What is the best type of roux to utilize in a Cajun gumbo?

Answer 1

Zataran roux or Bayou Magic Home-made, of course. You want a "chocolate" roux, which refers to the color, not the ingredients. I recommend looking on foodnetwork.com, and searching Emeril's recipes. He probably has two dozen gumbo recipes. But, if you don't want to make it yourself, there are mixes. The best I have ever tried is MamPapaul's Gumbo with Roux. I have lived outside of Louisiana for the last 12 years, and it's impossible for me to find. But I understand it's not easy to find even in Louisiana. They may have stopped making it. But, if you can find it, be careful not to get the "Gumbo with Okra". Buy the "Gumbo with Roux" and put your own okra in it. That dehydrated okra is nasty. Anyway, if you can't find MamPapauls, Louisiana Fish Fry Products also makes a good gumbo mix, as well as Tony Chachere's. I haven't tried the two products mentioned by the first answerer, so I can't comment on them. This is what I like to do with gumbo mix. It may or may not agree with the package directions. Combine the mix with the recommended amount of water and whisk. Bring to a boil. Add 3-4 chicken BREASTS1, with skin and bones, 1 pund Hillshire Farms smoked sausage2, sliced into 1/4-inch disks, and 1 pound of frozen okra3. Return to a boil, stir, then simmer, stirring occasionally, 40 minutes to an hour, or until the meat is falling off bones. One at a time, remove chicken breasts from the gumbo and separate the meat from the bones, skin, and cartilege. Chop or tear the meat into bite-size pieces and return them to the gumbo. Discard the rest. Serve over rice. Garlic bread is good with this. 1 Personally, I don't like dark meat, hence the use of chicken breasts. However, there's another reason. If you use all the different parts of the chicken, cooking times for the indidual pieces will vary. Breasts are all, roughly, the same size, and will therefore all take about the same amount of time to cook, and you will be able to do all your boning at the same time. But that's not that big a deal. If you like dark meat, put it in there. Also, traditional gumbo usually has WHOLE chicken pieces, including the bone. I don't like it this way. You have to eat the chicken with your hands. I don't mind eating food with my hands, but, when I sit down to a meal, I don't like switching between hands and utensils. 2 This is the only store-bought brand of sausage that is any good in gumbo. But be careful not to get the Beef smoked sausage. I confess I've never had gumbo with genuine Louisiana andouille sausage, but I can't imagine it tasting any better than HF smoked sausage. 3 The word "gumbo" is, in fact, French for "okra". Therefore, you MUST put okra in your gumbo. Personally, I can't stand okra. Except in gumbo. Actually, I don't really LIKE it in gumbo, but I can tolerate it. I suspect it would taste just as good, possibly better, without okra, but, for some reason, this is the one tradition I will not abandon when it comes to gumbo. A Final Note: "Seafood Gumbo" is a terrible thing to do to gumbo and an even worse thing to do to seafood. The gumbo recipe was invented to turn ordinary chicken and sausage (or, for the wild-game lovers, duck and deer sausage) into an exceptional meal. It doesn't work with shrimp and crabmeat, because they are already delicious, and putting them in gumbo just masks their great flavor. Oh it's edible, I suppose. But why would you do that to seafood when there are so many other recipes that do a much, much better job of accenting the flavor of seafood? If you have shrimp, I heartily recommend Shrimp Creole, or even etouffee (though the latter is better with crawfish tails). But, if you are cooking gumbo, you CANNOT do better than chicken and sausage.