Chicken and andouille gumbo

Name: Chicken and andouille gumbo
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 2 h 45 min
Total time: 3 h 15 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 tbsp neutral oil, for the sausage; 450 g andouille sausage, sliced 1 cm thick; 180 ml neutral oil (such as vegetable, peanut or canola), for the roux; 125 g plain flour; 2 onions (about 300 g), finely diced; 3 celery sticks (about 150 g), finely diced; 1 large green bell pepper (about 200 g), finely diced; 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped; 1.2 kg bone-in chicken thighs (about 8), skin pulled off; 1½ tsp fine sea salt, plus more to taste; 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper; 1 tsp dried thyme; ½–1 tsp cayenne pepper; 2 bay leaves; 2.5 l chicken stock, warmed; 400 g long-grain white rice; 700 ml water; ½ tsp fine sea salt; 4 spring onions, thinly sliced; 3 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley; 1 tbsp filé powder (optional); Louisiana-style hot sauce, to serve

A roux stirred patiently to the colour of chocolate, the holy trinity, smoky andouille and tender chicken thighs, ladled over white rice. Louisiana's great stew, Cajun-style.

By the Soupmap Culinary Team

Prep: 25 min
Cook: 2 hr 45 min
Total: 3 hr 15 min
Effort: Takes some care
Serves: 8

Broth richness 9/10

Spice 4/10

Comfort 8/10

Ratings by the Soupmap Culinary Team, not readers.

Dairy-free

Photo: HarshLight, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gumbo is Louisiana's great stew-soup, and this is the Cajun version: Cajun cooking is the food of rural south Louisiana's communities of French-speaking Acadian descent. Chicken and smoky sausage simmer in a dark, brothy gravy that's ladled over rice. It's all built on a roux, flour cooked in fat, stirred over steady heat until it turns the colour of milk chocolate or darker and smells of toasted nuts. That colour is the flavour. A dark roux thickens far less than a pale one, so it's there mostly for its roasted depth.

Then comes the holy trinity, Louisiana's name for the onion, celery and green pepper at the base of so much of its cooking, and andouille, a coarse, heavily smoked pork sausage. Filé, ground dried sassafras leaves, is an optional finish, stirred in off the heat.

The common mistake is rushing the roux. Turn the heat up and it scorches; walk away and it burns, and there's no saving it either way. Put on long sleeves, chop everything before you start and give it your full attention. There's more on the dish's tangled history in our journal piece.

Method

Get ready

Chop the onions, celery, green pepper and garlic before you start and keep them by the stove: once the roux is dark you'll need them fast. Season the chicken thighs all over with 1/2 tsp of the salt and 1/2 tsp of the black pepper.

Brown the sausage

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large heavy pot (6–7 l, ideally cast iron or an enamelled casserole) over medium heat. Add the andouille and cook, stirring now and then, until browned at the edges and some of its fat has rendered, 5–7 minutes. Lift it out with a slotted spoon and set it aside, leaving the fat in the pot.

Make the roux

Add the 180 ml oil to the pot and whisk in the flour until smooth. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a flat-edged wooden spoon or spatula and scraping the whole base and the corners of the pot; it will go blond, then peanut-butter brown at around 20 minutes. Keep going until it's the colour of milk chocolate and smells deeply toasty, 30–45 minutes in all, or to dark chocolate, up to 1 hour. If you see black flecks or it smells acrid, it has burnt: let it cool completely, discard it and start again.
As soon as it reaches the colour you want, add the onions, celery and green pepper, standing back as they hiss and steam. Stir constantly for the first minute, then often, until the vegetables are soft, 8–10 minutes. Stir in the garlic, thyme, cayenne (start with 1/2 tsp), the remaining 1/2 tsp black pepper and 1 tsp salt, and cook for 1 minute.

Simmer

Pour in the warm stock a ladleful at a time for the first litre, stirring until each addition is smooth, then add the rest. Add the bay leaves, the browned andouille and the chicken thighs, bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then turn the heat down to low.
Simmer, uncovered and stirring now and then, until the chicken is very tender and pulls easily from the bone, about 1 hour. Skim off the oil that rises to the surface as you go; a dark roux sheds a lot of it.
Meanwhile, cook the rice. Rinse it in a sieve until the water runs clear, put it in a saucepan with the 700 ml water and 1/2 tsp salt and bring to a boil. Cover, turn the heat to its lowest and cook for 15 minutes, then leave it covered off the heat for 10 minutes and fluff it with a fork.
Lift the chicken out onto a board, pull the meat into large shreds and discard the bones. Return the meat to the pot and simmer for 15 minutes more.

