Sunday Gumbo That Tastes Like Grandma Made It

All right, folks, listen, you know I got a smile. Listen, my soul is warmed up because I'm gonna make something that takes me home, right? Today, I'm gonna show you guys how to make a gumbo, and I bet you guys didn't know it's just this easy to make. Let's get it. Now, look, I'm gonna pan over all of these ingredients, but we finna get right into it, though. As you can see, look, this is gonna be the star. This time, I wasn't able to find any king crabs, so I went ahead and went with the dungeons, you know, the clusters, right? So what I'm gonna do now is just go ahead and get this started. A lot of you guys ask me why do I use this or where I get it from, you know, but the answer to why I use a burner like this, the reason is I do this so it's easier for me to film. Instead of me being on the stove, you know what I mean, having to film where it's kind of like dark and all of that. But meanwhile, let's go ahead and get this open. You know what I mean? And let's go ahead and start prepping these ingredients. It may look like a lot, you guys, but really it's, I mean, it is a few ingredients, but it's so easy to make. That's what really this video is about. I've made this several times, but I think I explained it now a little bit better, you know, so you guys can just see. I want you guys to follow along with me. So once you get your ingredients, you know, restart this over after looking at it and then just, you know, cook along with me, real simple. Now, oh, let's talk about this gumbo filet. Everybody don't like it. You know, a lot of people are used to having it without it. Now, if you're down South, you probably have this. So what I usually do is I take the filet, right? And I go ahead and I save it, you know, at the end. That way, when somebody gets their own bowl, they can actually just sprinkle it in. So what I'm doing now is just taking some Creole kick, you know, go ahead and hit this flesh of this shrimp. Let's just get this going. Let this start to marinate. You know what I mean? Let this soak into it. And then we go from there. Now it's up to you. Now don't forget the full ingredient list will be on my website, smokingandgrillingwithab.com. Don't forget, that's W-I-T-A-B.com, right? So when you guys go there, you guys get to look. You can look at the ingredients. You can see what I'm making. If you want to put more shrimp in there, you can. You want to add more or less, you can do that on your own to make it your own, right? But you see how I got them like this right here? That's what you want to get. We just want to let these soak in here just like that. So now I'm going to set that right here. Let me go ahead and change my board because I'm going to go ahead and do a little bit of prep on my veggies, cut the celery down, get everything ready. And then we can start that room. All right, so there is a little bit of prep work that, you know, comes into play when it comes to doing a gumbo, right? Now, obviously I'm doing my green onions. You know what I mean? Look, I'm just going to set them off to the side like this. Let me get all of these together. I don't know about y'all, but I love the green in the gumbo too. Now, if you ask me, gumbo, just the way I see it, gumbo is really like a, you can clear a lot of things out in your, I'll just say in your refrigerator, you know, things of that nature, right? Any leftovers, any chicken, anything like that. If you got any shrimp that you didn't use and when you buy them big two pound bags, you know, you can go ahead and do all of that. So look, I'm going to go ahead and get these going, but I got to wash these, right? Now, what you guys normally see me doing, I usually take these and I cut the tops off, but really being honest with you, keeping it true to the way my grandmama made it, all of this, all of the leafy, everything goes into the gumbo, right? So let me go ahead and just wash this and then we'll go ahead and dice these down. All right, look, so I washed them up and what I did was, you know how they ribbed? I should have shown that part. I just cut them down. Like, it depends on if it's super wide, I make three out of them. If not, I do two, right? So again, like how I told you, my grandmama, this the real way she made them. You see this little leafy green right here? All of that goes in there too, right? So now we just want to cut these down. You know, we just dice them up. Look at the size and then look at, you know, when you're done, make sure you taste it and all of that, which we are going to do. I don't know why I just said that, but you know what? It depends. A lot of times I tell you guys, this is how it works. Listen, you dice small for flavor and you leave it big for the texture. But because this is going in the gumbo, this is going to have a little size to it, but as we cook it down, they're going to soften up. You know what I mean? So I do something that way and then I do something small. All right, so next thing we're going