Christmas Dinner = Gumbo!
BTW, that is 5 minutes after I said it was ready and stepped away for a minute. That "high-water mark" is how much there had been before the Creoles swarmed the cooktop...
And that's a 14qt pot.
FWIW, Gumbo is actually pretty simple: bay leaf, pepper (red & black) parsley, thyme, onion, garlic, celery and filé a.k.a. ground sassafras (a thickener) are typical and sufficient on the veggies & herb side. The only salt in mine is from the other ingredients.
Some add okra for flavor and as a thickener. I don't particularly care for okra, but if you know what you're doing, it can be good. There are only 4 okra gumbos I eat, 3 of them are made by fellow Louisianans, and one of THOSE is my Mom's cousin who used to have a restaurant.
On the meat side, you can to as simple as a chicken and sausage, or as fancy as you like, Mom used to make hers with chicken thighs, smoked sausage, hot sausage, ham, shrimp, crab and once, lobster. Mine currently uses chicken thighs, smoked & hot sausage, shrimp, a container of lump crab meat, and a few clusters of snow crab, broken up.
BTW, that is 5 minutes after I said it was ready and stepped away for a minute. That "high-water mark" is how much there had been before the Creoles swarmed the cooktop...
And that's a 14qt pot.
FWIW, Gumbo is actually pretty simple: bay leaf, pepper (red & black) parsley, thyme, onion, garlic, celery and filé a.k.a. ground sassafras (a thickener) are typical and sufficient on the veggies & herb side. The only salt in mine is from the other ingredients.
Some add okra for flavor and as a thickener. I don't particularly care for okra, but if you know what you're doing, it can be good. There are only 4 okra gumbos I eat, 3 of them are made by fellow Louisianans, and one of THOSE is my Mom's cousin who used to have a restaurant.
On the meat side, you can to as simple as a chicken and sausage, or as fancy as you like, Mom used to make hers with chicken thighs, smoked sausage, hot sausage, ham, shrimp, crab and once, lobster. Mine currently uses chicken thighs, smoked & hot sausage, shrimp, a container of lump crab meat, and a few clusters of snow crab, broken up.