Finish and serve

Take out the bay leaves. Taste and adjust with salt, black pepper and cayenne: it should be savoury and gently peppery, with a long, toasty finish. Stir in most of the spring onions and parsley.
If you're using filé, take the pot off the heat and stir it in just before serving, or let everyone sprinkle about 1/2 tsp over their own bowl. Don't let the gumbo boil once the filé is in.
Put a scoop of rice in each bowl, ladle the gumbo around it and scatter with the rest of the spring onions and parsley. Pass the hot sauce at the table.

Swaps

Cooking for coeliac disease or an allergy? Check every label: the notes below say which ones matter.

Gluten-free

Make the roux with 125 g white rice flour, or a plain flour blend labelled gluten-free, in place of the wheat flour, and cook it exactly as in step 3, watching the colour and smell. The flavour is very close; the gravy can be a touch less silky.
Check the andouille, stock, hot sauce and filé: some sausages contain wheat-based fillers, and stock cubes and some cartons contain wheat or barley. The rice is gluten-free.

Plant-based

Leave out the chicken and andouille and use vegetable stock (check the label). In step 2, brown 400 g torn oyster mushrooms in 2 tbsp oil until golden, 8–10 minutes, and return them with the stock. Add 250 g sliced okra with the trinity for body (and skip the filé), and 1 tsp sweet smoked paprika with the thyme for smokiness. Simmer for 45 minutes and skip step 8.
The oil roux, trinity and seasonings are already vegan. Plant-based smoked sausages can stand in for the andouille, but many are made from wheat gluten. It's a different gumbo, still deep and toasty, without the meaty richness.

High-protein

Already over 30 g protein a bowl from the chicken and andouille. For more, add 500 g peeled raw prawns for the last 4–5 minutes of step 8, just until pink and firm: about 12 g more per bowl.
Or add 2 more chicken thighs with the others (about 5 g more per bowl), or a halved hard-boiled egg in each bowl (about 6 g).

Tips

Treat hot roux with respect. It's far hotter than boiling water and it sticks to skin, so a splash burns badly. Wear long sleeves, use a long-handled spoon, keep children and pets out of the kitchen and never taste it from the pot.
Medium heat, a flat spoon and oil, not butter. A straight-edged spatula scrapes the whole base as you stir, so no patch of flour sits still long enough to scorch. Butter's milk solids burn long before the roux gets dark, while a neutral oil lets you take it all the way. If you're new to this, use medium-low: it takes longer, but you have more time to react.
The trinity is your brake. Cold, wet vegetables drop the temperature of the roux at once and stop it browning, which is why they need to be chopped and waiting before it reaches its colour.
Skim the oil. As the gumbo simmers, some of the roux's oil floats free. Skim most of it off and the gumbo tastes rich rather than greasy.
Filé goes in off the heat. It thickens and adds an earthy, herbal note, but boiled it turns stringy. Add it only to what you'll eat now, or at the table.
Substitutes. If you can't find andouille, any well-smoked pork sausage, such as kielbasa, works with an extra pinch of cayenne. If you can't find filé, leave it out: the gumbo is complete without it.

Make ahead and storage

Gumbo is better the next day. Cool it quickly in shallow containers and refrigerate within 2 hours; it keeps for 4 days, or 3 months in the freezer. Leave the filé out of any you plan to keep, and store the gumbo without rice.
Cook rice fresh if you can. Cool any leftover rice within 1 hour, refrigerate it, eat it within 1 day and reheat it until steaming hot all the way through.
You can make a plain roux (just the oil and flour) ahead: cool it, keep it in a jar in the fridge for up to 2 weeks and stir it back together before using.

Variations

Oven roux (shortcut): whisk the oil and flour together in an ovenproof pot and bake at 175 °C (350 °F), stirring every 20–30 minutes, until milk-chocolate brown, 1 1/2–2 hours. It needs far less stirring and is hard to burn; brown the sausage in a separate pan.
With okra: add 250 g sliced okra with the trinity. It thickens the gumbo in its own way, and most cooks use either okra or filé, not both.
Seafood gumbo: leave out the chicken and andouille, make the roux and trinity as above, add seafood or chicken stock and simmer for 45 minutes. Add 750 g peeled raw prawns (shrimp) for the last 4–5 minutes, just until pink and firm.

Reviews & cooks' tips

Reviews and tips from people who've cooked this appear here.