to do is our bell pepper. You know what I mean? Now look, I cut it down like this, but I'm going to use all of this bell pepper. So you just want to go ahead and get yourself some slices, even off of the bottom part, right? Then we'll just dice these up. I'll do all of these together in just one second. But I just want to let you know, all of this is going in the inside of there. I'm even cut some of that out because you only need one bell pepper. That's up to you. It depends on the taste that you're looking for. You know what I mean? Nowhere did I say that this is like truly authentic, but this is gumbo. This will take you home. It will render everything that you know about gumbo and just be fire. All right, so after you prep all your veggies, now listen, I still have my cloves right here. This is my garlic press. I'll press these in here in a minute. Listen, we want to start with a great base, right? This is where we're going to get that flavor from. It starts at the beginning. So for myself, I like to use bacon fat. You guys don't have bacon fat? That's okay. Go ahead and just give yourself some, what will I say? Just go ahead and get yourself some butter, you know? So we'll just put a couple of heaping tablespoons of bacon grease, you know, to start it off. All right, now I'm getting ready to add some cooking grease. Now you guys can use vegetable oil or you can use canola. You know what I mean? I went with the two tablespoons in the very beginning. I could actually fill that up, but now we want to start right here first. You know what I mean? Just give it some flavor and get that going. Then once we start seeing the ripples and we got some heat, then we're going to go ahead and start applying. That means adding our flour. Super easy, folks. I don't know why Gumbo has this, you know, this little, I don't know, stigma about it, like making it. You know what I mean? It's so easy to make. Okay, once your oil, you know, starts to come up to temp, you know what I mean? We're going to go ahead and just start applying some of this, you know, some of this flour to it, right? So the key is, listen, making a roux, let me just go ahead and kick it into high gear. You can hear how relaxed I am. The key is making a roux. To making a roux is just, you know, adding a little bit of time and then spending some time with the roux. I don't usually, normally, I don't walk off from my roux when I'm making it. You know what I mean? I just, once I start, I start, you know? So I don't want to have no lumps either down here. You know what I mean? So we're just going to go ahead and just keep this going. The reason we don't want no lumps, because those lumps represent a little raw flour on the inside, right? But you see how it foams up like this right here? That's okay. That's what you want to do. I mean, that's what you want to see, folks. So again, I'll tell this, because I know all of my chef friends that watch this, you know what I mean? And they tell me, A.B., you know you can put that in there, you know, all of the flour in there, but I just like to do everything in increments, you know what I mean? So I can control how lumpy it is, you know, stuff like that. So especially if you're new, this will give you a little confidence, you know what I mean? And get your arm strength up, you know what I mean? But look, I want you to pay attention to that color. Now, I like to say it has three stages to it. One is going to start off, you know, as we cook this down, we want it to be, we want to see it turn tan. After that, then we look for the color of peanut butter. And after that, then we're looking for a chocolate bar. Right? So notice what I'm doing. I'm staying with it. I'm not stopping. I hear people say you can burn it. I don't know. I've never ever burned a root that I know of anyway. You know what I mean? So we just want to keep it moving and keep going just like what you see right here. Okay, so if you look at it down here, look at this right here. This is what I'm talking about. We'll call this stage one. Now we reach tan. And listen, that nutty smell that you smelled is coming off of this right here. You just know we on the way, or yourself is on the way to making a good root. Right? So we just keep working this in until we reach the next stage. And that will be peanut butter. All right, so look at here. We at stage two. We're gonna call this peanut butter. Actually, we a little bit darker than the peanut butter. You know, color, but this will do it. You know what I mean? The next phase is we want it to look like dark chocolate. Right? That's the way I like mine to be. Love that flavor that it gets. And you can see what I'm doing. I've never stopped, you know, stirring. All right, so now I got a dark. This is the dark chocolate I wanted to show you guys. But before you get here, let me address this. Listen, I got so many gumbos, I made them different ways. I even went against the grain and added some tomato. You know the one, and I know that is, thou shall not