How to Make Gumbo with Our Foolproof (Surprising) Technique and Tips for Perfect Red Beans and Rice

[Music] today on America's Test Kitchen Bridget and Julia reveal the secrets to spectacular chicken and sausage gumbo Jack challenges Julia to a tasting of smoked paprika and Aaron makes Bridget red beans and rice it's all coming up right here on America's Test Kitchen before the Civil War New Orleans drew more immigrants than the ports of Boston Philadelphia or Baltimore it's the melting part of the melting pot which is why New Orleans food much like its culture is an eclectic mix of French Spanish and African cultures voodoo thrown in even everyday food is a lot more interesting hmm you don't just eat a sandwich even muffuletta a po-boy and it's not a doughnut it's a shame they don't mix do they make gumbo there's so much mystery built into New Orleans cooking and today we're taking to New Orleans classics gumbo and red beans and rice and we're gonna give them the Test Kitchen treatments gumbo would be just another stew if it wasn't for the room the roux is everything it sure is and there's so many different types of Rue and the general rule of thumb is the lighter the roux the more it's about thickening and the darker the roots more about flavor less about sickening we have a whole bunch of different kinds of Ruhi r this is a white room this is something that you'll find often most roots are started on the stovetop a little bit of butter a little bit of flour it's cooked together and those come together really nice and light this is something that you would use at the beginning of a classic sauce called a bechamel again it's not about flavor at this point now you see start getting a little bit more color on the Rue and they color as they cook this is something that you might use for something like a Thanksgiving gravy often called a blonde roux it's our favorite room that's nothing called a blonde Roux so it thickens still it adds a little bit more flavor because the flour has started taking on color and color means flavor you start working down this and these two you definitely see these on a lot of New Orleans classic foods all those really Roo centric dishes tons of flavor and less about thickening and you want to kind of cradle it and coddle it until it reaches these beautiful colors here but if you let it go too fast it's ruined and you get that if you hit this just get rid of it because that smells like burnt coffee yep and it will absolutely infiltrate the whole dish now won't we get it all so we're gonna do a much more foolproof an easier safer way and that is with a dry roux and I have a skillet here but I don't have a stove top no you don't you're missing something we're not gonna cook this on the stovetop we're gonna use the oven instead all around heats going to toast just the flour I'm just going to make it much more foolproof for us to use and thicken our gumbo a little later on now this is 1 cup of all-purpose flour when you add it to a skillet this is going to go into a 425-degree oven it's gonna stay in there between 45 55 minutes and what I'm looking for is this flour is going to go from white to the color of ground cinnamon or maybe even dark brown sugar as it cooks and as it colors it's going to start going faster and faster so I do want to keep an eye on it toward the end of cooking so it doesn't matter if you're making a dry room or a traditional wet room that flour does the same thing in the broth to help thicken it into a sauce as the flour disperses evenly into the broth it slowly absorbs the moisture and then as that liquids heated those starches in the flour begin to gelatinize and that's what thickens a broth into a sauce all right Joe a look at the color of this flower it really does look like cinnamon it does now this is what 45 55 minutes does to flour tons of flavor in here but for now just want to get this out of the skillet because if you left it in the skillet it would continue to toast and turn a lot of shades darker so now we're gonna get cooking and our Dutch oven so this is a tablespoon of vegetable oil heating it up over medium heat until that oil it's just starting to shimmer so this is the Trinity onions bell pepper and celery this makes a classic flavor for New Orleans cooking so this is one onion and we've finely chopped it one green bell pepper again finely chopped a lot of people want to use red bell pepper because they like the flavor red bell pepper but it's not New Orleans if I hurry and then to ribs of celery again finely chopped I don't let this go again over medium heat this is nice and soften for about five maybe up to seven minutes smells great smells amazing and just gently softened we're not looking for color there no we're getting that color from the rule eight Iran alright so now we're going to have more spices and a little bit of garlic got three cloves of garlic goes right in we've minced those a couple of bay leaves very Louisiana there and a tablespoon of fresh minced thyme we have a teaspoon of paprika that's just sweet paprika we have a half a teaspoon of cayenne and then we have a quarter teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper and it really only takes about 30 seconds up to a minute you just want to cook this until you start to smell all that all right so now we want to stop them from overcooking so we're gonna add our liquid this is two cups of chicken broth and scrape up any little bits font that might have developed on the bottom of the pan and now two pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs chicken thighs are perfect for this full of collagen intramuscular fat they're gonna break down get really really juicy and tender so I'm going to place them in an even layer right in that pot and it's okay if they're not completely submerged