Super Bowl Dining

In honor of the Super Bowl being in New Orleans this year, I decided to go Cajun with my February cooking project. Chicken and Andouille Gumbo and Honey Corn Muffins was the call. I love corn muffins, and I had been sitting on this recipe for the longest time. Making the gumbo gave me the perfect opportunity to use the recipe and put together my meal idea. I had made the gumbo before back in college, but I had never made the corn muffins before so I was excited about this project.

 Prepped gumbo ingredients

I learned from my last attempt that prepping all of the ingredients made cooking everything much easier so I started the night before by chopping the onion, green pepper, and celery. I measured out the flour, salt, and cayenne and sliced up the andouille sausage right before starting to cook. Not pictured above are the chopped scallions prepped the day before or the chicken that I cut into cubes and rubbed with the chicken rub pictured above.

Roux

Making gumbo is an exercise in patience. The first step is making the roux. Roux is a thickening agent for many French sauces and normally involves cooking flour and some form of fat. In this case the fat was canola oil. The roux basically consisted of me heating the oil in the pot, dumping in the flour, and stirring constantly for nearly half an hour on medium heat. The result was the chocolate colored gloop seen above.

Simmering soup

After making the roux I dumped in the onion, green pepper, and celery and stirred them around to get them covered in the roux and also soften. From there I threw in the sausage, salt, cayenne, and bay leaves and poured in the 3 cans of chicken stock. After stirring to combine all of the ingredients, patience was once more required. At this point the gumbo needed to be brought up to a boil and then simmered for 2 hours. During the two hours I stirred here and there, but it really was left to its own devices. During this time I cubed the chicken and put the rub on, defrosted half a pound of frozen okra, and minced up some cilantro.

I had hoped to use fresh okra, but I couldn't find any on our grocery shopping excursions. The frozen okra worked quite well, though. I didn't use okra my first time, but I wanted to add some more vegetable matter to the gumbo this time around, and it's also a good thickening agent. Traditional gumbo doesn't use okra and instead uses file powder as a finishing and thickening agent after the soup is fully cooked.

Once the 2 hours was complete, I threw in the chicken and okra. At this point I had to continue simmering the soup for another hour while skimming the fat from time to time. I think I should have stirred up the soup from time to time as well, though, because some of the flour burned to the bottom of the pot. It didn't make the gumbo taste bad or anything, but it was disappointing to be spooning out the gumbo and run into a block of blackened flour at the bottom. What's worse was that pieces of food got caught in there too. It was sad, but overall it didn't affect the gumbo.

After this last hour finished, I mixed in the chopped scallions and cilantro. This is where the file powder would come in, but a) I didn't have any and b) the okra thickened it up perfectly.

Finished gumbo

I thought overall the gumbo was a little salty. The combination of the chicken stock, sausage, seasoning on the chicken, and the added salt itself turned out a touch heavy on the overall saltiness. I think if I were to make this again I would either add less salt or cut the chicken stock to two cans and add one can's worth of water. The gumbo had a nice spicy bite to it, though. That came from the andouille and cayenne. Overall I was pleased with how it turned out, but I certainly have some tweaks I would incorporate next time.

I was extremely pleased with how the honey corn muffins came out. The batter consisted of flour, corn meal, salt, sugar, baking powder, butter, eggs, milk, and honey. As with all baking, proper measurements are required. So in classic me form, I totally mismeasured the ingredients. Instead of pulling out a half cup measuring cup to measure out a full cup, I pulled out a 2/3 cup measuring cup. I had to measure out an extra 1/3 of every other ingredient so instead of making 12 muffins, I got to make 16. In the end it worked out, but it was still a pretty stupid mistake on my part.

 

Corn muffin batter

To make the batter, I combined all of the dry ingredients and sifted them together in the bowl. I then melted the butter and added it to the wet ingredients and whisked it all together. After dumping the wet into the dry, I stirred it all up until it was a nice, smooth glop. After distributing the batter into the 12 paper muffin cups (and then an additional 4 later), I baked them up into corn muffin goodness.

Finished corn muffins

The corn muffins weren't as sweet as I was expecting, and I think I might add additional honey next time. They had a good corn flavor to them, and while they were balanced between the saltiness and sweetness, I still prefer corn muffins to be a little sweeter. The only drawback, which isn't that much of a drawback, is that they're really dense. The leftovers made for a nice breakfast in the coming days.

The overall meal was very successful. When paired together, the saltiness of the gumbo wasn't as evident. I don't think that's the answer to the saltiness of the gumbo, but it made it more bearable. I was extremely pleased with how the meal turned out, and I was glad that I took the time to play around with the original gumbo recipe. I've also identified ways to play with both recipes and think they'll turn out even better next time.

The whole meal (and subsequent leftovers) didn't actually cost that much either:

Gumbo

Andouille sausage ($8.88)

Celery ($0.19)
Okra ($1.20)
Onion ($0.96)
Green peppers ($0.31)
Bay leaves ($0.30)
Scallions ($0.50)
Cilantro ($0.25)
Cayenne pepper ($4.29 for package - $0.04)
Flour ($0.40)
Chicken
Chicken broth ($0.72 x 3)
Salt
Vegetable oil
Emeril rub
Total: About $15 (excluding ingredients we already had)

Honey Corn Muffins

Eggs ($0.62)
Butter ($0.29)
Milk ($0.76)
Cornmeal ($0.43)
Flour ($0.60)
Baking powder ($0.26)
Salt
Sugar
Honey
Total: About $3 (excluding ingredients we already had)