add tomato, anything to a gumbo. Right? But if you look right there, you can see I got andouille sauces. Right? Normally I put the andouille sauces in the beginning. I get a little char on it, crispy up them edges, get it to sweat down and put that andouille, you know, flavor in the inside before I put the bacon in and all of that. Right? This time I did a little different because I want you guys to look at the different stages. Cause you'll see that that leaves a little residue in there. And some people say, well, is that burn? Cause you'll see a little specks, but that's cause I put the black on there. Now with all that talking, come on in here and look at this right here. Cause this is what I'm proud of. You see this right here? This is what you want to achieve. You want to have that dark chocolate look right there. Now we finna kick it up and get down and do what we do folks. This right here is the base of a starting, you know, gumbo. That is a rule. All right. So if you've been following me for a minute, you know I always start with my onions first. Right? So let's go ahead and get them in there. You see, I ain't shy about getting them onions in there. Now it's going to kick back and do its thing. Don't forget. It's got a lot of water in it. So that's all of the bubbling and the popping that you see in right now. That's it. I don't make no adjustments, but it start thickening up on you too. But don't worry. We finna add the rest of them, but I like to just give those a head start. Now I'm getting ready to come with my, the rest of all of my veggies. All right. Now it'll become like a little paste, but that's okay. We're just going to go ahead and move this around, get everything nice and hot and let it to start to sweat. Right? Cause we want to soften these up just a little bit. We really want to get this flavor to marry. There's something about when it's hot like this that does it. Right? Look at that right there. Now I'm finna bring that andouille in. All right. Now we add these in. Now, if you guys pay attention, look at that right there. Look at that. You see that little orange flavor inside of the body of the meat right there, inside of that, you know, medallion. Look, that's the andouille flavor. That's what you want to get in here. And if you look down there, that is super hot. We going to get it in there. Believe me, it's going to go ahead and heat up and release its flavors in here too. Everybody know this is my ingredient that I put in here that just really takes it over the top and gets you starting to think like, oh snap, this is a real good gumbo. Now I'm going to go ahead and just put a two. Let's get it. Let's get it filled up right. One, two and a half. Really like just a couple of heaping tablespoons. Right? So we'll just get this mixed up in here and get this going. All right. And then now we're getting ready to go ahead and just start adding, you know, our garlic to it. Right? So I'm using my press. Putting a smile on my face, folks. Man, you want to use the sharp edge. You can use the back of a knife or your wooden spoon, whatever you want to use, you know, just to knock off, you know, your mince, right? Your minced garlic. All right. So after stirring it, you know, and moving it around, you know, for about maybe about like a minute or two, you know, just so that I can smell and it's nice and fragrant, you know, with the garlic. Now we're going to go ahead and start adding in our broth or stock, whichever one you guys have. So if you guys come in here and look down on this, look at it. As I stir this, now I'm going to bring this fire up. Right? Now we running it high. Look at this right here. Now it'll start looking like a gumbo to you guys. You know, just looking at it, look at the color. All right. Now, as we letting that come back up to a boil, before we set it to a simmer, I just want to show you using a rotisserie chicken, this right here is the way. Now I want you guys to talk to me down in the comment section below. I'm pulling off of this, you know, this skin right now, but tell me, look, you can even see, look how far that, look at the coloring that this, you know, comes with. Just save so much time. You guys do not have to use this. You guys can go ahead and just, you know, cook one up, season it how you want to, and then do it. But if you want to save some time, this is how you do it. Now, talk to me down in the comment section below. Do you put the skin inside of there too? You guys let me know. I like the skin, you know what I mean? So you guys let me know, what would you do? I got everything shredded down. We got a nice little boil going over here. I'm constantly stirring, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom as far as that andouille, right? So if you want to look, I left this out here so you guys can see. This is just like the carcass and some of the bone, you know what I mean? Leftover from the chicken. This is what we're going to add to that. So now I'm going to start adding this into it. You know, adding this to it. Be careful, make sure you're not doing what I'm doing. I should have put it in there in increments, just so the fact that we don't have no splash. But I want you to look, look down in there. Actually, pot this size, I could have used two birds. You know what I mean? Two yard birds, but don't trip. We still got shrimp and we're going to be adding some cabbage to it also. But look at this right here. Yes, sir. Now we're going to let this marry, right? I'm going to let this come back up to a boil. