Our Best-Ever Homemade Gumbo Will Transport You Straight To Louisiana
Our best-ever gumbo recipe features shrimp and sausage and starts off with an extremely flavorful roux (the key to the best possible gumbo).
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00:00 Hey everybody, it's Justin here
00:01 in the Delish Kitchen studios.
00:03 When I was like eight or nine years old,
00:04 I had gumbo for the first time
00:05 and it became one of those dishes
00:07 that kind of just like opens up what food can be for me.
00:10 Like the level of complexity and balance
00:13 that could live within this like brown bowl of stew
00:16 that looks so unassuming was mind blowing to me.
00:19 It's truly like one of my top 10 favorite foods
00:22 and I'm gonna make it to you today.
00:23 Let's do this.
00:24 On this cutting board,
00:25 we have the backbones of Cajun and Cretole cooking.
00:27 You may have heard of the mirepoix in French cooking,
00:30 that like classic base of ingredients like a sofrito
00:33 that is onions, carrots, and celery.
00:35 And here we still have that celery and those onions,
00:38 but we swap out the carrots for bell peppers
00:40 because you can find them locally in Louisiana
00:42 and they're really delicious.
00:43 The other thing that's really important in this gumbo
00:45 is andouille sausage.
00:47 You could probably get away with swapping it for kielbasa
00:50 if you absolutely need to,
00:51 but I think that the little bit of smoke and heat
00:53 that you get from this is pretty intrinsic to gumbo
00:55 and to a lot of Cajun and Creole food.
00:57 We also have a little bit of garlic
00:58 because what is any good savory dish without garlic?
01:01 It's truly one of my favorite vegetables.
01:02 So we're gonna dice all this up.
01:04 The onion, give a nice chop.
01:06 The celery, the bell pepper.
01:08 Mince up the garlic nice and fine.
01:10 And then you're gonna slice up the sausage
01:12 into little coins.
01:14 Now it's time to the main event.
01:15 Truly the thing that if you don't have this,
01:17 you don't have gumbo.
01:18 We're gonna be making a roux.
01:19 This isn't that light golden brown roux
01:21 that you'd see if you're making a bechamel
01:23 or some French sauce.
01:24 This is a roux that's gonna take time.
01:26 It's gonna develop color.
01:27 You gotta go slow 'cause roux can burn.
01:29 Basically just cooking flour in fat.
01:31 And if you've seen how easily baked goods can burn,
01:34 it can be even, even easier over direct heat like this.
01:36 You're gonna get a Dutch oven
01:37 or some heavy bottom pot over low heat.
01:40 Then you're gonna add your butter
01:42 and get it melted until it's nice and bubbly.
01:44 Then you're gonna slowly incorporate that flour,
01:46 sprinkling a little bit,
01:47 whisking in so we don't have any lumps.
01:49 My main tips for not burning roux is go low and slow.
01:52 Truly the lower the temp, the better.
01:54 As you get more experience, you can raise that heat up,
01:56 but low heat is totally fine.
01:58 Secondly, you wanna be adding your flour really gradually.
02:01 That's to make sure that there are no lumps
02:02 in the final product.
02:04 And third, do not leave the stove.
02:05 You should be over this pot.
02:06 It's only gonna take like 10 to 12 minutes.
02:08 It's worth the patience
02:09 and it's worth having your eyes on it,
02:11 stirring it constantly.
02:12 Once it's all incorporated,
02:13 we're gonna be standing here whisking
02:14 for about like 10 to 12 minutes.
02:16 There are multiple stages of roux color for cooking.
02:20 There can be like a red color or like a caramelly look
02:24 or like dark brick red.
02:26 For this, we're looking for the color of like dark caramel
02:28 or like almost milk chocolate.
02:30 When you develop color and the flavors of a roux like that,
02:33 you're toasting the grains.
02:35 That's not just gonna thicken your soup,
02:36 but it's gonna flavor it.
02:37 It's super rich, buttery,
02:40 and truly like you cannot make gumbo without doing this.
02:43 It is a little difficult.
02:44 You might burn it once or twice,
02:46 but what's great is butter and flour
02:47 are not the most expensive ingredients.
02:49 So you can just start again.
02:50 This is looking pretty good.
02:51 We want that deep color.
02:53 Once you reach your desired consistency and that darkness,
02:57 we're gonna go in with all of our veg.
02:59 So our onion, bell pepper, celery,
03:02 and we're gonna move that all around pretty quickly
03:04 so that we get nice, even distribution
03:06 of the roux over everything.
03:07 And at this point,
03:08 you don't have to worry as much about it burning
03:09 because now you're introducing other elements
03:12 as well as moisture that will keep the roux from burning.
03:14 It smells absolutely incredible here.
03:16 Truly, I would eat just this.
03:18 I really would, but there's more to come.
03:20 So we're gonna go in with our sausage, garlic,
03:24 and some Cajun seasoning,
03:26 as well as a big, heavy pinch of salt and pepper.
03:28 Get that nice and incorporated, toss it around.
03:30 Then we're gonna go in with some chicken stock,
03:33 some fire roasted tomatoes.
03:35 Cajun and Creole gumbo tend to differ.
03:37 Cajun is usually meat-based and does not have tomatoes.
03:39 Creole is usually seafood-based,
03:41 specifically shellfish, and in this case, shrimp,
03:43 and that usually does have tomatoes.
03:45 And we use these fire roasted tomatoes.
03:48 They just add a little bit more flavor
03:49 that like vague, like it's been over a char grill.
03:52 Don't need to use them, but I like 'em.
03:54 Then we're gonna add a cutie little bay leaf
03:55 and bring it up to a boil.
03:56 Once we're at a boil, we're gonna reduce the heat to low
03:58 and simmer for about an hour.
04:00 Really good time to let all the flavors melt
04:02 and let this gumbo develop.
04:04 This looks and smells truly incredible,
04:06 and I would wanna eat it right now.
04:08 It's nice and thick from the roux,
04:09 all the flavors have developed over the last hour,
04:12 but we're not done.
04:13 We still have to add some shrimpies.
04:15 We're gonna add these about six minutes, five minutes
04:18 before the end of the cook time.
04:19 They should literally just cook from the residual heat
04:21 of the simmering gumbo.
04:23 We want them to be pink, opaque, and not overcooked,
04:26 so do not go too far with them, all right?
04:28 We're gonna slice up some scallion
04:29 and add it just before we serve it to the pot
04:31 so we have that like nice crunch of an onion bite.
04:34 Then you're gonna serve over rice.
04:36 That's basically like mandatory with gumbo.
04:38 You want something to suck up all of that liquid.
04:41 And then you can add a little bit more
04:42 of that scallion green thinly sliced over top.
04:45 I love gumbo so much.
04:47 I'm not even kidding, it truly made me like wanna cook
04:49 and eat food for a living.
04:52 I'm gonna take a little bit of a shrimpy,
04:54 a little bit of a sausage man, some veg.
04:56 It's all working in tandem.
05:03 The roux thickened things up, got it nice and rich.
05:06 The andouille adds a touch of heat, smokiness.
05:09 The shrimp are sweet and perfectly cooked.
05:11 And all that veg is adding all of its beautiful goodness,
05:14 and I'm glad we let it cook for an hour
05:16 because you can taste every ounce of flavor in this.
05:19 This is definition stick to your ribs cooking.
05:22 So for more comfort food recipes just like this one,
05:25 stick around here on delish.com.
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