as this cooks the chickens gonna kick off a little bit of its liquid and it will start to cover that chicken so it will cook evenly we're gonna cook this right on the stovetop we'll bring it up to a simmer and once it's there I'll cover the pot reduce the heat to medium-low we're gonna let this cook until the chicken is cooked through that's going to take about fifteen maybe up to 20 minutes 17 minutes Julia and that chicken is cooked through so we're gonna get it out of the pot at this point put on a plate mmm smelling gumbo II it is and that chicken is falling apart it's so nice and tender it really is tender now do you mind turning the heat down a little bit for me you can actually turn it off I'm gonna set that aside we're gonna let that cool for a little bit now in the meantime we're gonna get back to our dry rib I wondered when we're gonna add that in yep so we're not going to add this right into the pot as is you've got another two cups of room-temperature chicken broth and I'll whisk this into the roux just gradually to make sure that it absorbs it well and Eve have you added this toast a flower to that hot liquid it could clump very easily so this is like a slurry it is like a slurry you're tempering it I am back over medium heat pour this right into the gumbo here's the flavor going right in now actually that's a lot of root for that amount of liquid so that's a lot of good flavor that's right because again the darker through the less it is about thickening all right so now it wouldn't be gumbo without and do we stop I agree this is eight ounces cut it into pretty thin pieces about a quarter-inch and this isn't going to cook that long that Anne do is actually precooked super to let this go for about 20 minutes let it just simmer away in the meantime back to the chicken I'm gonna go in there a couple of forks and just start shredding it apart it's easier to do when it's a little bit cooler it tends to come apart easier alright we are all just about done with the gun top just stop it but first I'm gonna fish out there's a little bay leaves some say it's good luck to find one that's somebody who's never choking on one that's right chicken goes back in nicely shredded I might add thank you alright some scallions this is six scallions sliced them and they go so we'll toss this in the sauce oh yeah and marvel at its beauty mm-hmm so I'm gonna turn this off a couple last-minute adjustments now we have a teaspoon of white vinegar this brightens the dish up gonna add a little bit of salt here mm-hmm that looks delicious well the good news is we are ready to eat we've got some white rice martini in the bowl so I love a little rice in the bottom of my gumbo bowl plenty of sauce oh oh you're killing me would you like some hot sauce I would I would mmm going in that one as such a smoky deep flavor of course the chicken super super silky mmm in the end doing nice and tender not dried out it's the flavor of the sauce that gets me though it's just very complex there's just layers and layers of flavor and spice and smoke and it was so easy to make didn't have to worry about standing over a stove and stirring the roux for an hour - yeah that ruin the ovens a good trick yep so to make great chicken gumbo start with the right room a dark dry room aid in the oven after sauteing the aromatics and cooking the chicken turn the roux into a paste using some of the broth then slowly add it to the pot in small increments to prevent clumping finally add the sausage and simmer the gumbo until thickened and there you have it from the Test Kitchen to your kitchen a super easy recipe for chicken and sausage gumbo [Music] smoked paprika is the darling of the spice aisle these days and for good reason it's earthy smoky flavor adds incredible depth to nearly any dish and today jack is gonna tell us if brand really matters here Oh Julia brand certainly matters and in this case it really does I love smoked paprika it's got so much flavor and as you might take from the name the difference between regular paprika and smoked paprika is that they use smoke in the drying process traditionally paprika it is really just a chili pepper is dried outdoors it was done in the Sun now it's done in factories smoked paprika is dried over an oak fire up to 15 days in Spain that's a while yeah it gives a lot of smoke flavor so dig in this is homemade mayonnaise with an awful lot of smoke yeah it's not gonna be spicy there are three kinds of smoked paprika it can be labeled sweet bitter sweet or hot these are all sweet so what you're really looking for is a lot of smoke flavor you're gonna be using a much smaller amount when you're putting it on an egg dish in a soup a spice rub until you really want that flavor because otherwise if it doesn't have the smoke you may as well just be using regular paprika secondary there should be a little fruitiness in the way that you get that sort of fruitiness and really good dried chilies there should be a little bit of food missing almost like raisins we found that the brands that were from Spain generally had a lot of smoked flavor and the ones with 15 days of smoking over oak fire were really smoky some of the brands that are made here in the US frankly we're disappointing they were very very mild they were similar to regular paprika great color not so great on the flavor Department so these are I assume not that difficult to taste because we have and they're tasty they're delicious and they're really even much better when you put them in in something you wouldn't you know that you seem to be enjoying the mayonnaise I'm loving this any impressions about the three samples here yes this one so bland could barely get any smoke there's very little fruitiness tasted like just regular pepper coffee okay this guy had more smoke flavor and was fruity