Monday Munchies: Shrimp Gumbo

Mr. Glitter Tart had a hankering for Gumbo last week.  I've never made Gumbo so it was off to the internet to search out the best recipe. We decided on an Alton Brown, Mr. Glitter Tart's favorite food network chef.

 

But when I got into the cooking process I realized that I wasn't following his recipe at all.  I did however make my roux the way he suggested. I say make, not the same ingredients.

 

For my roux:

4 oz butter

4 oz flour

 

Place the butter and flour into a 5 to 6-quart cast iron Dutch oven and whisk together to combine. Place on the middle shelf of the oven, uncovered, and bake for 1 1/2 hours, whisking 2 to 3 times throughout the cooking process.

This is the color of my roux at the end of the cooking time.

 

Gumbo Ingredients:

• 2 pounds shrimp (I had to use frozen it's all that was available) 
• 2 quarts chicken broth
• 1 cup diced onion
• 1/2 cup diced celery
• 1/2 cup diced green peppers
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 1/2 cup peeled, seeded and chopped tomato
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt (I didn't need this because my chicken stock was homemade)
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 pound andouille sausage, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 1 pound okra cut into bite sized pieces



Once the roux is done, remove it from the oven and set over medium-high heat. Add the onions, celery, green peppers and garlic and cook, moving constantly for 7 to 8 minutes or until the onions begin to turn translucent. Add the tomatoes, salt, black pepper, thyme, cayenne pepper, and bay leaves and stir to combine. Gradually add the broth while whisking continually. Decrease the heat to low, cover and cook for 35 minutes. Add the shrimp and sausage and stir to combine.  Cover and let cook on low for a while, I did about 2 hours . Turn heat up and add the okra, cook for about 30 minutes. Serve over rice.

 

Mr. Glitter Tart 5 stars

Me 4 1/2 stars (a bit salty for me)

Kudzu 4 stars

Stinkabeth did not eat it, took one look at it and decided "ewww"

 

So what have you been cooking?

Monday Munchies: Beef Braciole from Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever

Cookbooks, we all have them, I seem to have an abundance of them.  This picture is only half of the shelf and I have lots more squirreled around the house.  So I thought I might try to whittle them down by actually trying the recipes inside.  Of course one recipe isn't going to determine the fate of the entire book but I have to start somewhere.  I hope for the next year to be able to offer you some insight into these books so you can decide if it is right for you.  And also some tips and hints that I use, along with my mess ups.

For Christmas my fabulous sister gave me Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever and I dove right into this one.  With two small girls crock pot meals are a god send.

The first recipe I tried was

Beef Braciole

My husband and I gave it 4 stars

Stinkabeth (4 yrs old) gave it 3

and Kudzo (7 yrs old) 1 (but she doesn't like tomatoes)

 

Ease:

This was not a throw it in the crock pot and hit go.  There was a lot of prep work (you can see some in the image above) but it was well worth it.  The filling had to be made, the meat had to be cut, then assembled and lastly seared.  Then the veggies and spices needed sautéing. After all that was done it finally went into the crock pot.

 

Outcome:

Some of my rolls fell apart and they were very difficult to get out of my crock pot so presentation was a complete failure. 

 

The recipe says it makes 8 servings.  For us it made more than that, we ate it for an entire week!

 

Notes:

I doubled the nutmeg for two reasons.  1.  We tend to like more flavorful dishes 2. My nutmeg was old.  The extra nutmeg did not over power the dish.