Recreating Leah Chase's Gumbo from Taste | Bon Appétit

hi its Sola from the v8s kitchen and we're here today to have a secret conversation about Chris Morocco once again we're going to be putting his super taster abilities to the test this is Leah Chase's creole gumbo we're challenging Chris to replicate this dish with every ingredient in just two days he'll be able to taste it touch it smell it but at no point will he be able to look at the dish at the end of the second day I'll come back taste his final creation and then I will be the judge [Music] huh that's that's the apron what's cool is like what kind of tentacle is that so I'm definitely getting kind of seafood kind of aroma okay so we have kind of like the whole sort of like left wing if you will of a crap body really interesting kind of spicy undertones so got shrimp we have like a coin of a pork sausage this is also kind of furthering my belief that this could be gumbo or jambalaya we have a lot of flavor being washed out of it from having been cooked in this working title stewey situation so it's stripped out a little bit of like the spice and nuance it seems like maybe it's like got a little bit of like kind of smokiness to it a little hard to say I feel like the traditional sausage in a dish like this would be andouille sausage whoa if something about the texture of this it's like not just like standard meat it's like organ like sweetbreads it's like no clue what that was the texture was like meaty nay bacony kind of dried out but like really there almost no flavor of its own I don't know that that freaked me out a little bit whoa slippery little suckers huh Oh eat that taste where the trash Oh tasted like a flaccid little tough nugget of liver ate that shrimp great big what so now I seem to have a pocket of braised meat which I'm tentatively calling pork shoulder so now we have like another sausage oh my god you guys so this one actually has like quite a bit of pepperiness quite a bit of bite to it so we need like a kind of like a one-inch very spice forward sausage so the other one was like a little bit milder like a mild and dewy like a kielbasa something like that we also need like a very peppery kind of like Cayenne forward smaller sausage is that a chicken neck have no frame of reference for what this is no it's so supple and so tender though soul are you back there what do you know about a pigtail a lot of fat right chewy okay at first I was like oh is this like a chicken neck but these feel like too big to be a chicken back these are like burly right yeah I don't okay this little number this seat feels like it's almost feels like I haven't had it anymore here we have like another bony something with like a fatty rich something all around it Oh chicken wing sorry I'm back so now I'm getting down to where there is lots of texture I don't know that's freaking me out that feels like just like some like a like a lump of like fat this and this I'll give you one we'll do it together how about that what does it taste like doesn't taste like anything is that cheese briny Oh guys waster this one's a workout now I'm just taking a bite of the thing so the flavor is actually a little bit more understated than maybe I was like initially led to believe I'm getting like all the flavors of the meats kind of coming into it I say there's probably like onion and garlic some green pepper maybe it's spicy in like a Creole seasoning way you know there's like a little pop of like dried red chili heat a lot of pepper salt could this be another ruse itchin I feel like from past experience you know jambalaya or gumbo is thickened with Feli powder it's like ground sassafras leaves which is kind of like a thickening agent but without being like crazy bound and the rice is obviously kind of hydrating as this cooks so I'm gonna lean on like no Roux but like maybe a thickening agent of some kind I would call this jambalaya and say maybe Emeril all right I think I'm done here I need ready to take the blindfold off ready to live my life in terms of our shopping list of proteins we've got crab something medium sized shrimp two pork sausages pretty sure that was liver cuz I had such a violent reaction to it sweetbreads her kidney I don't it will pick up both if we're looking at a pigtail wing flats and then oyster what happened no I got locked out of my house what I have an emergen just ate so much organ meat and like slippery seafood bits and like different doing it's like barnyard and like a tide pool in one dish pig tails I've never had a pigtail or maybe or hobbits it was some part of a animal it was like under cross which I didn't like bite the bone was it rice that was rice in there was it real loose it was like thick it was tight he was tight is your chicken in it - yeah there's wings wings this ain't jambalaya this is somebody's jumbo is some goulash this is like these a rodeo in your bowl this is wild I think it's something someone just ripped on all of this and made a veggie goulash all right I got a I go back to work all right this is exciting all right real quick cuz I have to go onion garlic maybe like a dried chili paprika kind of situation feel a with the accent rice cool so I'm gonna grab my list head to the supermarket and see what I can find there [Music] I'm just getting at least one green pepper option I'm gonna get a couple safety Chili's we're gonna get some garlic and onion spices I've got hot paprika and sweet paprika I feel like feel a powder would definitely be in the spice section but I could be wrong if only it were that easy Emeril essence we got to get this let's check out sausages all right so I'm getting andouille here wings chicken liver by far my least favorite thing about the dish so we're gonna need some seafood hi how you doing could I have a half pound of the wild shrimp please and could I