Wait, the Just people is Hampton Creek? The fraudsters?
Oops, I guess they are just Just now. But yeah, Hampton Creek started the Just line as their first brand.
Like Timex, my mind has been blow with all of this info on flax and even chickpea … um … sweat.
The chickpea juice stuff was big news in the food world a couple years back, mostly because it seemed so incredibly unlikely.
Is it only chickpea juice, or does it work with ANY bean juice?
It does work with other bean juices, white cannellini beans in particular. I’m sure there’s a list on the internet somewhere.
Speaking of bean trivia, did you know that kidney beans cooked from raw/dried in a slow-cooker can kill you? They are poisonous until boiled for 10 minutes.
Yeah, I almost always do a hard boil for 10 minutes when cooking any beans before putting them into the slow cooker, but its good to remember that kidney beans (and cannellini beans and broad beans) especially need this. You should also discard the soaking water too, if you cook from dry. Proper soaking gets rid of a lot of the toxin. Boiling gets the rest.
Lima beans have a different chemical, but it is also neutralized with a 10 minute hard boil.
Awwwwww yisssssss
Kudos to you for all that patience and not burning the damn thing (which is almost a certainty with me). I plan to be making Gumbo in a couple of days but it will be okra and file powder for me. I just don;t have the patience for a roux.
You NEED to use a roux. Even if you don’t make it that dark, you still need it.
The gumbo is progressing nicely.
It’s a variation on green gumbo, in that it’s got all the greens, but also a bunch of meat, so not really the classic lent dish.
It’s got kale and red Swiss chard, and was cooked with some smoked ham shanks. I just took the meat off the shanks, and added in some andouille sausage.
Yes, it’s essential for the flavor. When you make an especially dark roux, it actually provides almost no thickening power, so that’s why the add in the filé (or the okra, if your Cajun mawmaw didn’t really love you).
Finished making lots more Chinese food. Man, I gotta get a different brand of dark soy sauce; this one turns the whole dish almost black!
@Timex, you’re doing excellently. But definitely sear that Andouille first… And use the resulting oil as part of the roux of course…
Yeah, normally I start with that, and make the roux in a separate pan. But this time i just did it all in one pot, starting with the roux. I probably could have just let the sausage cook the entire time, or pulled it out before starting the roux.
Ok, i freaking nailed this, yo. Final product:
Some things i forgot to mention, the roux was made with a cup of lard, which i happened to have. Lard is pretty good stuff. That, combined with the breakdown of all the stuff in the ham shanks has given it a super good mouth feel. It has the kind of fatty taste in your lips.
In retrospect, Browning the sausage first would have been good, but at the same time i think that it was definitely correct to not have it cook in the gumbo for the whole time, as the texture of the sausage is finer now than if it had simmered for hours.
Another thing, i used a good amount of berebere spice as a primary flavor component, and i would highly recommend it. It goes extremely well in this kind of food, which perhaps makes sense given that cajun and creole good has African roots in some ways.
My only regret is that i cannot take a picture which fully encapsulates how good this is.
Oh, also, i used file powder, as i like the flavor of sassafras.
Gumbo and Chinese look super awesomely delicious!
Perhaps for the modern version, but not necessarily so.
Just to be clear to folks who don’t read the whole thing, that article isn’t saying that a roux basis for gumbo originated in the 1980s, but rather a particular famous chef started a trend of very dark roux based sausage gumbo… Although he also said that was the gumbo his mother made, suggesting that it must certainly didn’t originate when he started serving it in a restaurant.
My statement wasn’t that you literally had to use a roux though, just that a roux adds so much flavor so easily that it’s worth it.
Even if you only go with a light roux, which doesn’t take very long to make, it will add an earthy toasted taste that is awesome.
Mawmaw’s recipe definitely called for a very dark roux; dad remembers her slaving over it for ages when he was a kid. Worse yet for him, it was always game gumbo, deer on a good day, but usually squirrel…