Tuesday, August 31, 2010

It's Gumbo, Dumbo!

Gumbo is a great dish that is good for any beginner cook. It is pretty hard to mess up, and you can be a little adventurous with the ingredients because you can put almost ANYTHING in gumbo. 

I made a chicken and sausage gumbo that I found on the Cooking Light website while I was browsing. For some reason I have a been in a soup and stew mood, and I came across this in my browsing. I altered it a little bit, so I will post it how I made it and throw some tips down at the end.

Chicken Sausage Gumbo

Ingredients:
1 bag boil-in-bag rice
2 tbsp. whole wheat flour
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 C. chopped onion
1 C. chopped green bell pepper
1 C. chopped celery
1 tsp. bottled minced garlic
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 tsp. ground red pepper
2 C. chopped roasted skinless, boneless chicken breasts (about 2 breasts)
8 ounces turkey kielbasa, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes with jalapenos
1 (14.5 oz) can fat-free, low sodium chicken broth

Steps:
Bring water to a boil. Submerge bag of rice and cook for 10 minutes. When done, remove from heat and set aside.
While rice cooks, combine flour and oil in a large sauce pan. Saute over medium-high heat 3 minutes.

Add onion, pepper, celery, garlic, thyme and red pepper; cook 3 minutes or until tender, stirring frequently.
Stir in chicken, kielbasa, tomatoes, and broth; cook 6 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Serve over rice.

Tips:
I used diced tomatoes with jalapenos because I like the spice, but the original recipe called for diced tomatoes with peppers and onions.

I used a reduced-fat, skinless, turkey sausage that was good, but may have been a little too sweet for this recipe.

I also chose not to serve mine over rice (I overdid it a little this weekend), but it taste fabulous without it anyways - I guess it is personal preference.




As far as weight watchers points*, I don't think it is that much. All the veggies have nothing, the chicken is about 6 total in the whole recipe, the sausage that I used was very low in fat so i will say another 6 points for that. Add in a point for flour, oil and 2 for the tomatoes - that brings the whole thing to about 16. I'll call a serving a 1 1/2 cups, 4 servings/recipe, so...after all that math - 4 points for 1 1/2 cups of delicious, fabulous, spicy gumbo sans rice).


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This looks amazing!