also have four Easter's that actually takes care of most of our proteins aside from a pigtail and possibly sweetbreads or other weirdly textured organ meat I'm also gonna get some whole peeled just a couple small cans of whole peeled tomatoes that all puree myself also while we're over here let's check out rice I think honestly what we want is just basic AF long grain white rice that's it I think that's it we're done [Music] all right we just got back from the supermarket I've been trying to organize my thoughts as to what sequence all of these ingredients need to be put into a pot I'm under a lot of time pressure here I I see myself down a fun beverage hmm so I'm just gonna make the sofrito sofrito is just like your aromatic base of vegetables usually some combination of punya garlic pepper could be celery carrot depending on what you're making I'm gonna go for combination of green bell pepper and then jalapeno that I'm gonna seed I'm just gonna pulse up the base for my sofrito I just want it to be super fine and I want to cook it out until it's like kind of pasty I want this sofrito to end up as closer to a paste this is gonna take a little while to cook out so I just want to have it going on the side in a separate pot over here I'm gonna start browning off some of that meat develop a little bit of a Fond that we can then kind of deglaze it's gonna be great don't worry so I've got pigtail chicken neck and sweetbreads from veal so the supermarket didn't have these ingredients I asked for them and our intrepid culinary team went out and sourced them on very short notice or they just had them in the back and they're totally with me I'll never know this is like a nice smoky you know hopefully fairly peppery andouille sausage and then this is a kielbasa also a smoked sausage this is a combination of beef and pork I just want the flat of the way chicken neck throw a couple of these in so it turns out that pigtails are a little bit bigger than I was expecting what I had in the original dish was not pigtail this looks like mini ox tails much more likely looking now what I tasted and felt was chicken neck and it does look like a richer darker meat you know and maybe it does get that rich more shreddy texture that I was experiencing I don't know I mean it's a real kind of mind now so sausage I just kind of gave a little bit of color to and then I'll keep browning this stuff right here just putting a little each of these paprika's in so like this is the moment where if I wanted to use flour and create you know like some kind of roux but you have a roux and then have feel a powder I mean it's nothing like feel a powder is something that I can taste I'm gonna try not doing the flour today how about that so I was just a little half can of tomato now I want to cook this out we're gonna see how this one does today in terms of any changes tomorrow I'm gonna start to bring this up with some water I'm gonna deglaze like those brown bits on the bottom of the pot and get this cooking so you can see even just the color of the water as we deglaze these you know bits water is pulling some of the color off of our browned meat all that is good stuff and then what I might do right now put in half so that kind of gives us something like that oh hello buddy so I've got shrimp I will be dropping the shrimp right into the stew I'm shucking an oyster although I'm not doing a very good job of it there we go just want to keep it intact and in its own liquor I assume this is a blue crab they're gonna go in our lake weight we're gonna cook them off and Hansie is gonna tell me how long 8 to 10 minutes ok go 8 to 10 minutes so this is our kielbasa our mixture of beef and pork [Music] what do you know about jambalaya okay it appears that I'm nothing right person via that's consulting here sorry that's all right it's a good gut check thanks ma'am let's pull these out let's see where we're at crabs are out rice got to go in we're gonna get it even somewhat cooked on time not putting a lot of rice in so this is chicken liver I don't have like some big beef with like chicken liver mousse or whatever but just the liver hanging out like a fart in a car I don't need that shrimp just went in just want to poach them up in here livers just going in I'm so short on time it's like not even funny all right we're gonna let this go for just a few minutes all right cool wasters coming in it's gonna kind of dot them around in there all right so this is my first version of the dish not bad for first crack there's a lot of flavor going on in here I think I have most of the elements I am questioning whether there could be an herb you know there always the possibility of another spice or something wondering about the placement of the rice whether that feels right I don't hate this actually but I maybe I'll have a better sense when I taste the dish again tomorrow morning right ingredients I'll give myself an 82 taste look I will give myself a solid 85 there maybe even an 86 this is where I'll put myself at 70 I feel like these things could be added in any kind of order you could have two pots coming together into one pot everything could be dumped in a pot and brought up together like Doc baulkham tongue style nose appearance I'll give myself a 78 I mean there's crab sticking out of a bowl and there's a whole bunch in it I didn't like put up a burger here you know I'm just like waiting for that stupid actually score to just pop up there all right so that puts me at a 79 percent or C+ average this is my first pass but I've got one more chance to taste the dish tomorrow before I have to make a final version for Sola and I'm a little bit freaked out [Music] okay let's get into it alright so we've got our crab here I want to just see if I can determine if there might be something on the surface all right so I've got an herb