The turkey rises, like a Phoenix from the ashes...

So my fiancée’s family had their Thanksgiving yesterday, as she is a nurse and will be working on Thursday. I made the dangerous move of offering to make the turkey; a smoked one at that. Luckily it was well received and turned out great. I did take the carcass home (the bird was a 22.5 lb'er) with plans to make a smoked turkey stock.

So this morning I picked all the meat I could from the bird (mainly from thighs and legs) and followed the recipe Mike G pointed out from the Bones cookbook for a roasted turkey stock. I popped the bones in the oven to roast for a bit with some onion, carrot and celery. Then into a big stockpot with about 1.5 gallons of water, some fresh thyme and parsley springs and peppercorns. It has about 30 minutes left to simmer and looks rich and delicious. To enhance the smoke flavor, I added the intact wings which dry out a bit too much to be enjoyable, and a bunch of the skin.

After this I plan to make a smoked turkey and sausage gumbo. Not knowing a many great places to get andouille, and being fairly certain Paulina is closed on Sunday (though not actually looking this info up to confirm), I headed to Whole Foods. Best looking sausages they had was the Wellshire brand, so I grabbed 12oz packs of andouille and one of Polish kielbasa. Anyone ever tried this brand? They LOOK great, nice and dark and smoked looking; just hope they taste as good.

So, what is everyone else doing with that carcass??

Jamie

Paulina is indeed closed on Sunday, and I've bought Wellshire Farms stuff in the past, my feeling is that you're getting good quality meat but it'll be dangerously low in salt, nitrites and other stuff that makes food yummy, so I would season accordingly.

Wellshire is my go-to grocery store andouille and I have used it in several gumbos, including a smoked turkey and sausage gumbo two Thanksgivings ago. It actually is quite spicy for an andouille that comes from somewhere on the east coast or northeast. My only advice is to get the pork, not the turkey. The turkey does not hold up well in the gumbo -- it doesn't necessarily fall apart, but the texture is just off. I also use the pork andouille regularly in jambalaya. I've never had the kielbasa.

So the gumbo turned out quite well. It was hard to really pick too much of a smoked taste out over all the other flavors going on in the bowl, but perhaps it will be easier to pick out today.

For a grocery store andouille, the Wellshire was pretty good, though I would prefer something with a bit more fat, and a flavor that didn't seem like it was trying to hide the fact there isn't enough fat.

I took my roux to a dark peanut butter/milk chocolate stage. I used 1 cup oil and 1 cup flour with 1 gallon of stock plus 2 lbs of frozen okra. In the end I still had to make a quick blonde roux (2 Tablespoons each) to thicken it some more. Anyone have any tips to get a thicker product in the end? Not sure what was wrong...

Jamie

My turkey's final resting place:

Jamieson22 wrote:Anyone have any tips to get a thicker product in the end? Not sure what was wrong...

Jamie,

Gumbo looks terrific! Nice use of smoked turkey bones.

General rule is 2-Tablespoons flour per cup of liquid for a thickish, gumbo like, end result, so you were dead-on with the ratio. The darker the roux the less thickening power it has which would account for you having to add a bit of blonde roux.

You might want to use a little file in the last second or two, added at the end it thickens nicely, cooked into the gumbo file turns stringy and slightly bitter. Another thing I've done, on the rare occasion I'm going for a lower in fat gumbo, is add pureed okra, the viscous okra standing in for part of the roux.

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:
Gumbo looks terrific! Nice use of smoked turkey bones.

General rule is 2-Tablespoons flour per cup of liquid for a thickish, gumbo like, end result, so you were dead-on with the ratio. The darker the roux the less thickening power it has which would account for you having to add a bit of blonde roux.

You might want to use a little file in the last second or two, added at the end it thickens nicely, cooked into the gumbo file turns stringy and slightly bitter. Another thing I've done, on the rare occasion I'm going for a lower in fat gumbo, is add pureed okra, the viscous okra standing in for part of the roux.

Enjoy,
Gary

It may just be that I tend to like my gumbo a bit thicker than normal; more of a preference thing than a failure. But figuring I didn't take my roux as dark as I could have, plus the 2 pounds of sliced okra that pretty much disintegrated into it, you'd think it would have been thicker.

