How much file powder

You can also freeze it for up to eight months. Simply transfer to freezer-safe containers. This is a wonderful recipe. I am have a husband who grew up in New Orleans and is never satisfied with New Orleans cooking outside of the Crescent City, but when I made this gumbo he loved it. In mid-December I had a surplus of kielbasa to cook up, thanks to a generous friend, so I ended up tripling this recipe.

I decided then that this would be our Christmas Eve dinner this year. The roux took a really long time - minutes to achieve a dark brown coloring. I ended up with 12 quarts of gumbo, staying mostly true to the recipe, adding shrimp and chicken to fill it out. I was giving it away left and right. And everyone said it was some of the best gumbo they'd tasted! As it was to be reheated, I didn't add any file, and no one missed it!

I was disappointed in the lack of flavor in this gumbo; even after I doctored it up the best I could, it was bland. In addition, I never achieved the chocolate brown colored roux. I stirred for a very long time and followed the directions, however, the end product was different than the picture. Already a subscriber? Log in. Get the print magazine, 25 years of back issues online, over 7, recipes, and more. Start your FREE trial. The French verb filer means "to make into threads. If you add too much, cook it for too long, or cook it at too high a heat, your dish will likely turn stringy and gummy.

Give heft to vegetable gravy. Use as a thickener instead of roux, but be prepared for the final product to reflect the flavor of the changed ingredients. Note: The bark of the sassafras plant contains an oil called safrole that has been outlawed for use in food in many countries because it is thought to cause liver cancer.

Savor the Science: Thick and Delicious Gumbo. Trans Fat 0g. Polyunsaturated Fat 0g. Monounsaturated Fat 0g. Sodium 0. Browning the meat over a high heat first, as Gwen McKee suggests in The Little Gumbo Book, boosts the flavour of the entire dish: Cajun Paul Prudhomme deep fries the legs in a spiced batter. But once the meat is added to the stew, the batter loses its crunch, so this seems like an awful lot of effort for sadly little reward.

The sausage element in the dish's homeland is generally the spiced, smoked pork andouille but the closest agreed equivalent seems to be Polish kabanos, available in many British supermarkets and eastern European grocers. I also tried chorizo, on the basis it's both smoky and spicy but, although delicious, it makes everything taste unmistakably Spanish.

Kabanos lend a subtler savoury note to the gumbo — don't add them at the beginning of cooking, however, or they'll become rubbery. This, then, is the essence of gumbo. McKee, a native of Baton Rouge, claims "no self-respecting Cajun would dream of making gumbo without a roux". This isn't roux as we know it, however — toasted to within an inch of burning. Roahen notes many New Orleans cooks use their own skin as a colour guide "Sporting the pallor of bechamel sauce myself, I cannot emulate this technique," she confesses sadly.

It can be anything from Jamie Oliver's " peanut butter" to Prudhomme's "dark red brown to black" — nerve-wracking stuff indeed, which can take up to an hour of coaxing to achieve. The bitter, slightly smoky flavour isn't to everyone's taste and is decried in some Louisiana circles as a modern, cheffy affectation. Guste Jr is the great-grandson of the founder of New Orleans' famous Antoine's Restaurant, which serves a considerably darker version.

American magazine Cooks Illustrated pooh-poohs the notion that the roux needs to be cooked as gently and slowly as possibly, deciding sensibly that 20 minutes is the maximum amount of time anyone wants to stand over a pan — in any case "testers discerned little difference in flavour", according to their New Best Recipes book.

Starting with really hot oil makes a considerable difference, although I find the C oil Prudhomme uses, fresh from frying the chicken, a bit too scary to work with. Once I've nailed the technique, I try making roux with lard and butter but find them too heavy — chicken fat will provide the necessary richness in any case. Okra, that much-maligned vegetable, is another popular thickener — indeed, a poster on the food forum egullet.

It's good but once I've added a litre or so of stock, noticeably thinner than the other gumbos. I like the flavour and texture of the okra itself though — definitely one for the pot. Traditionally okra was used in summer, when it was in season. In Tunisia, too, powdered molokhia is fried in oil before adding hot stock, and then simmered for many hours or even overnight to achieve a rich and silky texture.

When the leaves are used fresh or frozen, as they are most often available in the United States , a quicker cooking time is preferred, to keep the leaves suspended in their thick and slippery broth.

Gumbo is a precious part of the North American culinary heritage because, like many of the truly great parts of our country, the recipe is an amalgam of diverse traditions and painful history. It is a quintessentially American dish, influenced by African, European, and native Choctaw cooking techniques and ingredients. The earliest versions were, according to Brightsen, thickened only by okra, a vegetable that was brought to the New World by slaves.