Happy Thanksgiving from New Orleans!

In my family, chicken and sausage gumbo is often served as soon as the weather turns chilly (typically around Thanksgiving) and it is always served on Christmas Eve. We eat it over steaming hot rice, with a dollop of Grandma’s potato salad on the side. Since sharing recipes is the next best thing to fixing gumbo and potato salad for you, and since I’m eternally thankful for readers, I’m including both recipes in this blog.

Don’t worry – the recipes are easy! As you know if you’ve read my other blogs, writing novels and being a lawyer keep me pretty busy. While New Orleans-style gumbo can take hours and hours to prepare, I’ve streamlined prep time on this easy gumbo recipe.

Chicken And Sausage Gumbo

My favorite shortcut in this easy gumbo recipe (and other cooking) is actually an appliance — a slow cooker. I’m mildly obsessed with the slow cooker method, which gives dishes a richness that only comes from hours and hours of cooking. With additional shortcuts of using pre-made roux and pre-made chicken stock, the total prep time of this dish is about 20 minutes. Once the gumbo simmers for hours and hours in a slow cooker, the flavors blend together beautifully. No one will know that you made shortcuts in the beginning unless you tell them!

(Serves 10-12)

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo Ingredients:

• 1 Tablespoon Oil
• Celery: 2 Cups, Small Dice
• Onions: 3 Cups, Small Dice
• Green Bell Pepper: 2 Cups, Small Dice
• Garlic: 5 Cloves, Chopped Fine
• Chicken: 4 boneless, skinless breasts; 4 bone-in legs; 4 bone-in thighs
• Smoked Sausage: (2) 12-ounce links, chopped in bite-size pieces
• Savoie’s Old Fashioned Dark Roux: About 1.5 cups (more if you like a thicker gumbo)
• Salt-Free Chicken Stock (about 45 ounces, or one and a half 32-ounce cartons; the amount of stock depends on the size of your slow cooker)
• Cayenne Pepper: a few pinches
• Granulated Garlic: a few pinches
• Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper
• Fresh cooked rice
• Crystal Hot Sauce: a dash or more, depending on taste
• Green Onions: chopped
• Gumbo File: a sprinkling over each bowl

(and don’t forget to serve it with Grandma’s Potato Salad! (recipe below))

Directions:

1. Place the chicken in a colander in the sink. Rinse and pat dry. Season liberally with Freshly Ground Black Pepper, Salt, Granulated Garlic, and Cayenne Pepper. Set aside.
2. With the slow cooker on the “saute” feature, or on the stove if your slow cooker doesn’t have a saute feature, cook celery, onions, green pepper, and garlic in olive oil until soft and fragrant.
3. While vegetables are cooking, in a separate pot or a large microwave-safe bowl, boil 3 cups of chicken stock and add 1.5 cups of Savoie’s Roux to it. (I usually discard the oil that has separated at the top of the roux OR you can use the roux oil in place of olive oil to cook the vegetables). The consistency of the roux makes it hard to get out of the jar. I usually use a knife to “cut” it out. Be careful! Once the roux is in the hot stock it will soften; don’t worry if it doesn’t blend well – the remaining chunks will dissolve while the dish is slow cooking.
4. Switch the slow cooker to “slow cook” mode. Cook on “low” for 6-8 hours or “high” for 4 hours. Add chicken, roux mixture, and remaining stock. Leave at least 2 inches of space in the slow cooker so that accumulating liquid doesn’t cause overflow. Prior to serving, remove loose bones and chicken skin. Skim off extra grease. Add more salt and pepper if needed.
5. Serve over freshly cooked rice. Sprinkle with chopped green onions, a dash of crystal hot sauce, and a pinch of gumbo file.

A few extra notes: My slow cooker is a Cuisinart Multi-Cooker, 7 Quart, which has a brown/saute feature. Also, while chicken bones produce nice flavor, I don’t use bone-in chicken breasts because the breastbone has small pieces that fall apart in the slow cooking process and are difficult to remove.

In New Orleans, andouille sausage is often used with chicken and sausage gumbo. I experiment with different brands. If your area doesn’t have great local smokehouses that produce smoked sausage, Hillshire Farms smoked sausage works well and is generally available in grocery stores.

If you’d like to try a gumbo recipe without shortcuts, try this recipe for turkey and sausage gumbo from my Cajun friend, Wendy Dolan, the founder of GetOnline NOLA.

And finally…this is a really rich, holiday/cold weather dish. I’m not sure of calorie or carb count, or any other nutritional details, and I really don’t want to know, so please don’t tell me!

Grandma’s Potato Salad

While Grandma always peeled her potatoes before boiling them, I’m not good with knives and I’m too lazy to peel all the skin off the potatoes in advance. Plus, I like the taste of the skin, so I leave some of it on in the final dish. I also wait until after the potatoes are boiled to peel them – it’s easier that way, though Grandma always said the potatoes taste differently if they’re boiled with the skins intact.

(Serves 10-12)

• 3 lbs. red potatoes
• 8 eggs, boiled
• ½ cup chopped dill pickles
• ½ tsp. sugar
• salt and pepper to taste
• 9 TBSP. of mayonnaise (Grandma used Blue Plate)

Directions:

1. Peel potatoes and boil them in lightly salted water until tender, but not mushy. Afterwards, chop the boiled potatoes: not too fine, not too chunky.
2. Mash the egg yolks and add the yolks to the mayonnaise.
3. Chop the egg whites and add the whites to the yolk/mayonnaise mixture.
4. Add in the potatoes, and then all the other ingredients. Stir carefully, trying not to smash the potatoes.

Let me know what you think of the recipes! And, if you’re looking for something to do while your chicken and sausage gumbo is simmering, I have an idea for you – try reading Concierge, A Black Raven Novel, which is set in New Orleans, or Imagine, A Black Raven Novel, which is a Christmas story.

Happy Thanksgiving 2018!