Sunnys Big Easy Chicken And Andouille File Gumbo Recipes

SUNNY'S QUICKEST SAUSAGE "GUMBO" EVER

Steps:

• In a large pot on medium heat, add the butter and sausage. Cook, stirring, until color and a light crust forms on most sides of the sausage, about 5 minutes. Add the pepper and onion blend and tomato paste and cook, stirring, until the bright red of the paste becomes a muted reddish brown, 5 to 8 minutes. Add the Cajun seasoning blend and cook it the same way as the tomato paste, ensuring the spices bloom and become fragrant. Add the stock, bring to a simmer and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes.
• Pour over prepared rice and hit with a shake of your favorite hot sauce.

CHICKEN ANDOUILLE GUMBO

Steps:

• Combine water and chicken in large pot. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until chicken is tender, about 1 hour. Using tongs, transfer chicken to strainer and cool, saving cooking liquid. Remove meat from bones in pieces.
• Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy skillet over medium heat. Add okra and cook until no longer sticky, stirring frequently, about 20 minutes; set aside.
• Stir flour and remaining 1/2 cup oil in heavy large Dutch oven. Cook over medium heat until deep golden brown, stirring frequently, about 6 minutes. Add 4 cups reserved chicken cooking broth, okra, andouille sausage, tomatoes with their juices, bell pepper, celery, garlic, bay leaf, salt, thyme, basil, cayenne, and pepper. Cover partially and simmer until thickened, about 1 1/2 hours.
• Spoon off any fat from surface of gumbo. Add chicken and file powder to gumbo and simmer gently 15 minutes. (If preparing ahead, cover and refrigerate. Bring to simmer before serving.) Mound rice in shallow bowls if desired. Ladle gumbo over and serve.

CHICKEN AND ANDOUILLE GUMBO

Steps:

• Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add the vegetable oil. Add the sausage and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and much of the fat is rendered. Remove the sausage to plate with a slotted spoon.
• While the sausage browns, pour a good amount of flour into a shallow baking dish, and season with salt and pepper. Dredge the chicken with the flour and add to the Dutch oven, in batches if necessary, and cook until brown on both sides. Remove to the plate with the sausage.
• Add the 1/2 cup flour to the Dutch oven and cook, stirring constantly, until light golden brown. Add the onions, peppers, and celery to the Dutch oven and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. Stir in the okra and the garlic and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes.
• Strip the leaves from the thyme into the Dutch oven, and stir in the bay leaves, red pepper flakes, and 6 cups broth. Crush the tomatoes through your hands into the pot. Return the chicken and sausage to the pot, bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer, uncovered, 25 to 30 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Stir in some additional chicken stock to thin the sauce a bit, if desired.
• Stir in the vinegar, scallions, and parsley, taste, and adjust the seasoning.
• Copyright (c) 2004 Television Food Network, G.P., All Rights Reserved.
• 2 cups long-grain rice
• 3 cups water or chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Put the rice in a medium saucepan with a cover. Stir in the water or broth, salt, and pepper. Smooth the rice to make an even surface, cover and heat over low to medium-low heat until all the liquid has been absorbed and rice is tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.
• Yield: 4 servings

FILE CHICKEN GUMBO

Steps:

• To make chicken stock, place all ingredients into 8-quart stockpot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, skimming impurities off the top. Remove chicken pieces. Allow chicken to cool, remove meat from bones, and then return bones to stock. Reserve chicken meat for the gumbo. Continue to simmer stock for additional 2 1/2 hours.
• To make gumbo, begin by heating oil in a large pot (preferably an enameled cast iron or other heavy-bottomed pot) and cooking garlic, onions, peppers, and celery until soft and translucent. Add sausage, tomatoes, tomato paste, and stock. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer and add okra and reserved cooked chicken meat. Season with hot pepper sauce, cayenne, salt, pepper, and file. Simmer for 1 hour until flavors meld together. Stir in chopped parsley. Serve over hot rice and garnish with julienned scallions.

BIG-BATCH ANDOUILLE GUMBO

Steps:

• Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add 1/2 cup of the oil and the sausage, and cook, stirring, until it has browned and much of the fat has rendered, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer the sausage to a plate with a slotted spoon; set aside.
• Add the remaining 1/2 cup oil, and heat. Add the flour, and cook, stirring constantly, until light golden brown, about 3 minutes. Add the onions, peppers, celery and 2 teaspoons salt, and cook, partially covered, lifting the lid to stir occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes (add a splash of water or broth if the mixture begins to stick to the bottom of the pot). Add the okra, garlic, thyme, bay leaves and crushed red peppers, and cook, stirring, until the okra begins to soften, about 2 minutes.
• Add the chicken broth, tomatoes and reserved sausage, and bring to a high simmer. Adjust the heat to maintain a low simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, to heat through the soup and let the flavors meld, about 20 minutes. If you want the soup thinner, add a little more chicken broth or water. Stir in the vinegar, scallions and parsley, and add salt to taste.
• Let the soup cool to room temperature, then divide it among four 1-quart containers and freeze for up to 1 month.
• To reheat: Let the soup thaw in the refrigerator overnight. Bring it to a simmer over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until heated through. Thin it with a little water if desired, and adjust the seasoning with salt. Serve with steamed white rice.