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to set it to a simmer. Now, let me address this part right here. All right, so addressing the part about the seafood, I had this out. I should have probably put this in the refrigerator. Usually I put ice under the bottom and just put it on there, especially when it come to crab. But listen, it's nice cool in here. That's fine. I'm going to put this back in the refrigerator because we don't add this until like the last, you know what I'm saying? This is really don't go in until like the last 10, 15 minutes and then for our shrimp, we don't put our shrimp in until like the last five minutes. Actually, when I cut it off and drop them in like that, we just let the residual heat do it. You know what I mean? And that'll do it because we don't want it to be rubbery. Now take your bay leaves, drop those in there. You know what I mean? Hey, somebody tell me, who was the first person to use bay leaf? What made somebody take a leaf off the ground and put it in their food to figure out that it was going to be good? If you know, please let me know down in the comment section below. Now, let me just put this top on here. I'm going to transfer this over to my stove. I'm going to set it, make sure it's at a simmer and I'm going to let it simmer for at least an hour, right? So then I'm going to let it simmer for at least an hour and then I'm going to show you what we do next. Okay, so you guys just seen how I did the bread. Got the French bread in the inside right there. Look, let me give you guys a pro tip, right? Because I want you guys to look in the inside of here. Look right here. Listen, remember, break away from you. Don't break it. Don't pick it up evenly. If you do, you'll catch that burn underneath. I don't want to see you guys, you know, catch that, right? So, take a look. Come on in here. Look at that right there. That's what you want to have. Look at the color. Just, as soon as I pull it off the top, that let everybody know, even my next door neighbor, like, hey, I know he's seeing. Uh-oh, they got gumbos over there, folks. Now, we already had a simmer. This is how we going to do this. Now, I had this back in the refrigerator. You know what I mean? Staying cool. Now, you want to grab your clusters and you want to put these in here. Now, don't forget, this is like putting an ice cube in something hot. This is going to lower my temperature, right? So, we're going to get these in here, just like you see. You know what I mean? Now, I'm getting ready to raise that temperature up underneath this fire. You know what I mean? Just so that I can continue for this to simmer. I'm going to let this simmer for about 15 minutes. Look at this right here. Is this what y'all know? Yes, sir. All right. So, now we just want to go ahead and work these in and get everything nice and, you know, submerged, because we want that flavor in that crab meat. Now, this is Dungeness crab. I think I mentioned that earlier. Most of you guys know that, but if you didn't know, there's all types of different crab, but like, most commonly used would be the snow crab. You know, everybody, I'm going to say the last 15 years has been trying to use that king crab, you know? So, let me go ahead and make sure. I want to see it boil. But you see that right there? Oh, yeah. Now, you can add crab meat here. You can do it however you want to. Even if it's sitting up here, I just want to make sure that it's been submerged at least once, right? And then if you see these pieces sitting up right here, when they start boiling, it's going to start to steam. I promise you, y'all, this is the way it's going to be. Okay, so, come here, take a look. I'm going to break this again away from myself, let that steam out, because that's a blister getter, folks. All right, let's put that down right there. Look right there. That's it. Remember I talked about the steam? Just because all of it's not submerged, it's okay. It steamed and got it right. Now, I'm going to turn everything off, just like you see. All right, now I'm going to move some of these around. Let's get them in there. You know what I mean? Those who are on the bottom, it's time for you to come up here to the top and let everybody else spend a little time down there on the bottom, all right? So, it's up to you how much and how much heat, you know, how much seafood you put in here. All right, I can't wait, folks. Now, I just pulled my shrimp out. Remember my shrimp? You see