here and I'm gonna call that for parsley he was like mine ugh this is like the nug of doom that now just tastes like a slightly dry piece of chicken thigh I guess it's probably not sweetbreads it just doesn't really have like any flavor whatsoever but if I had to say you know maybe I'll do some like boneless skinless chicken thigh and roll with that so we have our very smoky spicy and doing we had our mild sausage earlier we've got shrimp duh we've got a chicken neck so it seems like you guys gave me some drum apps today like this actually has flavor this tastes like a lump of hunk of pork shoulder Wow that wing is was like falling apart I feel like it's got to have been cooked in there for a while I think there is a reasonable question to ask in terms of like was this wing possibly just dropped into the stew not browned off ahead of time same thing with the pork shoulder I don't know in terms of how I imagined this dish would be constructed it still makes sense to me to brown off the meat that kind of wants to be browned off one thing that tells me that the sausage certainly like spent a decent amount of time in the liquid to see how the skin on the sausage is kind of like cupped like that it's only gonna do that when it's been sliced and then added to the liquid that kind of tightens that casing up and makes the sides kind of bulge out like that giving you that little dip in there the texture of the rice in here is perfect I think now that this rice has been cooked on the side not really anywhere that different from where I was yesterday in terms of flavors I'm wondering if there's just like some other herb I could be putting kind of in with my sort of chili there's something about it the interaction with that kind of broth I was thinking dried oregano I think I'm good all right let's maybe make our aromatic base here let's get some meat sweating so I've got boneless pork shoulder this was not easy yesterday but only because I forgot to use it yesterday I've decided to go ahead and sear off the meat the chicken wings I feel like we could kind of go high they're way on some of the seafood obviously you know you just it makes sense to drop it in at the very end so I just pulled it without thinking about it too hard because I do have a certain amount of affection for this pot but it's a disc bottom pot so you have multiple layers of a metal only in the center of the bottom so you get these like stupid hot spots all around the edge just don't get very even cooking not being into it before I build up too much bond in the pot that's really upsetting me I just want to transfer change course you know you feel something is going wrong got to do something about it right away so we're not going crazy trying to get like masses of color on this meat just like sweat out some of that fat develop a little more fun so I've got my mild kielbasa and then I've got my smoky peppery andouille sausage I don't know why I'm having such a hard time with those like meaty little no I don't know if I'm just making it way more complicated than it needs to be so I've got my aromatic base it's gonna pulse it up so we got our aromatic base in the pot it's picking up all that fond I don't want to rush this I want to cook off the water and then I want to just give like a light brown and super concentration to this correct me if I'm wrong but the Holy Trinity refers to onion garlic and then pepper and green pepper specifically onion celery pepper what's that oh you did right with celery do I need to put some celery in here yeah all right give me a celery stock quick quick quick quick I've got to get it in there I don't often put celery in my aromatic bases but it's easier this cuz I can't be bothered to like have it around at home all right celery is now in so I've got some hot paprika sweet paprika a good bit of black pepper oregano now that's giving me like zesty this is a tomato puree just going in we're gonna cook it out again real hard see how concentrated that tomato is it's almost turned into you know kind of paste that's good like that tomato is cooked out we're not gonna have any more of that kind of tin ECAM tomato flavor cooking out tomato is something that I firmly firmly firmly believe in I think at this point we can also add these kind of long cooking meats I put one chicken thigh in there I'm gonna see how it behaves we're gonna let this situation come up to a simmer turn the heat down simmer it gently probably check it in like an hour all right so I'm gonna slice some sausage and get it in along with our crabs I want to go ahead and steam off our little friends there today the rice is being cooked separately I want a little more heat here great so we are peeling the shrimp liver crab pretty good maybe just a pinch of salt and then liver and shrimp can go in and then I think we're like basically there all right so straight up we have to break with our normal format for the show which is that normally on the second day I cook the dish twice but because this dish takes a little while to cook I'm just doing one version of the dish today that I have to serve to stola so unfortunately out of time but those are the breaks and I think it's gonna be all right rice on the bottom these are wasters that we had shuck this morning [Music] parsley there you have it Emeril Lagasse's insanity gumbo how you like them apples four ingredients I would give myself in eighty three taste I'm gonna go with eighty six technique ooh let's call this 84 appearance 88 so that averages me out at 85 I don't think I'm gonna get an 85 from Sola she doesn't even give herself 85 I'm so curious to find out who the developer of this dish was what it's called and how it's actually made and what the ingredients are here we are okay let me get into it so it's just like it's so hard all right ready so yeah Chris okay I want