FRIED CHICKEN AND ANDOUILLE-FILE GUMBO

Steps:

• Heat the oil in a heavy 5-quart pot over medium heat. Add the chicken and brown on all sides. Remove chicken and set aside.
• Make a roux by blending the flour into the oil in the pot and stirring constantly with a long-handled spoon until the mixture is a deep coffee brown. Add the sausage, ham, onion, green pepper and celery. Saute, stirring, for about 10 minutes. Add the browned chicken, scallions, garlic, parsley, thyme, bay leaves and enough water to cover, stirring to incorporate the roux into the liquid.
• Stir in salt and pepper and simmer the soup slowly, partly covered, until the chicken is tender, about 1 hour. If you are using the very spicy rind of tasso ham, you will probably not need cayenne or Tabasco. Otherwise, add either toward the end of cooking.
• Take out the chicken and set aside just until cool enough to handle. Pull off the skin and bones and return the chicken to the soup in large pieces. Adjust seasoning if needed. The soup can be prepared in advance up to this point and stored, covered, in the refrigerator for 2 days. Skim fat from soup.
• Bring the soup to a simmer. Five minutes before serving, remove from heat and stir in the file powder. Cover and let stand for about 5 minutes. Do not boil the soup after the file has been added. Mound rice in soup plates and ladle the gumbo over.

CHICKEN-ANDOUILLE FILE GUMBO

Steps:

• Heat a medium, heavy duty skillet over medium-high heat. Add andouille sausage and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned, about 5 minutes. Transfer sausage to a large bowl. Add 1/2 cup water to skillet and scrape bottom to release any browned bits. Set this liquid aside.
• Heat oil in an 8 quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Season chicken pieces with salt and pepper and saute until golden brown, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer chicken to bowl containing sausage.
• Add the flour to the remaining oil in Dutch oven, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon over medium-high heat until roux turn caramel-colored, about 6-8 minutes. Add onion, stirring constantly until roux becomes the color of milk chocolate, 2-3 minutes. Add celery, bell pepper, and garlic, and cook, stirring often, until vegetables are softened, about 4 minutes. Stir in chicken broth, 1 qt of water, the reserve sausage liquid, and the andouille, chicken, bay leaves, and thyme.
• Bring to boil, reduce heat, and simmer uncovered until chicken is falling off the bone, about 45 minutes.
• Transfer chicken pieces to a plate and allow to cool. Once cooled, remove skin and bones from chicken, pull meat into bite size pieces and return to gumbo. Season to taste with salt and pepper if needed.
• Serve in large bowls over 1/4 cup of hot cooked rice per serving. Add scallions and hot sauce to taste. Pass file at the table for everyone to add to taste.

DAD'S CHICKEN AND ANDOUILLE SAUSAGE GUMBO

Steps:

• Get a beer from the fridge and pop it open--you're in for about 30 minutes of stirring over hot hot heat, so you'll need a refreshment (or three, in my case). In a large heavy-bottomed stock pot, start your roux: combine the flour and oil over medium-high heat and stir with a wooden spoon (only use a wooden spoon as a roux will melt plastic). Stir continuously while scraping the bottom of the pot so the roux doesn't burn (I have a wooden spoon with a flat edge, which works best for scraping.) I was very nervous about burning rues until my dad told me that as long as you keep scraping the bottom of the pot and stirring the roux, it's really hard to burn it -- he's right. Your roux will slowly darken from a cream to a caramel to a milk chocolate to finally a dark chocolate color. If it starts really smoking at any time, lower your heat, pull your pot off the burner, and continue stirring until it calms down a bit. It usually takes me three beers to get my roux dark enough. It's a lonely time at that pot, so make sure you have company (or turn the Saints game on).
• Once your roux is dark enough to your taste, throw in what New Orleanians call the Holy Trinity (pepper, onion, and celery) to cool the roux down. Keep stirring until the vegetables are soft, about 8 minutes. Your rue will darken even more and your kitchen will smell delicious! Toss in the okra and stir just until it melts.
• Once the vegetables are cooked, add in your chicken stock, slowly, while mixing it with the roux. You don't want to end up with a watered down gumbo, but the okra will thicken it as it cooks. Add in the tomatoes with juice, the raw chicken, and sausage. If you need more liquid, you can add in some water. Let the gumbo come to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.
• In the meantime, boil your eggs in a separate pot, cool, and peel them. Once the chicken and sausage are cooked, carefully remove them from the gumbo, pull the chicken meat from the bones, chop it and the sausage into bite-sized pieces, then add it all back to the pot. Skim off any foam or fat with a spoon. Add in the boiled eggs and seasonings. Make the rice in a separate pot while simmering the gumbo.
• Serve over white rice with French bread while bragging. Make sure the Tabasco sauce is handy for those who really want to spice up their bowl even more.