What's Cooking Wednesday

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo and Mini King Cakes

Despite having never been to New Orleans (it's on the list), we enjoy a good Mardi Gras meal!  I usually go with Jambalaya, but decided to mix it up this year and try a gumbo recipe.  We had shrimp Friday night, so after scouring Pinterest I came up with chicken and sausage gumbo.  I worked from two recipes to create this one.

Adapted from Iowa Girl Eats and Moms with Crock Pots 

Ingredients

1-1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast, cooked and diced or shredded

12-16 oz package Andouille sausage, sliced

3T vegetable oil

3T flour

1 onion, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

1 cup okra, sliced ( I used Goya frozen)

1 rainbow pepper pack, diced

3 cloves garlic, mined

4 cups low sodium chicken broth

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions

1.  Heat 1 T of vegetable oil in a large sauce pan and add sliced sausage.  Cook 5-7 minutes over medium-high heat. 

2.  Remove sausage from pan and set aside with cooked chicken.

3.  Add remaining 2 T of vegetable oil to pan along with the 3 T of flour, whisk together over medium heat.  Add diced vegetables and cook 5 minutes until slightly tender.  Add garlic.

4.  Slowly stir in chicken broth, paprika and cayenne pepper and bring to a boil.

5.  Turn down heat, add chicken and sausage.  Simmer for and hour.

I served it with Texmati Rice.  The recipe makes 8 healthy servings, we have leftovers in the freezer now!

We finished off with Mini King Cakes from The Virtuous Wife, these received rave reviews from the family!  I tweaked the recipe by using reduced fat crescent rolls, reduced fat cream cheese and cutting the sugar that goes into the cream cheese mixture by half...they were still super sweet because of the glaze.

Did you celebrate Mardi Gras?