So I’m relaxing on my NYE day off with the Today Show in the background, and there’s a segment in which chef JJ Johnson shares his traditional family New Year’s Eve seafood gumbo recipe. Being a big fan of both making and eating gumbo, I’m always interested in various gumbo-making techniques.
After he has all the veggies and liquid added to the roux, he adds in crab and raw shrimp, scallops and lobster. So far so good! But then he says to simmer the gumbo for an hour. WTF…AFTER adding the shellfish?
I have a vintage copy of the Picayune Creole Cookbook in which there are recipes to add shrimp and then simmer for an hour or more, and I just assumed it was an old-fashioned thing that was out of style. My method of adding raw shrimp or other shellfish to soups and stews is to do the long simmer first, THEN add the raw shellfish at the very end, so it just cooks to perfection.
I would think simmering shellfish for an hour in a gumbo would either turn it awful and rubbery, or cause it to completely disintegrate into the gumbo. Maybe that’s what they’re going for? Could there be desirable results from simmering shellfish that long?
I made gumbo for Xmas . The instructions had me cooking all the ingredients on low heat except shrimp for two hours. While the finished product was good, the vegetables including okra were too softened by prolonged cooking.
An hour might be too long for raw shellfish, but you don’t want to risk undercooking it either. Maybe prepare the shellfish separately to perfect doneness and only add it to the gumbo for a final short simmering period?
It’s really hard to undercook shellfish when adding it to a soup or stew. I often use the Asian method of cooking shrimp in soup by first turning off the heat altogether, adding the shrimp, then waiting 3-5 minutes while it cooks in the residual heat. It’s a practically foolproof method of cooking it just right without overcooking it.
I looked up the video and he doesn’t actually say simmer for an hour. I wonder if it is just a mistake on the title card. I found a written version that says simmer 10 minutes.