Frank's N'Awlins Seafood Gumbo

Frank's N'Awlins Seafood Gumbo

Even though there must be a thousand recipes for seafood gumbo, this one is so good, it’ll make you slap your MawMaw! It’s so good it’ll make your bulldog break his chain! It’s so good I promise you’ll never eat anybody else’s gumbo ever again! Make some, and see for yourself!

Ingredients
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 lb. smoked sausage, small diced
3 lbs. frozen cut okra
2 large onions, diced
4 ribs celery, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup parsley, minced
1/2 to 3/4 cups prepared roux (as needed)
2 qts. chicken stock + 2 qts. water (as needed)
1 can tomato sauce, 16-oz.
2 Tbsp. Frank Davis Complete Seafood Boil
2 Tbsp. Frank Davis Seafood Seasoning
1 tsp. ground thyme
2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
5 bay leaves
2 Tbsp. salt (if needed)
1 lb. picked crabmeat
1 dozen crabs, raw and cleaned
4 lbs. whole shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 lbs. crawfish tails, pre-cooked
1/4 cup parsley, minced
6 cups long grain rice, cooked
Gumbo File for garnish
1 box saltine crackers

Directions
Experience has taught me over the years that a good gumbo always comes together best when you prepare everything in advance. For example, you should totally defrost the okra in the sink in a colander; clean, wash, and crack the crabs; have all the seasoning vegetables chopped and measured out; and cut up the sausage and butterfly the shrimp long before you ever put a skillet on the stove top. Doing this will before you being cooking keep you from rushing around while you’re "building" your gumbo.

So okay, assuming you got everything prepped and ready, the first thing you want to do is select the right size pot. It should be nothing less than 10 quarts in capacity. A big spaghetti cooker or a canner is ideal for gumbos because it gives you room to stir ingredients without crowding them.

One more thing. Procedure here is important. So to get quality, be sure not to skip or short-cut any of the steps.

First off, put the pot on a high fire, add the quarter cup of cooking oil, and toss in the smoked sausage. Fry this really well—it’s the base for browning the okra.

Next, without removing the sausage add all of the okra and fry it well too. Plan on this taking you about 20 minutes—it’s going to require about that long to cut the amount of "rope" (slime) which will be secreted by the okra. But note: when you add the okra, reduce the heat to medium so that the vegetable doesn’t burn. And keep stirring constantly!

When the okra is ready, add to the pot the onions, celery, garlic, parsley, and about half of the prepared roux. Once they’re totally combined in the mix, pour in the chicken broth along with one quart of water and the tomato sauce, reduce the heat to low, and simmer the gumbo base—stirring constantly—for about 10 minutes.

At this point it’s time to stir in the seafood boil, seafood seasoning, thyme, crushed red pepper flakes, and the bay leaves. Then once again thoroughly blend the ingredients. And when they’re uniformly mixed, taste the "broth: and re-adjust the salt if necessary. Cover the pot and simmer for about 10 minutes.

All the remaining ingredients except the parsley and the rice go in next. That means the crabmeat, the cracked crabs, the peeled shrimp, and the crawfish tails. Then, one more time, stir everything again; you want to create the perfect blend in the pot. Note that at this stage the gumbo liquid should be brownish in color with a reddish tinge, and the okra should be broken up and suspended in solution.

Now cover the pot and simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes (you can stir in a little extra prepared roux any time you want to if you’d like the consistency to be thicker). During this period stir the liquid about 3 times to keep the contents uniformly mixed.

When the gumbo is ready take the pot off the fire and set it aside, but leave the cover on for 20 more minutes. This will allow the seasonings to blend fully--remember the gumbo won’t taste “Creole” unless you let it set.

Finally, after it has cooled slightly, you can either toss the steamed rice into the pot and stir it all together or ladle the gumbo over separate bowls of steamed rice (which is my favorite way and the traditional way to do it).

I suggest you serve it piping hot alongside a plate of multi-grain saltine crackers. A little parsley sprinkled over the top makes a nice garnish.