Ingredients

Roux:

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup all-purpose flour

Or other Roux method.  Roux should be about 2-3 cups. If you buy Tony's Instant Roux 5 oz mix, that's the way we do it.

1 large onion, chopped

1 large green bell pepper, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

2 large carrots chopped

1-2 bunches sliced green onions

4-8 cloves garlic, minced

1 pound andouille or smoked sausage, sliced 1/4 inch thick. 

Could also add shrimp and/or lump crab meat and/or bay scallops if desired.

32 ounce unsalted vegetable or chicken stock (4 cups).

2 cups of water (or 2 additional cups of stock).

1 tablespoon white sugar

Salt to taste

Black pepper to taste

1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper

1 tablespoons hot pepper sauce (such as Tabasco)

1-2 teaspoons Cajun seasoning blend

4 bay leaves

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes

We've also made this just dicing 6 tomatoes and putting them in.

1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce

2 teaspoons gumbo file powder

2 tablespoons butter

20 ounces of okra

2 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar (less is ok)

2 tablespoons or Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons of gumbo file powder.

2 Zucchini sliced into 1/4 inch thick rounds

1 cups of cooked white rice per serving.

Cooking Directions

Make the roux by whisking the flour and oil over medium heat for 8-10 minutes (or other roux method ... we actually prefer just buying Tony's Roux mix and doing that method).

Place celery, carrot, onion, green onions, green bell pepper, and garlic into a food processor and pulse until the vegetables are finely chopped.  Stir them into the roux.

Let simmer over medium low heat until vegetables are tender, 10-15 minutes.

Add vegetable stock and water and to roux mixture.

Add sugar, salt, ground black pepper, hot sauce, ground red pepper, cajun seasoning, bay leaves, thyme, stewed tomatoes, and tomato sauce to the roux mixture.  Simmer over low for 45 minutes.  Then add 2 teaspoons of the file gumbo powder and simmer for another 15 minutes. 

In a sauce pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and cook the cut okra with vinegar over medium heat for 15 minutes.  Remove okra with a slotted spoon and put in the the simmering gumbo.  Add Worcestershire sauce and simmer for 45 more minutes. 

Add zucchini rounds and cook for 10-15 minutes. While the zucchini rounds are cooking, you can also start to cook the meats and then also make the croutons if you are doing that.

For the meats, we normally cook all meats separately in a skillet and then add the amount of gumbo to that skillet per the number of servings we are going to have.  Since this makes a lot, gumbo is normally a 3 or 4 night meal for us, doing this is a good way to get the proper portions per bowl.  If you are going to make this for a lot of people and have them over, you could put the meats into the gumbo after browning them. Normally the andouille and crab meat are already cooked, so you are just heating them up and getting a little bit of browning on them. For shrimp and/or bay scallops, you will want to make sure to cook them but not overcook them.

Just before serving remove the bay leaves and add 2 teaspoons of file gumbo powder.

Serve over white rice.