This Is How You Make Chicken Étouffée the Right Way

Okay, folks. Now, this one right here even puts a smile on my face, right? Today, I'm going to show you guys just how easy it is to make a chicken auf. Now, if you just look at that thumbnail, some of you guys might say that looks like a gumbo, but it's not. A2 is a little thicker. Gumbo is a lot thinner and it uses okra, you know what I mean? To like kind of like thicken it up, you know, along with the felt. And then when you're doing the A2, I'm going to show you all that. We not even going to talk about it. Let's get it. Now, this is what we going to do. I already washed and you know and patted dry you know my boneless skinless chicken thighs. And by the way don't forget the full ingredient list is on my website and that's smoking and grillingwithab.com and that's witab.com. Now you guys can use any creole/cajun seasoning that you would like to put on there. But you guys know I like to use the creole kick. But this right here, this sweet kick gives you something just a little bit extra. That's what we going to be using. Right. So let me go ahead and get this open. cuz we want to keep one hand to be able to touch everything, right? I'll put that off to the side. Now, when it comes to just like cleaning up your boneless, skinless, you know what I mean? I'm going just cut some of this off. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time, you know, but if I can get whatever I can get off, you know, like with one pass, then so be it. All right. So, now that I trim what I'm going to trim, you know what I mean? Now, I'm going to come ahead. I'm going to go ahead and just, you know, season. Remember, I keep one hand, you know, this is what I'mma touch all the chicken with. And we put this in here just like this. I'm not going to add nothing else to it. What it's going to do is as I get everything else ready and before I put the chicken in, it's going to marinade. Now, as I work this and I, you know, tumble these together, I can look at how it is. Look at that right there. So, just to see boneless, skinless, you know, it's so this dark meat is just nice, folks. It peels up. You know, it's got a lot of flavor to it. You know, it stays juicy, right? So, once you have them up, you make sure it's in all of the crevices. Everything should have that color of your seasoning. All right. So, this is what we going to do. I went ahead and put a medium flame underneath the bottom of this. I put a little bit of infused olive oil inside of here. Right now, once this comes up to temp, we'll know. I'll be able to see it kind of like shimmer, which it probably is already. What we going to do is we going to brown our, you know, our chicken thighs. I'm going to put these in here and we just going to, you know, get some color on them. They're going to cook in the A2 in our sauce, right? So, we don't have to, you know, try to cook them all the way through. We just add them like this. And this is about 3 lbs. Now, anywhere between 3 to 5 minutes is when you want to turn them over, right? So, I'll do them like this. Remember, we not trying to cook these. All right. We always break this away. Right. I'll put this over here. I'm going to go ahead and turn my fire off right now. You know, I mean, we'll let the heat just gradually, you know, come down. But you see this? This what we want. Look at that right there. M. So now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to stick it in this bowl right here cuz these are ready. Now you can look inside my pan. For those of you guys that know what that is, that's called fond. Right. That right there is where we going to have all kind of all of that. That's that cooked goodness. You see that right there? Now you want to turn your fire back on, but we want a medium flame. Right. So, what we want to do is we just want to get our butter, you know, to gradually melt. Oh, yeah. This is it. One stick of butter, right? This is eight tablespoons. Once this is finished melting, then we're going to add our flour. And now we going to begin making our R. Once our, you know, butter is completely melted, you can see it picks up all of that flavor that we put in there, all, you know, the seasoning that we put on the chicken. Now, at this still medium high, I mean, excuse me, medium flame. Now, we go ahead and just add, you know, our flour. I'm going to change to a whisk. You can do it the way I'm doing it, you know, with using the spasta. Now, you want to whisk probably for about 10 minutes. If you're on a medium flame, look, that keeps us uh safe, right? We just want to get a little peanut butter, you know, color to it. We want to make sure that we cooked out all of that flour taste. You know what I mean? But I can tell you right now, I'm looking at it. It's getting it's getting there. All right. So, once we got it looking like this, it didn't picked up mostly everything on the bottom. Right now, what we want to do is we want to add our veggies inside of here. So, I'm going to go ahead and do this. Normally, I add my I add my onions first. You know what I mean? But, we going to go ahead and get them all in here just like this. Then you want to just keep