwhelming.
  
• Adding stock to the roux – this requires preparing the roux in the pot you will use for the gumbo. I used to do it exclusively like this, adding a ladleful of boiling stock to the roux and whisking it in so it incorporates before adding the next.
  
• Adding roux to the stock – this allows you to make the roux in whatever pan you want, and then spooning it into the boiling stock. After trying it out both ways, I almost always do it like this now and the results are almost always perfect.
  
• When to add vegetables – Many ways to do this. My preferred way is to add the onions and bell peppers to the roux when it’s fairly brown, like a penny. They will cook in the roux, which will continue to brown. When it’s a nice dark brown, add garlic and celery and cook a bit longer on lower heat.
  I don’t see much difference between only cooking the onions vs cooking onions and peppers. Also I’ve added a hatch or poblano pepper or two and it was a nice subtle change.
  Some people saute the vegetables separately, then add them after adding the stock. That seems fine.