Arley, There is a place in Lutcher that makes excellent smoked sausage and Andouille too.......it's called "Veron's Supermarket". It is located on the opposite side of the street as Lutcher High School. Their smoked sausage is the one I use for making Jambalaya.....it has more meat in it than most sausage recipes. There is a similar company near Baton Rouge that labels their meat products "Veron" (without the "s")......it is not the same product as "Veron's". I highly recommend Veron's products too. The best boudin is produced in the Southwestern part of Louisiana (not in my area).....near Lafayette. Those guys are the experts on boudin. We are the experts on Andouille. Just outside of Lafayette one half mile off I-10, there is a place in Scott, La. called "Best Stop" that literally sells tons of boudin per day....it is that good. They also produce some of the best cracklings around. They have a website and sell product all over the US. The smoked boudin is especially good. Give it a try if you are ever in that area. dlynn, if you ever make it to the Bonfire gumbo cook-offs, you can buy a sampler ticket which will allow you to taste quite a few gumbos. Many will literally knock your socks off and by all means try the Red Bean gumbo. And if you are lucky one of the locals will have one made with smoked tamed duck....it is especially rich tasting. Makes you wanna dance all night.....and yes they always have a band. Dan

Uh, asking how to make gumbo is a lot like asking how to make chili. Beans or no? Tomatoes or no? Similarly, you'll find all sorts of definitions and rules, most of which can be broken. Having said that, here are some observations based on many years of gumbo consumption in every place from family dinners to restaurants in New Orleans and southwest La. (My bona fides: I'm part cajun and lived in Louisiana the first 25 years of life. I've eaten--and cooked--lots of gumbos.) Gumbos usually all have a roux. It can be a mild blond roux or a dark mahogany brown roux depending on how much of a flavor you want it to impart and what thickening you want. By the way, the thickening power of a roux is inversely related to its darkness--light rouxs have more thickening power than dark rouxs. But there's no rule to say you can't have some of both. (Gumbos may, in addition, have either okra or file, but not both. For instance, chicken & sausage gumbo is usually a file gumbo--I've never seen okra in one. Likewise, seafood gumbos have might have okra but no file.) A lot of recipes for file gumbo call for adding the file to the pot at the end of cooking and then allowing it to sit for a few minutes. In my family, file was treated as a condiment on the table, add it to your personal taste. I like it a lot, but some people don't want to use as much as I do. Likewise for hot sauce. Have some Tabasco or sriracha on the table for people to heat their individual dishes. Sausage: andouille if you can find it, kielbasa if you can't. Don't bother using low fat sausage. It'll taste like hot dogs. Making a roux can be tricky to the uninitiated, but you might try the technique in the recipe that follows. If you have access to a water 'bullet' smoker (Brinkmann or similar, electric or charcoal), it's worth smoking up a bunch of chickens just to be able to make this recipe. Smoked Chicken and Andouille Sausage File Gumbo 1 fryer 3 to 4lbs, smoked 1 -1 1/2 lbs andouille sausage (see notes) 1/2 lb baked ham, diced (see notes) 1 bell pepper, chopped 1 bunch green onions, chopped 2 cups onions, chopped 2 qt chicken stock (see notes) or water 1 tsp black pepper, freshly ground 2 tbsp chopped parsley 1 tbsp minced garlic 1/2 tsp cayenne 1 1/2 tsp thyme 3 bay leaves Flour vegetable oil Salt Gumbo File This recipe takes a fair amount of time, but the labor can be spread out over days. You can smoke the chickens one day, make stock another, and assemble the gumbo on yet another day. It works best with chickens smoked in a water smoker (Brinkmann or similar device) but you can substitute rotisserie chickens from the supermarket if you don't have a smoker or the time. It freezes beautifully, so I usually multiply the recipe 4 or 6 fold. A 'single' recipe (i.e., one chicken) makes a great meal for 4 hungry or 6 polite people. Get some chickens in the 3 to 4 pound range. Season them generously with black and red pepper. Smoke them for 4 hours or so in a smoker using hickory or pecan wood. (Don't use mesquite; it's too resiny for this dish.) If you use rotisserie chickens, use the ones with the simplest flavorings; don't go for the heavy barbecue sauced ones. Remove the meat from the cooked chickens and reserve, saving the skin and bones to make stock. Put the skin and bones in a stockpot with onions, celery and garlic. Figure roughly 1 medium onion, two stalks of celery, and one garlic clove per chicken carcass. Don't add salt. Add 1 or 2 qt. cold water per chicken carcass and bring up to a simmer. Skim off any scum that rises to the top, simmer for at least a few hours. Strain it. Before making a roux, have your onions and other vegetables chopped up. You'll use them to arrest the browning of the roux. Make a roux: in a large pyrex measure (at least twice as large as the oil and flour, and bigger is better) or microwaveable glass bowl, use 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup flour for every chicken. (So if you're making a 6-chicken recipe, that would be 3 cups oil, 3 cups flour in a vessel no smaller than 12 cups, and larger is better). Put it in the microwave on high for 3 minutes. It'll bubble and froth. Stir it well, nuke it again for 2 minutes. Stir. Nuke again for 1 minute. Stir. Repeat the nuke/stir cycles, 30 seconds at a time, until it turns medium brown (about the color of peanut butter) At that point throw in some of the chopped vegetables to arrest the browning. It'll steam (be careful). Mix well. Put the roux and the rest of the vegetables in the bottom of a stock pot, mix well, add a little of the stock and mix again; then add the sausage, ham, all the seasonings except for salt and file powder, and the rest of the stock. Simmer for about 30 minutes. The oil from the roux and the sausage will rise to the top; ladle it off and discard. During this time, make some rice. Add the reserved chicken meat, simmer for another 10-15 minutes. Degrease the dish again. Add salt only if needed (probably won't need it, especially if you used canned chicken broth). Serve over boiled rice. Each diner may wish to add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of gumbo file to his dish. Leftover gumbo can be frozen; figure 1 to 2 cups per person, and make a fresh batch of rice while the gumbo is thawing. Nothing better on a cold winter night. Notes on ingredients: Andouille is a rich and spicy smoked sausage. Acceptable substitutes are kielbasa or smoked sausage. Don't use low-fat turkey sausage--it'l taste like hot dogs. Ham: get a chunk from the deli and cut it into 1/2 inch dice. Gumbo file is powdered sassafras leaves; it thickens the broth and gives an herbal touch. Both of these ingredients are available at most big supermarkets. Chicken Stock: If you don't want to make stock, you can use canned stock but that can make the dish salty. If you can find reduced-sodium broth, that's the best. You can always add salt if needed. Half canned stock and half water is okay. It'll even taste acceptably good if you use 100% water instead of stock, but stock makes it richer. For the ultimate in rich flavor, use the liquid from the smoker's water pan as part of the liquid you use to make your stock; just be sure to strain it well.