working this, you know, back and forth. Let it pick up everything. Now, the moisture inside of your veggies and the acid that's inside of the onions will pick up any of the fine that was left on the bottom of your pan. You know what I mean? But look at this right here. This is what you want to have. When it start looking like this, you know you're on your way. Now, I just want to make sure everything got, you know, surface contact, right? So, I kind of like just push it down. Make sure you use a pan or a pot that's big enough, you know, so you can get maximum coverage. You want to stir this frequently so that nothing sticks on the bottom, but you shouldn't have it. If you got a medium flame, you good right there. You know what I mean? That'll do it. I kind of like just want to make sure that nothing sticks. Right. Do this. This probably takes about 8 to 10 minutes. You know what I mean? Want to want to get these veggies, you know, on the soft side. So, we leave it like that. Not going to put no lid on there cuz I want all of the moisture to, you know, kind of like come off of that. I want them to settle down. Now, once you got them soft, you can hit them with your spatula. You can feel they softening up. Right now, you want to add your garlic. Right. Notice I put it on top. And then now we just go back and forth and keep this moving. Now, you want to have your broth or stock at at the ready, right? We just want to cook this down for maybe just one minute. And then here we just start adding this to it. Now I'mma raise my fire up cuz we want to get this to a simmer. So I pour it in slow, right? And just keep it keep it working. All right. We don't want to have any lumps here. All right. No lumps, folks. And this is going to be our thickening agent, too. So what I'm trying to do is get it up to a boil. Then I'm going to quickly reduce this down to a simmer. All right. Once I don't see any more lumps and I got it incorporated just, you know, the way I want it to be, I'mma add my seasoning. Then we going to come with our browning, you know, agent. And this is that that kitchen bouquet, folks. This right here doesn't. If you guys don't have this in your kitchen, you need to have it. All right. Like I said, we don't have any lumps. I don't know if you guys can see it. Let me see. It's starting to thicken up, you know, the way you want it to be. You know what I mean? It's on its way. But you see that? I can see a little bit of my garlic. No worries. Now, what we going to do is we we're going to reintroduce our chicken. You see that simmer? See, it's starting to come up. Right. So, we just add this here. This is how we going to cook the chicken. This is going to finish it off. Remember, we need 165 for chicken to be done. Right now that we have our, you know, our chicken back in there, we got all of our goodness inside of that. We going to let this thicken up. Right. You can see I got it set for a simmer. I'm going to go ahead and put this top on there. We going to let this simmer for about 30 minutes. Then we I'm going to show you that last little step after that. All right. So, what I want to do now is I want to check, right? So, I get my meat thermometer. I'm looking at these right here. This went to 184. I'm checking these thicker ones. I know the other ones are ready. Yes. And then I don't know if you guys can tell. Just look how easy it goes in. I don't need to like get no reading from them. I know they good. They've been in there 30 minutes. Oo, they super tender. Right. So, let me get this cleaned up. Put this off to the side. Now, you guys going to like this part right here. Now, you're not going to give nobody no whole piece. Right. So, what we'll do is we'll just take it, let that work like that. I'mma bring it over here to my chopping board. Right now, I'mma take it. I'mma cut this down into bite-sized pieces. Right. Oh my goodness. Look at this. Tell me you guys don't want none of this. Right. And then what I do is I just add this back to it. And I hope you guys are being able to catch like the the thickness. But look, gumbo is not this thick, right? So we just take it clean this up on the bottom. This is nice and meaty, folks. All right, now for the moment of truth. Right. So, I got me some right here. I don't need to have no rice. You know what I mean? This is just All I can tell you is it's fire, folks. Is if you like gumbo, you probably going to like this equally as good, right? So, cheers y'all. as you can see. And I'm going to get in here and get me some. You know, uh I got to tell you like this. Look, by me using the sweet kick, it's like a it's got a mild heat to it. If you guys want to add more, you can. But this right here, this combination right here, and the rice tones it down just a little bit, too. Uh let me know down in the comment section below what would you do or what would you add to this to just take your flavor and your bowl over the top. Now, with that being said, let me take this time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button, and tell everybody out there. There's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. It's time for me to eat, folks. I'm out. Peace. [Music]