Seeking gumbo advice

A

AvengeKingTut

25+ Posts
OK, so I made a chicken and sausage gumbo the other day. It was very good, but was noticeably lacking chunks of stuff that you can sink your teeth into, for lack of a better phrase. The reason is that the recipe called for lots of okra, but I am not a big fan so left it out.

So, my question is, are there any suggested "chunky" substitutes for okra in gumbo? Or should I just increase the amount of chicken and sausage in the recipe to make up for leaving the okra out?
 
Add some shrimp. Also, you can half the sausage before you slice it, so that there's twice as many pieces, but they're a little smaller.
 
Chunks in my most recent gumbo:

shrimp
andouille (cut in rounds, then in half)
celery (I cut my celery kind of big, like 1/2 inch dice, for just that reason)
bell pepper (also big cuts)

And of course, the rest of the usual suspects (onion, garlic, etc.).

When I do a duck gumbo (similar to yours), I put in a LOT of meat. Voila -- chunks.
 
how big were the chicken parts? I like having to bite off pieces of the chicken while i eat it.


also while i love adding stuff like crawfish and shrimp. Sometimes it is better to just have a basic chicken and sausage gumbo like the OP said...


edit: oh and im a full blooded coonass if that makes my opinion any more (or less) valid
smile.gif
 
I agree with all of those, but can't understand who doesn't like okra.... man I find it one of the most tasty veggies around.
Shrimp is a great answer for me, as well as sausage.
 
Acid gets rid of the slime in okra.

I always cook the okra down before I put it in the gumbo. You can add a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to the okra while cooking it down, and it won't be slimy. Tomatoes in the gumbo would do the same thing.
 
Actually, salonghorn, the tomatoes in gumbo in NO is not so much a citified thing as it is a creole vs. cajun thing. The reason that New Orleans cooking and traditional Cajun cooking (think Lafayette) aren't exactly the same has much to do with the different cultures and ethnicities that developed the cuisines.

Cajun country is mostly just that -- cajun french, with a significant black influence in some cases. Creole cooking, on the other hand, is more of a hodge-podge that often happens in a port city. Plenty of cajun, and black, but also spanish, and even italian (lotsa Sicilians in the last 150 years), among others.

Didn't mean to take this on a tangent, and it's certainly not an argument with anybody. I just find the parallels between cuisines and history and ethnography to be fascinating. We eat the way we do largely because of who we are, and who we were. That's pretty cool.
 
So, if I don't care for stewed tomato (and I really don't), I should avoid creole in favor of cajun?

I actually like slimy okra very much, btw. My wife will not cook okra, lima beans or brussel sprouts. I like them all and my kids will never know if they do. Well, not while my wife goes to the store for them. I do plenty of cooking, but I am never in charge of anything that is green so we never have them.

She also thinks that "salad" is good for you because it is green. As far as I'm concerned, it's just an excuse to taste a dressing.
 
Acid in general will kill the slime. Vinegar will work, so will tomatoes, those have been mentioned, but lemon juice will also work. If you don't like tomatoes, or want to put them in, I suggest lemon juice as the best alternative to cutting the slime out.
 
Thanks, Pip -- it's been a long time since I've done any "homework" on the subject. One of the things I always loved about NO was that it was a true "gumbo" of cultures and influences.

NO food and culture wouldn't be what it is without the cajuns, creoles, africans, sicilians, even the croatians (anyone remember Uglesich's?)

Such a crossover of food and ethnography can be done with regard to Texas barbecue (east Texas black influenced? Central Texas German influenced? West Texas cowboy influenced? South Texas Mexican influenced?), and even mexican cooking (interior mexican, northern mexican, tex-mex, anglicized-mex, etc).

It's not just "we are what we eat" -- it's also "we are what we cook."
 
And . . . there it is. Surprised it took this long.

I will cut to the final point of the previous posts on that subject. Go to the Airline Motors restaurant in La Place. Tell them that their oyster andouille gumbo, because it does not contain okra, is not actually gumbo.

Make sure to invite the rest of us as spectators -- we love to watch coonasses whoop ***.

Also, you could actually do the FULL homework, even a few minutes of which would show you that there are plenty of damned authentic gumbos made without okra. See, e.g., The Link

Or, see gumbo ya ya -- a chicken and sausage gumbo that is a La. Christmas tradition. It has no okra -- wonder why? Could it be that it's a winter gumbo, and okra is a summer crop?

Me hopes that Pevo is just a troll. Me also hopes that I learn to resist such bait in the future. But today, I is weak.
 
Brisket, don't you think I did a great job of holding my tongue on the okra issue. I agree that it has been beaten to death on Rusty's. I have posted several times without mentioning that line. I found it hilarious once it got mentioned. Pevo did it in such a classis manner. Perfect.
 
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