So, can anyone think of anything good to use 1/2 gallon of smoked turkey stock for (without any turkey meat to use with it)?

Jamie

It won't use the whole half gallon, but I suspect butternut squash risotto made with a rich smoked turkey stock would be excellent. You might consider throwing in some finely diced raw cranberries - or perhaps some fresh pomegranate seeds - near the end of cooking to provide a perky flavor contrast.

I had gumbo on my mind for last few days so in honor of the upcoming holiday, I made a pot of Shrimp and Chaurice Sausage gumbo.

Funny that shortly after deciding to make a pot, I noticed Good Eats was on Tivo with a episode about Gumbo. After watching I decided to give the "roux in the oven" method a shot. So 6 oz AP flour went into my 7.25 QT Le Creuset with 6 oz of vegetable oil which was placed in a 350 degree oven. Alton Brown's recipe calls for it to be in for 1.5 hours, at which point it should be brick in color. Mine was more of a peanut butter, so I left it in another 30-40 minutes. I finally gave up after it just didn't seem to be getting much darker in color.

I would have really liked to get it much darker but I was losing patience, and getting hungry. Other than that it was a pretty standard gumbo affair. For stock I used my homemade smoked turkey stock, which was enhanced by simmering with the shrimp shells from the 1.5 lbs of shrimp I was using in the gumbo. I also pan steamed/fried some of the Chaurice sausage I had made and added that into the mix. The whole pot was finished by taking off the heat and adding 1 TBSP of File Powder.

Turned out to be one of the better pots of gumbo I have made. Definitely plan on using the oven roux method more often, makes things quite a bit easier!

Jamie

Jamieson22 wrote:I had gumbo on my mind for last few days so in honor of the upcoming holiday, I made a pot of Shrimp and Chaurice Sausage gumbo.

Funny that shortly after deciding to make a pot, I noticed Good Eats was on Tivo with a episode about Gumbo. After watching I decided to give the "roux in the oven" method a shot. So 6 oz AP flour went into my 7.25 QT Le Creuset with 6 oz of vegetable oil which was placed in a 350 degree oven. Alton Brown's recipe calls for it to be in for 1.5 hours, at which point it should be brick in color. Mine was more of a peanut butter, so I left it in another 30-40 minutes. I finally gave up after it just didn't seem to be getting much darker in color.

I would have really liked to get it much darker but I was losing patience, and getting hungry. Other than that it was a pretty standard gumbo affair. For stock I used my homemade smoked turkey stock, which was enhanced by simmering with the shrimp shells from the 1.5 lbs of shrimp I was using in the gumbo. I also pan steamed/fried some of the Chaurice sausage I had made and added that into the mix. The whole pot was finished by taking off the heat and adding 1 TBSP of File Powder.

Turned out to be one of the better pots of gumbo I have made. Definitely plan on using the oven roux method more often, makes things quite a bit easier!

Jamie

Jamie,

Where I used to work we used the oven method for the dark roux used in our Gumbos and etouffe. I noticed that there is much less of a chance of burning the roux using this method, and you don't wear out your arm. Although if I remember correctly, we set the oven at 375-400.

Flip

Well, I suppose this could become the What Did You Make For Mardi Gras? thread as well as any other. Actually, I haven't made a point of observing Mardi Gras in some years, but since I'd been forced to make my own andouille a week or so ago, I figured I might as well go all the way and make a big pot of jambalaya, thus dooming me to have the same Hank Williams tune in my head for days.

Now, I would have sworn that I'd seen Zatarain's near the fish counter at Whole Foods about 1200 times, but the time I finally wanted it, no such luck, so I tried Treasure Island and was pleased to find not only Zatarain's but Tony Chachere's. Made my own dark chicken stock the night before, tomato paste, chicken, shrimp, andouille, rice...



For dessert I made something vaguely Southern if, admittedly, a long way from N'awlins-- a Barbara Fritchie pie, which is a variant of chess pie, from Camille Glenn's Heritage of Southern Cooking:



Laisser les bons pies rouler!

