Wood Duck And Andouille Sausage Gumbo
The deep, rich flavors of duck breast and sausage gumbo will make all the time spent whisking your roux worth it
I assure you, I am not being dramatic. When making this wood duck gumbo recipe, you really do need to whisk like your life depends on it. It requires so much whisking because making a roux is essential to gumbo-making.
Your roux will be the base of your gumbo’s flavor profile. On its face, roux-making seems simple. After all, a roux is just flour browned in hot oil. Simple, right? If you’ve never made a roux before, don’t be surprised if you screw it up a few times. Doing so is merely a rite of passage.
When making a roux, you’ll be successful if you do these two things:
- Never walk away from the pot
- Manage your heat level.
To ensure you don’t need to leave the pot, mise-en-place, or prepare all your ingredients before turning the stove on. Take a bathroom break. Crack a cold beer and throw on a good playlist. You’re going to be standing and whisking for the next hour.
When cooking in a heavy-bottomed cast iron Dutch oven, the heat can escape you. Make sure you don’t burn your roux by keeping an eye on your heat level. I usually start at a medium-high setting and work my way down to medium or just below it while making my roux. Keep a close eye on the contents of your pot and stay one step ahead of any potential scorching. You can always increase the heat if the roux isn’t browning like you want. What you can’t do, however, is un-scorch the flour. Once it goes from brown to burnt, just start over. There’s no saving it.
After the roux is sorted, the rest is easy. You’ll pretty much just be making stew. However, one stew-making tip is to add your chicken broth in stages. Doing so gives your gumbo a gravy-like thickness. Because your roux is the thickener and you made it at the beginning, you can’t add more thickener at the end of the recipe. If you add too much stock, there’s no going back, and you’ll end up with a thin gumbo. Adding the stock in stages helps your gumbo stay thick.
Wood duck gumbo is best enjoyed with a crowd of friends or family to help you scrape the pot clean. If you find yourself with leftovers, gumbo freezes well; store quarts of it for up to one year.
Wood Duck and Andouille Sausage Gumbo
Ingredients
- 1 large yellow onion finely diced
- 1 large green bell pepper finely diced
- 4 celery ribs finely diced
- 1 Fresno chili finely diced
- 3 cloves garlic finely diced
- 1 lb andouille sausage sliced into coins
- 1 lb wood duck breasts (about 6)
- 1 qt chicken stock
- ½ cup neutral oil vegetable, grapeseed, avocado, peanut, etc.
- ½ cup all-purpose flour
- 2 cold beers 1 for cooking and 1 for drinking (Abita Amber, if you want to be canonically correct)
- 4 cups cooked rice I used Carolina Gold
- 1 bunch green onions sliced for garnish
Instructions
- Mise-en-place every single ingredient. It must all be prepped, measured, and set aside in its own container, ready to go.
- Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven until it’s almost smoking.
- Sprinkle in the flour and begin whisking until well combined. Continue whisking for the next 40 to 50 minutes until the mixture has taken on the color of dark chocolate. You cannot over-whisk this roux.
- Once the roux has achieved the desired color, add the onion, bell pepper, celery, and Fresno chili. Stir to combine. Once the vegetables are sweated in the roux, add in the garlic. Allow the mixture to sweat again.
- Once all the veggies have been added, add in the andouille sausage. Stir to combine. Cook for a few minutes or until some of the sausage fat has rendered.
- Add ½ of a beer and cook until the liquid is reduced by half.
- Stir in the chicken broth until well combined. Remember, add it in stages; don’t add it all at once.
- Bring the mixture to an even boil. Add the wood duck breasts. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Simmer the gumbo for 2-3 hours.
- Remove the duck breasts from the gumbo and place them in a bowl to cool. Once they are cool enough to handle, shred the duck breasts. Then, return the meat to the pot and simmer it for another 20-30 minutes.
- Tightly pack cooked rice into a ramekin, turn the ramekin out into the center of a shallow bowl and ladle the gumbo around the rice. Garnish with green onions and serve.
Nutrition
