RouxBDoo's Low Carb Gumbo

Hi friends, in an effort to help others, I am posting my “Low Carb Gumbo” recipe I have developed.  As some of you might know I have been diagnosed as a Type 2 Diabetic.  I have adopted a Low Carb lifestyle and am enjoying reworking some of my old recipes.  This recipe for gumbo contains everything from my regular gumbo except for a roux, or rather the flour for a roux.

A Cajun dark roux is made for flavor, not for thickening.  The darker the roux, the less thickening power it has, whereas a blonde roux will thicken a soup significantly.  The okra will thicken the gumbo and the Filé powder (if available) will also thicken it, if it is fresh.  I don’t think you’ll notice a big difference.

If you serve it with rice you are defeating the purpose.  This Gumbo is Low Carb, not Low Fat, nor Low Calorie.  It tastes like your good ol’ Nawlins’ Gumbo Ya-Ya (chicken, andouille, and shrimp) just not as dark.  Be choosy when selecting your smoked sausage and find one without so much sugar and carbs in it.  Always check the labels.  The yield of this recipe is about 6 servings of 10 oz each.  Each serving around 5 grams of carbs.  Like every Gumbo, it’s always better the second day reheated and simmered  Yes, all you purists I added some tomato in the form of Rotel.  We'll just call it Creole-ish.

Remember, the key to a successful Low Carb lifestyle is don’t let yourself get bored, don’t let yourself get hungry.  Good Luck Friends!

Ingredients

½ (2 oz) small onion, diced (4g carbs)
1 lg stalk celery, diced (.5g carbs)
½ cup green pepper, diced (2g carbs)
1 tbs minced garlic (1g carbs)
1 tbs Worcestershire sauce (3g carbs)
½ lb Andouille sausage (4g carbs)
2 green onions, diced (2g carbs)
2 chicken stock cube (or 2 tbs stock powder) (2g carbs)
½ cup Rotel tomatoes (2g carbs)
1 cup okra (4g carbs)
½ rotisserie chicken, skinned, boned and rough chopped (0g carbs)
8 - 12 oz shrimp (cleaned and deveined) (0g carbs)
6 cups water (0g carbs)
¼ cup or ½ stick butter (0g carbs)
½ tsp liquid smoke (0g carbs) *opt.
1 tbs Filé powder (3g carbs)
½ tsp each salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, dried Italian herbs (1g carbs)

Serving size: 8-10 oz
Total servings: 6
Net carbs: under 5

Melt butter in a pot on MED heat, saute your onion until brown, add garlic, celery, green pepper, and spices.  When it has started to cook down add your okra.  Stir this a bit to work the “Shine” off the okra. Now, add your smoked sausage, chicken meat, and stir well for about 5 mins.  Add Rotel, Worcestershire, liquid smoke, stir well to further combine all the ingredients.

Set the 6 cups of water on the stove in a pot and bring to a boil.  Add your chicken stock and blend well.  If you have time you can skip using the stock cube and make stock from the bones and skin of the chicken, along with any onion or celery scraps, bring to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes.  Strain all the scraps and bones from the stock and use 6 cups in your gumbo.  *Never use green pepper scraps in a stock.

Add the stock to the gumbo pot. Bring up to a boil and then simmer well for an hour.  Just about 15 mins before serving add your filé powder, green onions, and shrimp.  Check your seasonings and salt, then let this wonderful gumbo relax a bit while the shrimp are getting cozy and your filé is doing it’s job thickening the soup up.

Enjoy this soup without worrying about the carbs.  Take care and check in again soon!

RouxBDoo

RouxBDoo's Crock-Pot Gumbo

Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo

OK, I have used a Crock-Pot occasionally over the years, but I recently bought a new, large, Crock-Pot with a removable crock, which makes it easier to clean.  So far I have made Red Beans and Rice, Stewed Chicken Legs, and and Chili.  I had been wanting Gumbo here recently and a friend of mine from Louisiana sent me some nice Andouille Sausage.  So I tried my new Crock-Pot and Andouille at making gumbo... Ahhhh, I love the sweet smell of success when you wake up in the morning with a kettle full of Gumbo.  Needless to say, it was successful and tasty.