but he was nowhere near as fruity and flavorful as this first guy most more flavor a good fruity background had a lot more going on than this guy who was pretty good that takes the cake all right you are very sure about your opinions I am actually let's see how you did against the tasting panel all right so you start with a loser mccormick mccormick our tasting panel did not like this for the same reason they said where is the smoke there's actually a mccormick gourmet smoked paprika that we did in a pre tasting also bland so neither mccormick product has enough smoke flavor for either you alright next up this guy was my runner-up this was also the runner-up for the tasting panel this is from spain it's dop so it comes from a region called la vera which is in western spain it's really a delicious paprika but it was not our winner and this one which you know really was so different than these others so he is simply organic no this comes from spain despite the name it is smoked in spain bottled in spain but sold here in the US it's delicious yes great flavor it makes anything taste better yeah in this brand you can find at supermarkets and i see this brand around a lot easily found inexpensive it's delicious so there you have it when buying smoked paprika look for the brand simply organic Mondays in Louisiana means red beans and rice for dinner and this tradition goes all the way back to the days when ladies needed to make a hands-off dinner while doing a little bit of laundry well I would do laundry every single day for a big bowl of red beans and rice but it's pretty hard to duplicate outside of the Pelican state luckily Aaron is here to show us the voodoo of red beans and rice red beans and rice is one dish you really need to get right it's a heart and soul of New Orleans cooking and what we wanted was a very hearty dish very smoky and very meaty and our beans needed to be creamy excellent and also we wanted to make this available to everybody because some of the ingredients that are in traditional recipes are hard to find that's right so we're gonna start with the beans okay okay so Camellia beans are the traditional bean down in New Orleans so we thought that we could just buy kidney beans up here we find that their skins are too chewy and that their flesh is too melee so we went and tried a couple of other things our favorite bean was the small red bean this is also called the Mexican bean and this is creamy and that thins were very tender so we're gonna use these and we're actually gonna brine or beans project-- brining beans softens the skins so that the bean says they cook while they don't crack open exactly and it seasons them all the way throughout so I'm gonna add 3 tablespoons of salt to 4 quarts of water it's gonna whisk this to combine have this image right in there and we're gonna let these brine at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours okay so you do this a day in advance exactly ok Bridge a it's time for the meat my favorite part legitimate Louisiana recipes for red beans and rice the signature flavors come from three different pork products so we have an Dewey sausage right here which is pretty easy to find then we have pickled pork shoulder I've never seen in my grocery pickle pork is really important cuz it adds brightness to our red beans and rice and then third we have toss Oh toss Oh is heavily spiced ham that is smoked until it's almost like jerky it's hard to find also but we're gonna find substitute for it yeah I haven't seen this at my grocery store either no me neither okay so come over here so we have four slices of bacon bacon is gonna be part of our solution for the Tasso bacon is gonna give us that pork flavor and also the smokiness that we're missing so this has been rendering for about five to eight minutes until it's nice and brown to the bacon we're gonna add one onion it's been finely chopped 1 small green pepper that's been seeded and finely chopped and one celery rib that's been finely chopped and this is also known as Holy Trinity Holy Trinity is a foundation to most of Cajun recipes well the fridge they have their mirepoix Latin cooking has its sofrito and Cajun and Creole cooking well they have the Holy Trinity they're all doing the same thing which is establishing a flavor base the components of all three are humble and inexpensive vegetables but they're considered indispensable and their respective traditions these all-important Benj sort of disappear in the finished dish we like to think of them as the unsung heroes of the ingredient world their flavors permeate the food and without them well the dish would simply taste flat and one-dimensional so our vegetables have softened these have cooked for about 6 or 7 minutes and now we're ready for our spices great so because we're not using the toss so we need to make up for the spices that we're lacking so we're gonna add 1 teaspoon of paprika 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne and we're adding 3 garlic cloves that we've minced 1 teaspoon of thyme leaves and also 2 bay leaves so we're gonna cook this until it's fragrant about 30 seconds Oh smell it absolutely so I've drained and rinsed our brine beans and I'm gonna add them to the pot and I'm gonna add 3 cups of chicken broth and 6 cups of water a lot of the old recipes for red beans and rice call for all water and then a lot of the more modern versions call for a chicken broth and so we tried both and we found that this was a perfect ratio that's great and there's just enough chicken broth in here but not so much that it's going to overtake that pork exactly yes we want that pork flavor to come through so we're gonna bring this up to a boil and once it comes to a boil we're gonna cut it back but we're not gonna cut it back to like a very low simmer like