Nah, Chris I'm not fooling with stuffing anymore casing. Thanks for the link there.
Bob there's probably 1000 ways to make Gumbo. I think mine's pretty good and I never brown my meat. My brother browns his meat; he's lived in South Louisiana all his life and his gumbo is pretty bad, mainly because he always burns his Roux and he puts in too much water. The most important thing is the Roux. If you have your Roux you've got most of it done. You can buy Roux. My wife does that sometimes when she's in a hurry but it's cheating. She uses Tony Chachere's. It's pretty good really.
To make my Roux first off I chop up a half a onion, half a bell pepper, half a clove of garlic. I put in enough cooking oil to comfortably cover the bottom of a skillet and then some. I start to heat the oil and before it gets hot I throw in the veggies. Once they're going pretty good and the onions are getting a brown edge to them and the oil is hot I put in some flour. Enough to thicken it up some so it's kind of a molasses consistency. Now here's the thing: You must not burn that flour not even a little or you will ruin the whole damn mess. You must stir it continuously with a spatula until it just begins to turn a LITTLE golden. Then shut the heat off and take the skillet off the burner or you will burn the Roux. Getting it just right is the key. If you mess up and don't brown it enough it will look a little funny but it will still taste good. Oh yeah towards the end of this browning process I put a great deal of cayenne pepper into the Roux, or if I have some whole peppers from my garden I put half of them in the Roux. Be careful with that if you're from up North.
Now put the cut up meat, sausage (Andouille if you can get it, any other if you can't) and another chopped up onion and bell pepper, and the other half garlic and onion chopped up of what you had left over from above, chop up some celery, half an apple, and to really be gumbo you must have some okra (gumbo is a West African word that means okra), and put all that in a great big gumbo pot. Throw the Roux in on top of everything else. Add just enough water so you can barely stir it. Not much water really. Bring to a boil. Once it boils put the top on the pot and just barely simmer it for at least 1 1/2 hrs or longer up to 3 hrs, stirring occaisionally. At this stage if some of it sticks to the bottom and burns it only adds to the flavor it won't screw it up. Usually I go 1 1/2 to 2 hrs. You can throw an egg in there if you want. I hold back the second half of the bell pepper from the Roux and little more celery and add that to the boil the last 30 minutes. When it's about done, add enough cayenne so that when you taste it your mouth burns as you exhale. About 1 minute prior to flame shutoff I add Gumbo fillet. Others say that is sacrilege as it should be added at the table. You definitely should not add it any earlier to the boil as there are volatile aromatic compounds that will be lost if you add it too early that add much to the flavor. I put little or no salt in my gumbo and have it on the table. It's easy to over salt and ruin it. Serve over rice.
Things that mess up gumbo: burnt roux, too much water, too much salt, tomatos, forgetting the sausage.
Bon Appetite.
Ed.