To revive this thread, like a phoenix -- I used leftover turkey from Thanksgiving to make gumbo this year. Typically, I do that on the morning after Thanksgiving and then enjoy it while watching the LSU-Arkansas game (which is always the Friday after Thanksgiving). Considering we were out of town for Thanksgiving and I didn't get around to making the gumbo until Sunday, I'm sure it was no coincidence that the Tigers lost a triple overtime heartbreaker this year. Of course, if you follow college football, you know that that's all water under the bridge now (thanks Pitt and Oklahoma!).

I did manage to snag the turkey carcass from Thanksgiving and transport it from St. Louis back to Chicago in order to make a stock. Unfortunately, I hadn't read about this stock technique (which I found in another LTH thread) prior to making the stock, but it still turned out really nice, even if I did apparently commit some no-nos (or maybe just some not-so-goods).

The different thing about this gumbo recipe, and I've done it the past couple of years for post-Thanksgiving gumbo, is the use of a "dry roux" that is basically flour browned in the oven, without any oil or other fat. (I learned this technique from my mother based on a recipe she found in, I believe, the Baton Rouge paper.) The sequencing becomes a bit different than in traditional gumbo, in that you first soften the vegetables in oil while the flour bakes, as opposed to adding them to the roux later.

Holy trinity sauteeing.



Incidentally, I read somewhere for the first time recently that the standard base of onions, celery and green pepper used in creole and cajun cooking substitutes the pepper for the carrot in the classic French mirepoix because carrots don't really (or didn't really) grow in the below sea level soil of New Orleans and its environs, whereas green peppers are much more suited to that environment.

For the "dry roux," you basically take flour (I used maybe 1.5 to 2 cups), spread it on a baking sheet and throw it in the oven at 400 degrees for maybe 15 minutes, breaking up and stirring a couple of times. It's done when it gets a dark caramel color. Compared to a standard, stovetop roux, this has the advantage of freeing you up to do other prep work. It still can result in quite the smell, and might set off a testy smoke alarm.

Here's the browned flour at the conclusion of the browning:



Next, you add the flour to the softened vegetables:



Mix the flour into the vegetables well. Next add hot (almost boiling) stock to mix maybe a cup or two, and whisk very well. Because of the dry flour, it is important that the liquid be hot. Then add the rest of the liquid, mix well, and let that simmer for a while. I used about 2.5 quarts of what turned out to be a fairly hearty turkey stock (let's just say that you could have used a knife and fork on the leftover gumbo the next day, prior to reheating), cut with 2 cups of water.

This is what the gumbo looked like at the end of the simmer:



And here's the finished product in the bowl (final step was to add leftover turkey and some andouille sausage and bring those up to temperature, although I gave it a bit more than that to allow the flavors to develop):



As you can see, the gumbo is a fairly nice medium-dark brown, although not as dark as when made with a traditional oil and flour roux taken to the chocolate brown phase. You also lose a bit of the smokiness that comes with the stovetop method. You can make up for that a bit by using smoked meat and/or smokier sausage; I didn't feel like this version was lacking. This method also results in a somewhat "lighter" gumbo lacking in the oily heaviness of some gumbos. I particularly like it for that reason immediately after Thanksgiving, when I'm not exactly looking for a heavy meal.

God damn that looks good, Matt!

I am rather regretting that we threw away our two turkeys after Thanksgiving, but after dinner for 26, our kitchen was overloaded and just needed to declutter the food stuff. Will be smoking one on Saturday, so will use that for stock and gumbo.

How much flour did you use or did you just wing it?

Jamie

Jamieson22 wrote:God damn that looks good, Matt!

I am rather regretting that we threw away our two turkeys after Thanksgiving, but after dinner for 26, our kitchen was overloaded and just needed to declutter the food stuff. Will be smoking one on Saturday, so will use that for stock and gumbo.

How much flour did you use or did you just wing it?

Jamie

Thanks, Jamie. I used the full amount of flour on that baking sheet (approx. 1.5-2 cups) for what ended up being about 3 quarts of liquid (10 cups stock and 2 water).

In light of your forthcoming turkey smoking and (presumably) stock-making, if you haven't checked out the link to Ruhlman's stock-making technique in my post above, it's well worth checking out.