usually you'll cook beans we want this to be at a vigorous simmer and we want that because we want the beans to kind of knock against each other and really throw off their starches because we want this to be creamy dish about the beans to be creamy and you're gonna be surprised that the beans are gonna hold their shape okay so this has been simmering vigorously for about 45 minutes and the beans are just tender but they're not exploded and they're not exploded yet you were right yep but now we're gonna move on to our other two key ingredients and do a sausage which is a must so we're gonna add 8 ounces I mean do we sausage shall we cut into bite-sized pieces okay not only we're gonna heat the andouille sausage through we want to impart the smoky spicy flavor into our beans okay and then the next key ingredient is pickled pork shoulder which as we mentioned is very very very hard to find we did try making our own pickled pork shoulder and it was a three day process and that's something that nobody's gonna want to do a shot in the dark we tried adding just a teaspoon of vinegar it added the brightness it ities at that pork added to it so this is magic magic in a small bowl one teaspoon of red wine vinegar and we're just gonna continue to cook this for about 30 minutes until the beans are fully cooked and creamy and have thrown off all that nice starch to make that very creamy liquid so now we're gonna move on to the rice here we have two cups of long grain white rice can you please put that in the colander and just rinse it until the water runs clear what we're doing is renting off that excess starch and it's gonna really help us to produce a very fluffy white rice at the end sounds good meanwhile I'm gonna melt a tablespoon of butter rice is rinsed and ready captain good job all right our butter is just about melted okay so now we're gonna start to Harrow rice what we're gonna do is we're just gonna coat the rice in the fat and we're gonna cook it until the rice starts to become aromatic and also the translucent this is a really important step in making any rice dishes okay so our rice is ready we're gonna add three cups of water and a teaspoon of table salt so that's a one to one-and-a-half ratio of rice to liquid now that's different from the back of the box package which often has a 1 to 2 so in those directions they would have 2 cups of rice and 4 cups of our what that does is it actually creates very gummy rice oddly enough using less water means it's less water to be absorbed by that rice and you get fluffier more tender grains exactly which is what we want so we're gonna bring this up to a boil over high heat and once it comes to a boil I'm gonna reduce it down to low and I'm gonna put the lid on it let it simmer for about 18 minutes just until all that water is absorbed once the water is absorbed I'm gonna take it off the heat I'm gonna take the lid off I'm gonna wrap it up with a towel and I'm gonna let it sit on the back burner for about 15 minutes to just steam all right so our beans are a perfect Brigitte we're close to done we were close to that yes yep see how they've reduced a bit and that liquid is nice and creamy yes and the beans are still intact not soupy not soupy I'm gonna remove the Daley's that we added so now I'm just gonna add a splash of red wine vinegar we added a teaspoon earlier but at the end I'm just gonna add a couple more drops just to make it pop I'm just gonna taste it to see if it needs any salt I know it doesn't meet pepper because we had we had a lot earlier Leah's perfect great you're gonna love it excellent you'll love it that is very fluffy rice because we rinsed that starch off it's nice because there's still enough of that brothy sauce in there and it's creamy sauce oh yeah here are some scallions and some hot sauce help yourself thank you even before I tuck into this what I'm amazed by and I was really really skeptical about look at the beans I mean they are all intact and that was despite that vigorous simmering let's push your brain it is so tender Ridgid they're really tender I guess would be good for me to eat or I could just subscribe it to you from mm-hmm melt-in-your-mouth tender in fact I can't believe that they look like this in the bowl because when you go to eat them I know they just fell apart your mouth it's perfect a lot of smoke in there between the bacon and the doing and poor little rice underneath not getting any love for much that rice is fluffy tender and ready to soak oh yeah a beautiful creamy sauce it's doing its job make Monday's red beans and rice day in your home the key is using the right substitutions for hard-to-find ingredients cook smoky bacon and place of Tasso ham then sauteed the Trinity for authentic Louisiana flavor at garlic paprika and lots of pepper along with brined small red beans and those are a fine sub for camellia brandings add plenty of andouille sausage and little red wine vinegar to take the place of briny pickled pork shoulder and there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen the most satisfying red beans and rice new laundry necessary and you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website America's Test Kitchen exceptional don't go for hot sauce yeah you know me all right give me a hit thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and 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Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 360,911

Rating: 4.8700275 out of 5

Keywords: americas test kitchen, cooking, cooking show, how to, public television, gumbo, chicken, sausage, red beans, rice, how to cook rice, red beans and rice, rice and beans, recipe, new orleans, louisiana, how to make a roux, roux

Id: inHVUFKSdy4

Length: 22min 16sec (1336 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 22 2018