Thi week' action - couple yardbird and armadillo eggs, with gumbo to follow - Q View included

Birds took quite a while - over 5 hours at around 325. I was probing after about 3 hours to cook to temp, not time. The breasts hit a wicked stall around 155 for a couple hours but I pushed through. The meat was still very tender and moist, not dried out at all which was a pleasant surprise given how long I cooked them at a fairly high heat. I laid the smoke on pretty heavy, since apple smoke tends to run pretty mild and 14 lbs of bird plus all the sausage can handle it.

I pulled the chicken meat and chopped the sausage last night, and left it all in the fridge while simmering the carcasses overnight. When I got up this morning I strained out my stock and started cooking a dark roux, equal parts butter and flour, in a cast iron skillet. Once I got the color I wanted, I added the trinity (bell peppers, onion, celery) plus green onions and chopped garlic. Cooked til the onions were opaque, then added the stock. Dumped in the chicken and sausage and let it simmer on low for hours. You can add okra/file powder/shrimp etc to suit your tastes. I was just using what I had kicking around this time so I didn't get fancy, but I've had success making gumbos with all those things in the past. My gumbo isn't something I normally brag about - just an old family recipe dating back to our time back in Lafayette, LA where we ate good Cajun food on a daily basis. Traditionally we'd serve it over white rice with buttered biscuits on the side, but I'm cutting carbs back so I just ate it straight up as a soup, no sides.

I've never had gumbo made with smoked chicken though...wow! The smokiness came through really well. Going to be hard to go back to plain non-smoked chicken gumbo in the future! The armadillo eggs were also a treat. I topped them with shredded mozzarella about 10 minutes before taking them off and the result was awesome - sausage had that smoky grilled pizza sausage flavor combined with the cheese, and the pepper/cream cheese filling was outstanding. I can see myself making these pretty regularly now - liked them way better than the ABTs I did a few weeks ago.

Chickens finally finished:


Armadillo eggs with melty cheese:


Stock simmering away overnight:


Gumbo time!