to present you with Creole gumbo by Leia chase from the Dooky chase restaurant I mean they look really close look at that is that ham that's what the cube was oh that's the cube how did cube lead you to chicken thigh it didn't really yeah I put like half of a chicken thigh and then saw how it behaved and I don't even want to acknowledge the fact that it's even in there I thought it was sweetbreads you thought the cube of sweetbreads yeah I had like a like an organ e yeah yeah you know what I mean tonight together yeah sure that does not taste like ham it does not taste like ham she just said it does not taste like him but like crab crab shrimp shrimp you got sausage Leah Chase's the Creole queen and this is a recipe from the Giudices restaurant so it is gumbo it is gumbo I'm so glad you came back from the jambalaya journey so we are gonna try the original okay and then the crisp Persian it's quite a light gumbo for sure no roof no no there isn't room ah there's ruling here is there fili powder there's fili powder this does not have the consistency of something with the room in it yeah I feel like it was just there for flavor for depth I'm gonna make you a perfect bite of this okay ready I'm just gonna make you a taste of the block I mean you're gonna get everything you need from me right I need to like sit there and eat the proteins do no that's fine it sounds a lot of body and I was concerned about that it felt like there was a little too much body from you know my aromatic base is there tomato in there oh yeah I put to me yeah I probably wear that body like spirit like a small amount of puree just like cooked out hard ingredient was it looks like you did pretty good what sausages what proteins what little animal tidbits did you choose pork shoulder pork shoulder okay I think that was the hardest ingredient which was actually feel ill veal who eases feel like I haven't seen deal in years I was blown away by it and then I had an andouille sausage nailed it I had a kielbasa or like a mild you know compounded sausage the judges will allow it then I had chicken neck perfect I had chicken wings crushing it I had crab you got the crabs never craps well they didn't everyone calm down shrimp shrimp pepper it was gizzards I thought it so close though so close are you brown off the liver too and know that in that you don't put it that I just slept in okay can you tell me about your procedure I browned off my pork shoulder wing chicken back built some fond and then I had an aromatic base on top of that paprika black pepper oregano I didn't end up using dried thyme just oregano oh so close with that time so close was there time in there it was time almost I'm in a little bit of tomato puree on top of that and then I used water just cuz your order of operations were not correct nothing's ground yeah all the brown flavor comes from the medium brown room yeah interesting okay the way that this creole gumbo is made so you start by putting the crab sausage veal gizzard all in a pot with no oil and then meanwhile in another skillet he'll make your room there's no aromatic base once you've got your room right nice and dark the onion goes in there no sweat down then that onion Roux situation gets poured on top of your steamed crab and sausage deal you slowly add water stirring the whole time so the root dissolves and then you throw in all of your proteins Wow everything just goes in there and then the oysters go in for the last bit just to like warm through okay and is there a frico in there hot paprika okay all right so you got that I mean I would have never done it this way never ever it would have never occurred to me to make it than ever so time for the score okay your favorite part yeah even though I feel like the veal for pork like whatever that's like that was an impossible one well we'll let that slide the weird cubes those cubes don't taste like anything thank you okay I appreciate who cares what those who hate that but then maybe like the bigger errors was the addition of stuff sure so how do you feel about a solid low B yeah look at 82% greater I know it took me a long time to have you know that taste is great I mean if you closed your eyes and took I mean like tomato notwithstanding take a take a flavor a little a little tasty taste of that huh 95% this is great technique Oh technique technique Oh God all come scratches okay I mean I can take him 65% of the technique was way way off yeah yeah appears besides the tomato and like there's some more body here they pretty much look the same how do you feel about 87 percent yep why be so that tabulates to 82 percent oh my god okay that's my eat way more respectable than I would have thought right this one was really tricky and it was tricky you know they're all tricky but like this was like so unexpected Thanks hey thank you seriously appreciate it thank you seriously every day there are no real closing thoughts this is a tough one I definitely learned something here doing the dish the way I did it there definitely would not have been time to do it all over again but now I know what's frustrating to me is that like I keep coming very close with a lot of things but there's just always something whether it's an ingredient or a technique that is not immediately readily apparent and ends up biting me in the ass and I don't want to get bit in the ass anymore I feel like we are so far from being done with types of dishes that would be appropriate for this I feel like there are so many different cuisines you know we haven't even touched and just looking forward to the next challenge which got their female flipper over you know that's a male we are in uncharted territory I'll show you how flip it over again say this one kind of looks like it and that is it that's the male that's it but little fun fact crab yeah just so you know cool