how hot it is? I done removed the fire from underneath, right? But you still see a boiler? That's all you need, right? We dump this in the inside. Yes, sir. Remember, it's been marinated with that Clio kick or whatever seasoning you guys put on there. And then we just drop this in here like this. And I'm going to hurry up and put this top on there. And we'll know when they're ready. You see how, when you put them down, they start turning that little pinkish color right there, and they're going to start drawing up. But you want to make sure all your shrimp is underneath. So, now we want to get this flavor and we want to have it cooked, but we don't want it to be overcooked. So, after I added my shrimp, you know, at the end, right? Everything turned off. We let the residual heat cook that. It probably takes about, I think I was saying it would take about five minutes, but it took me about 10 minutes for it to be right, right? So, everything nice and hot. Nothing is overcooked. I will show you. Anyway, it gives me another excuse to go in here and get myself some of this shrimp, you know? So, I can take that. You guys can see, got a little celery right here on top. This one. I'm doing that because you got to do it in the right steps, the right order, so you don't overcook that shrimp. Shrimp come out right like it is right here. Now, check it out. This is what we're going to go ahead and present this in. Okay, so look, I use these little small bowls right here. You know, my little ramekins or whatever. That's the shape, obviously, that you see. I just spray this with a nonstick spray, get it in here, pack it in there, and set it right in the center of whatever I'm going to serve in, and just drop it in there, right? Super easy. And if you guys take a little step back right here, look at that right there. I know everybody, when you say gumbo, you don't be thinking about that, but I like some nice, crunchy French bread. You know what I mean? I just fixed that up for myself because I do like to dip that inside of my gumbo. Okay, so listen, I done took a lot of pictures, did all of that. I've been eating crab like a mother. So I'm getting ready to show you guys, you know, you can see the reaction on my face because I give it every time I eat it. Just look, this is real genuine. Just the first time you ever made, just the first time you ever made gumbo, please follow this recipe. Follow it to a T, cook it like I tell you, and introduce what I introduced at the same time. And I promise you, this will give you success. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and take this one here. Hey, you know what? You guys can talk to me now. What do you gotta do with that knuckle down here? Do y'all save that? I do. I put it in there and I work with it all. Now, since these aren't pre-cut, you know, this is that Dungeons, right? I take a fork. Let's do it like, yeah, like this. I stick just the bottom piece in there. That's got a little chicken on it. We gonna get all, we eating it all. I just take it and I do like this, look. Right? Then once I have it all the way through, broken, then I just, I split it open, just like this. And I'm sure you guys got your own method, but I'm just showing you how I do it. You know what I mean? Like that. Now, you see this piece of meat I'm finna pull out of here like this? Now, I'm finna go ahead and find me a little spot where I can go ahead and give it a dip. Now, I know this ain't fair, this video going out on Sunday. This for all of y'all, Gerald. Hey, this is for everybody that be in there on Sundays. You know what? I'm gonna go ahead and do it like this. Cheers, y'all, and Happy New Year. It's time for us to throw down. Now, you guys let me know again down in the comment section below. You know what I mean? There's many ways to skin a cat. And I never said this is authentic, folks. This is gumbo, though. Real, real good gumbo. You guys try it. Like I said, when it come to the filet, here it is. If somebody want that, put this on the table. When they get their bowl, when they sitting down, everybody can sprinkle a little bit of this on if they'd like to. You know what I mean? Other than that, this right here is nice. Just a combination of shrimp. You know, you got Dungeness crab. Then we got the chicken. You know what I mean? We make that roux right. We put them veggies in there. It got the right color. You guys got the whole thing. But I ain't gonna lie to you, folks. I'm gonna go ahead and get some of this. Oh, the crunchier it is, the better. You know why? Because as I'm wrapping this video up, I'm gonna go ahead and just set that right there for a second and let it go ahead and sop that up. Now, if you're new to my channel, 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 here. There's a channel out here to simplify these recipes. And look at that right there, folks. And take the mystery out of cooking. I'm gonna go ahead and pat myself on the back and put a collar shirt on so I can pop it. I'm out. Peace.