The Saveur recipe is closest to mine. I cut the broth and the mixed greens in half, (and we like to use use some okra). I use aprox 4 cups of homemade veg broth. And a fair amount of mixed, sliced fine, greens. -A mix of any that look good in our market . Never weighed them but probably 1 and 1/2 lbs. DH is the roux king, probably the most important step. I like lots of 'Trinity' for the flavor. And a fair amount of spice. Agree that it should never be overly spicy. Subtle. I find it freezes really well !. I made a batch over the holidays and froze a couple qrts. One later became an oyster and sausage gumbo. It is the base roux and veg that is the most time consuming. So we froze some. A trick for freezing you might want to try is to take out a couple pints or a qrt way early in the green cooking stage. As little as 20 minutes. It will finish cooking later on. And roll those washed greens really tight and slice very thin. Breaks the cell wall, cooks more even and releases more of the green veg flavor. They will also become tender a bit faster than big leaves. Especially meaty greens like collards. Often why many do not like it. Needs over-cooking to get tender and then often has a bitter green taste. We like a splash of ac vinegar and a bit of fresh lemon...fresh parsley and celery leaves to the table. It can be a bit boring so i have to give it a bit of fresh. z'Herbes

Lol! You should see our Thibodeaux and Fontenot family reunions, you'd think you were in the back woods of.. well, you WOULD be.. lol Cooking is not just an art, it is also a work of love. They cook and eat gumbo like most people eat burgers. It's a staple of their life and they do it without thinking. If you asked my mom how to make gumbo, hell.. she'd say, "I don't have it written down, I just... make it.." So, I got it by watching her make it. Now, I altered mine a bit, but to write down everything I do.. not sure I could because I tend to do it just a little different each time. To that end, if you read up on how to make a good roux, many, if not most, people worth their weight in salt tell you how you can store some extra for later use. Same concept, just had it made by someone else.. heh. Anyway, to each their own and when I make my gumbo, the only people turning their nose up to it are the people I would not invite over anyway ;) Anyone down here around Bastrop, TX is welcome to join us! lol Russ