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 1,842,677

Rating: 4.9265237 out of 5

Keywords: reverse engineering, chris, chris morocco, chris bon appetit, chris makes, chris reverse engineering, chris test kitchen, blind cooking, blindfood cooking, cooking challenge, blindfold cooking challenge, taste testing, gumbo, gumbo recipe, make gumbo, making gumbo, how to gumbo, how to make gumbo, chris makes gumbo, chris gumbo, gumbo bon appetit, leah chase, leah chase gumbo, cook gumbo, cooking gumbo, leah chase recipe, leah chase gumbo recipe, food, bon appetit

Id: mfrqxqR4bJo

Length: 30min 31sec (1831 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/LilUziFlirt_]

I love how chris always gets stuff right in his initial tasting and doesn't go that route because he thinks its too crazy. This must be a lot harder than it looks.

[u/AjaxTFC]

Chris shit talking shrimp and chicken gizzards had me in stitches.

"Shrimp. Great. Big whoop."

Edit: I'm 8 minutes in and I've never heard so many bleeps in a BA video. Chris Morocco coming in hot today.

[u/Rated_PG-Squirteen]

"It tasted like a fucking flaccid, little, tough nugget of liver, and I fucking hate that shit!"

Me too, Chris. Me too.

[u/Font-street]

Also...

... I do miss the hubbub of the Test Kitchen, so thank you.

[u/smudgy-inkblob]

One of the great things about Chris is that he has a very mild but particular vibe, while also having a potty mouth.

[u/mynumberistwentynine]

Leah Chase's recipe not having bell pepper and celery in it is surprising to me, but then she's the Queen of Creole Cuisine and I'm not so what do I know. Either way, really interesting recipe and unlike others I've had before, that's for sure.

Also, this was a really tough challenge with lots of hard to pick out components. Doable, though. At least it didn't contain some random cheese.

[u/[deleted]]

A Sohla episode of recreating from taste! Hooray!

[u/gendry2402]

Nug of Doom new band name called it

[u/myman580]

That ending lol. Brad always coming in to lighten the mood.