6.19.2012

Gumbo?

I don't know if what I made is gumbo, but it sure is good! I've never had gumbo before but I've been wanting to add more rice dishes to our menu. The only thing is I hate okra and I don't eat shrimp. For dinner tonight I made red rice and used 1/2 pound of smoked sausage. I had a grilled chicken breast leftover from the other night and decided I needed to do something with it so I thought why not gumbo?  I didn't take pictures, but here's what I did:

1/2 lb smoked sausage
1 grilled chicken breast; shredded
2 cans chicken broth
1 can diced tomatoes
1 onion; chopped
1/2 bell pepper; chopped (you can use more if you want, but I'm not a huge fan of green peppers)
3 cloves garlic; chopped
3 T oil
3 T flour
cooked rice
salt and pepper to taste

Saute your smoked sausage in a little bit of olive oil until browned. Add onions and peppers and cook until crisp tender. Add garlic and cook just enough to take out the "rawness" of the garlic, probably about a minute. Take everything out of the pot and set aside. Add 3 Tbsp of flour and 3 Tbsp of oil to the pot (I added a little more flour because I had a bit more oil in the pot from the onion mixture). Stir the flour mixture until it turns a nice reddish brown color, it took me about 5 minutes for this to happen. Start adding chicken broth and whisk to keep smooth. When it stops looking like a gravy add the rest of the broth and tomatoes. Next add the sausage/onion mixture. Then add chicken. At this point everything smelled delicious! Let it simmer (covered) for about 15 minutes. To me it smelled like Chinese food which made me think Jasmine rice would be tasty with it. I think in traditional gumbo you're supposed to put the gumbo over rice, but I just dumped in 1 cup of uncooked Jasmine rice. Let it cook for an additional 15-20 minutes and it's done.


Oh my goodness! When I tasted this it made me smile. I couldn't help it. I thought it was really good. My hubby agreed and my little one agreed also. To me it was a Chinese/Southern cooking fusion and it was yummy. Not a bad use of leftovers.

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