Turkey/Sausage Gumbo with Rouse’s Roux

11/25/2022 – This cook referred to the cook in Thanksgiving 2021 that is here and that one referred to the one in Christmas 2017 that is here. The one in 2017 was inspired by Chef Robert Barker’s recipe on page 41 of Kit Whol’s book New Orleans Classic Gumbos and Soups. The following is a simpler process than those and it turned out great. This cook used Rouse’s dark roux from a jar and Kit’s Creole Seasoning.

The day before this cook smoked a 12 lb. turkey as posted here. Put the bones with a little meat and skin with its smokey aroma into the big old aluminum pot and filled it half full with water. Brought it to a boil and simmered for about 4 hours. Strained it by pouring it through the fine screen strainer into three plastic storage containers (two 16 oz. and one 32 oz) and put them into the refrigerator.

The Cook – See photo for relative quantities

  • Skimmed off the fat from the 3 containers of congealed broth.
  • About half of a 16 oz. jar of dark roux after several adjustments. See notes below.
  • 6-7 cups of turkey broth from the smoked turkey carcass that had been rubbed with Creole Poultry Seasoning. See the three containers in the photo where the grease has been removed.
  • 3 medium yellow onions roughly chopped
  • 6 small bell peppers from the garden
  • 5 stalks of celery chopped large
  • 4 cloves of garlic diced
  • 20″ link of Conecuh Black Pepper Pork sausage
  • 2 pieces of our vac-packed Tasso that when chopped into 1/4″ cubes—made about a heaping cup.
  • 3T Worcestershire Sauce
  • 1/8th cup Chrystal Hot Sauce
  • 2T Kit’s Creole Seasoning
  • one turkey breast and the meat and skin from both wings plus dark meat scrapes. Made a pile that was about 50% larger than the pile of sausage/tasso in the photo.
  1. Warmed up the dark roux adding boxed chicken broth to thin it down as it was very thick. Added about 1/3rd of the veggies. Stirred them into the roux letting it reheat. Kept adding broth as it was too thick. After 20 minutes or so added more veggies and mixed into the thick dark goo. [we started out with about 3/4ths of the jar and that was far too much. Had added some onion and peppers when we dipped out a heaping 2C measuring cup of the dark lumpy goo. Then what was left in the pot coated the new veggies correctly. After all that we watched a video here and liked his advice and techniques with the jar of roux.]
  2. In our everyday square old cast iron skillet—that still had bacon grease from breakfast—sauteed:
    • sausage chopped into bitesize pieces
    • tasso cut into small cubes
    • the garlic until it became fragrant
  3. Add the turkey stock to the roux/veggies as the veggies are starting to wilt.
  4. Add:
    1. Worcestershire
    2. hot sauce. Note this is half of what last cook called for but the dish is likely too spicy for some folks. Must be the tasso added a lot.
    3. contents of the skillet
  5. Let the Gumbo simmer and it looked thin. Added two roux-spoons of the saved roux/veggies from the measuring cup until it looked right. Covered and let it simmer for several hours and turned it off.
  6. About an hour and a half before dinner reheated and added the turkey meat chopped into 3/4″ chunks. Let it simmer until we were ready to eat.

Served around a lump of Jasmine rice. But again forgot to dress with fresh-cut green onions from the garden.

Next time:

  1. Brown the sausage in the stock pot. Remove it and add some bacon grease.
  2. Then add the thick roux to warm and thin by way of the bacon grease and oil from the sausage.