Try this Chicken Gumbo Soup recipe, or contribute your own.
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1 small onion chopped
- 2 cups water
- 1 small green bell pepper chopped
- salt & pepper
- 1 cup long grain rice
- 1/2 teaspoon cajun seasoning
- 2 ribs celery chopped
- 28 oz crushed tomatoes
- 3 slices bacon chopped
- 1-1/2 lbs chicken breasts cut into-bite sized pieces and seasoned with salt & pepper
- 1/4 cup gluten-free flour
- 32 oz chicken broth (plus more for reheating)
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (or more or less)
- Carbohydrate 173.153680006436 g
- Cholesterol 57.12 mg
- Fat 44.2166742822955 g
- Fiber 24.3373795321448 g
- Protein 35.4998376866644 g
- Saturated Fat 13.8121596596378 g
- Serving Size 1 1 recipe (2656g)
- Sodium 2428.6075404697 mg
- Sugar 148.816300474291 g
- Trans Fat 5.24788578368288 g
- Calories 1182 calories
Step-by-step
- Heat a large Dutch oven or soup pot over medium heat.
- Add bacon and cook until crispy then remove to a paper towel-lined plate and set aside, reserving bacon fat in pot (add extra virgin olive oil if necessary to get 2 Tablespoons fat total in pot.)
- Add onion, bell pepper, and celery then season with salt and pepper and saute for 5 minutes, or until veggies are softened.
- Add chicken and Cajun seasoning then cook for 5 more minutes.
- Add garlic then cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
- Sprinkle flour over veggies and chicken then stir to combine.
- Cook, stirring constantly, until flour turns golden brown, about 3 minutes.
- Add about a cup of chicken broth then scrape browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
- Add remaining chicken broth, crushed tomatoes, water, bay leaves, red chili pepper flakes, and salt then bring soup to a boil.
- Add rice then cover pot, turn heat down to medium-low, and simmer, stirring often, for 15-20 minutes or until rice is just barely tender (it will continue to cook and soften in soup.)
- Add cooked bacon back into the soup then let it sit and thicken off the heat for 10 minutes.
- Remove bay leaves and serve.
A raw ingredient manifest fails to show how rendered bacon fat reacts with gluten-free flour. Starch molecules trap lipids during the three-minute browning phase. This process creates a stable thickening matrix inside the Dutch oven. Without proper fat volume management, the flour clumps instead of coating the aromatics.
Chemical Behavior in the Pot
Onion, bell pepper, and celery release moisture rapidly when salted early. That water release stops the rendered pork fat from scorching the plant matter. Garlic burns easily. Introduce garlic only after the vegetables soften for five minutes. High heat degrades allicin instantly. When adding the broth, scrape the bottom vigorously. Deglazing lifts the Maillard compounds stuck to the metal. Those roasted proteins drive the depth of the finished broth. Rice absorbs liquid continuously as the pot cools. Raw long grain rice needs precisely fifteen to twenty minutes of gentle simmering. Cook past twenty minutes and the starches rupture completely, turning the liquid pasty. Off-heat resting for ten minutes stabilizes the suspension before serving.
- Reheating requires extra chicken broth because refrigerated rice swells and drinks free moisture.
- Freeze this base without the rice grains to prevent mushy textures upon thawing.
- Add extra virgin olive oil if bacon yield falls below two tablespoons total fat volume.
