Gumbo is one of my all-time favorite dishes. Dishing out something from a pot of gumbo is always exciting because it doesn’t matter which angle you go, you will always get something good 🙂
Gumbo is sort of a stew that was originated in Louisiana with some French influence in it. Gumbo is typically made of roux (a french base made of flour and fat), meat and/or shellfish or even alligator meats (I won’t be surprised with Louisiana’s dish) and vegetables such as tomatoes, celery and okra.
The best thing about preparing a gumbo dish is that you are not “confined” to whatever ingredients I listed here, you can swap them as you please. You can make it as fancy as you can or as economical as you can, and trust me, it will still be satisfying at the end of the meal. We did!
SURF AND TURF GUMBO
Ingredients
- 8-10 large , raw shrimp preferably shell-on
- Olive oil
- 10 oz spicy cured sausage , sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
- 6 cups chicken broth
- 2 ½ heaping Tbsp of all-purpose flour
- 1 small onion , peeled and diced
- 2 celery stalks , trimmed and diced
- 2 bay leaves
- A small bunch of thyme , leaves picked
- 4 cloves garlic , peeled and minced
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp Tabasco sauce
- 4 oz okra , sliced into rounds
- 3 oz picked crabmeat , plus 4 claws (if you can get hold of them)
- 10-15 mussels
- 7 oz diced tomatoes
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- A small bunch of fresh curly parsley
Instructions
- If you've got shells on your shrimp, peel them and keep the heads and shells aside for your broth. Heat a large saucepan over a medium to high heat and add a lug of olive oil and your sliced sausages. Let them get some nice color. While that's happening, put a large stock pot on a high heat, add another lug of olive oil, and fry any shrimp heads and shells for about 5 minutes. Use a rolling pin to bash them up in the pot and release all their lovely flavors, then pour in your chicken broth, bring to a boil, and leave to simmer for 20 minutes
- Move your cooked sausages to a plate and add the flour to the fat left behind in the pan. Turn the heat down to low and stir. You want the roux to have a semi-loose, doughy consistency, so add a splash of olive oil if there isn't a lot of fat (Peanut butter color is a good starting point, but you cant take it even darker if you prefer by stirring and cooking it for another 20 to 30 minutes)
- After about 2 minutes, add a splash of olive oil to the roux along with the onion, bell peppers, and celery. Stir and cook for about 5 minutes, then scrunch up your bay leaves to help bring out their flavors and stir these into the vegetable mixture with the thyme leaves. Fry for 5 minutes, then add your garlic, cayenne, Tabasco, and the okra, which will act as a brilliant thickening agent. Give it all a good stir and fry for a couple of minutes
- At this point, add your broth. If you've got shrimp shells in there, pour it through a large strainer. Stir and bring everything up to a boil. Add your crab claws, if using, and canned tomatoes and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in your cooked sausages, peeled shrimp, mussels and crabmeat, and leave on a medium heat to tick away for another 5 minutes
- Have a taste and add salt and pepper and a good squeeze of lemon juice if you think it needs it. Keep tasting and seasoning until it's got some kick. Roughly chop the parsley and sprinkle into your gumbo. This is lovely served in bowls over some rice, but you can also put that wonderful big pot right in the middle of the table and let everything go fishing. What a celebration