I suppose you could use this recipe to make seafood gumbo, but I wouldn't put the seafood in the Crock-Pot until the last hour.  This is a Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo using a rotisserie chicken from the Grocery or Mega-Mart store.  You need to make the roux first on your stove, you can buy pre-made roux in some regions, I have no experiience with it to give you an opinion on it.  Chef Dave here at the theater has used Chef John Folse's ready-made roux and loves it.  Anyway, here we go.

Ingredients
1 cup of oil
1 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
1 lb andouille smoked sausage (sliced 1/4 in.)
1 rotisserie chicken
1 large onion (diced)
3 -4 ribs of celery (diced)
1/2 lg green pepper (diced)
12 oz. package frozen okra
1 small can Rotel (10 oz. drained) *Optional
2 tbs minced garlic
4 -5 green onions (sliced thin)
8 -10 cups water
4 tbs powdered chicken stock (or 2 stock cubes)
1 tbs Tony Chachere's
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp Italian herbs
2 tbs parsley (dried or fresh)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 - 2 tbs Louisiana Hot Sauce (your choice)

1 tsp Liquid Smoke *Optional

This Light brown Roux is just perfect.

Preparation

Prepare your Crock-Pot by spraying the inside with non-stick cooking spray.  I use a 7 quart Crock-Pot and I would estimate this recipe makes 4 to 5 quarts. Make sure your Crock-Pot is big enough for this recipe or else you might need to cut back on the amounts listed, or even cut the recipe in half. 

Combine the oil and flour in a cast iron skillet (or similar skillet) and stir constantly, on high, until you have achieved a light brown roux. You do not want a really, really dark mahogany roux, for this recipe it needs to be the color of light chocolate.

Once you have the roux finished, turn off the heat, add your onions, and stir them in and let them cook in the roux for five minutes. You need to let this cool just a bit and transfer it into your Crock-Pot.

Now add all of your celery, green bell pepper, garlic, and green onions (reserve a quarter cup of green onions for garnish). Dissolve the powdered chicken stock in a cup of water. Add this and 8 more cups of water to your Crock-Pot. Stir well to combine the water with the roux, making sure it is dissolved well.

Break your rotisserie chicken down and remove all the bones, skin, fat, and cartilage from the meat.  Give the meat a rough chop, but don't mince it up too fine.  Put this nice chicken meat into the Crock-Pot and stir it well.  Add the rest of your ingredients to the pot give it a really good stir and put the lid on it. I let mine cook for one hour on HI, then I turn it down to LOW and cook for seven more hours.

Serve this gumbo with white rice and garnish with the remaining green onions. If you are able to get filé powder, add 1 tablespoon to this recipe.

If you guys like this recipe, let me know.  I might post my Red Beans recipe for you.  My next post will be about my buddy Eric, who is a Red Bean fanatic, he has a wonderful blog and a crockpot cookbook you guys need to download.  I'll try to get Eric's post lined up next week maybe.

RouxBDoo's Making a Roux

Mahogany roux looks like melted chocolate.

Well, howdy friends, I know it's been a long time since my last post and I am sorry.  I have been gathering ideas for a while and hopefully my schedule will allow me to get to them.  Thanks for checking in, all my blog followers, I appreciate you folks.

I was having dinner with my family in a Cajun restaurant on Father's Day.  These folks are from Metairie, LA and transplanted up here after Katrina.  Nice folks and good food but I have to say their gumbo was just awful.  It was just a soup, it tasted like a clear chicken broth with nice chunks of white meat chicken, an occasional bite of andouille, and some Ro-tel tomatoes that gave it a sour flavor.  Aside from a bite or two of celery and onion, that was it.

This made me wanna go home and make gumbo... so I did.  I made some gumbo using some catfish filets and smoked sausage.  I ran out of time before I had to go to work, so I let it cool and stored it in the fridge for when I get home tonight.  I'll bring it up to a boil and the let it simmer a few hours.  I might even add some shrimp to it.  I have a picture of the lovely dark mahogany roux I made up for the base.  That's what was missing to me in the gumbo Sunday, a roux.

For my post on how to make a roux, click HERE!  For this gumbo I used a smaller portion.  I use 1/2 cup of vegetable oil and 1 cup of all purpose flour to make the roux.

I hope you enjoy this little teaser, I will get some posts going soon.

RouxBDoo