Normally it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes to make my bacon-grease roux.

On Sunday, February 24, during test-cook No. 1 for the Gladiators of Gumbo cookoff, it took 18 minutes. 18 minutes!

I managed to brown my roux and assemble a palatable version of Pat and Stacy’s Thanksgiving Day Gumbo in 3 hours, 18 minutes, 56 seconds, while cooking for the very first time over an open flame on my new Bayou Classic Outdoor Gas Cooker… and I didn’t burn the house down. Although technically, it took me 22 hours and 58 minutes to cook all of it – since I really started on Saturday at 2:20 PM when I pulled my 24-pound turkey from the brine, popped it in a 350-degree oven and commenced three thrilling hours of bird-flipping, vegetable-chopping, sausage-grilling and okra-snotting, and truth be told, I forgot the okra-snotting until Sunday morning (add that one to the checklist!)

Logistics, my friends, logistics: In the controlled confines of your suburban kitchen, you may know your gumbo recipe inside and out – but outside in the great outdoors, cooking over an open flame that could extinguish at any moment because of the 15-mile-an-hour wind gusts, well, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game… especially when you have to think of every single last possible little tiny thing because you can’t just run to your pantry from the Festival Plaza in lovely downtown Shreveport. Need some salt? You’d better have packed it in your color-coordinated cooler. Burn your roux? You’d better hope you remembered the extra, pre-measured flour and bacon grease. Everything – including bottles of water to slake your thirst and non-gumbo snacks to keep your blood sugar levels up – everything must go in a cooler and into the truck so we can take it out to the cookoff… at 5:45 AM on Saturday, March 9.

Tucked onto my front porch with a folding table turned on its side to block the wind and my fire extinguisher at the ready, I commenced test-cook No. 1 at exactly 1 PM – or exactly one hour after I had planned to start. I had my cooler packed with labeled vegetable and meat containers. I had my giant stock pot, filled with warm stock (it keeps its heat overnight). I had my welding gloves, my cast-iron roux skillet, my lucky olive-wood roux-stirrer, my iPhone timer, my checklist and two rocking chairs. Since they were already on the front porch when I got started, I figured I might as well be comfortable (Note to self: Measure Dad’s pickup to see if a rocking chair will fit)

Now, I love to cook, but I can count on one hand the number of times that I have cooked over an open-flame… including the grill. It’s Pat’s domain, and frankly, I think it’s best for me to stay away from flammables. It’s safer that way. Thus, we decided test-cook No. 1 should be conducted on the front porch so Pat could watch me from his office window.

We did a safety test on the Bayou Classic. I now know how to open the propane bottle, choke down the rudimentary carburetor, put the lighter-wand beside the burner, ignite it, open up the regulator and listen for the thumping satisfaction of fire! (Since you can’t see the blue flame of success in broad daylight).

Then I turned it all off and did it again to Pat’s satisfaction…

“I really am glad I have the fire extinguisher,” I said.

“Well, let’s hope you don’t need it – and besides you’ve got the hose-bib right there,” he said, motioning to our garden implements.

“But you’re not supposed to put water on a kitchen fire.”

“This isn’t a grease fire.”

“uh-uh, it’s bacon grease and flour. Sounds like a grease fire to me. I’m glad I have the fire extinguisher – and it’s almost full.”

“I’m glad you have it too,” he said… and then he took shelter indoors from the wind and left me to my gas-powered devices.

The flames came out of the Bayou Classic so fast that for a moment there – several, actually – I thought I wouldn’t have any gumbo to test on my unsuspecting friends whom I’d invited to stop by since I just knew I wouldn’t be able to store an extra five gallons of gumbo in my freezer. “Bring your Tupperware!” I exhorted. “Free food!” But for those first 18 minutes of terror, I seriously thought I’d be giving them a free slag-heap of burned flour and rancid grease.

Cooking in the path of gale-force winds, I couldn’t get the flame low enough for the slow burn that produces my normal roux. Instead, I stirred furiously and resulted to picking up the cast-iron skillet and stirring it in mid-air and then dropping it back on the burner with a thud when my wrist gave out. I did that four times… and my wrist finally gave out. The roux wasn’t close to the traditional brown of my trusty roux-penny. Instead, it looked a little like peanut butter – but I didn’t care: I was 18 minutes in and it wasn’t burned. I dumped half my onions to sweat them and bring the roux temperature down – this bought me time to unload my chopped garlic, half the celery and half the bell pepper – my skillet wasn’t big enough to hold everything – and I was going to have to pour some stock on this puppy.

Fortunately, I’d thought of this one: I’d poured a half-gallon into an iced-tea pitcher. But then I had a bigger problem – I wasn’t cooking my gumbo in my skillet. I was cooking it in the 7-gallon aluminum gumbo pot that was sitting cold behind the rocking chair. Logistics. Logistics. Logistics. I turned off the regulator, heard the whump of extinguished fire and closed my propane tank. I dumped the contents of my skillet into the gumbo pot. Then I opened up the propane tank, choked down the rudimentary carburetor, touched the lighter-wand to the burner, and opened up the regulator – I was cooking once again with gas.

I dumped all my remaining vegetables, poured all the stock in, offloaded my tomatoes, emptied my pre-measured container of spices and sat in my chair. 31 minutes elapsed. My work would be done for the next couple hours. By the time 90 minutes had elapsed – or the point at which I’d normally start to fret over the temperature of my roux – all of the elements were in the pot and it was simmering. I poured myself a glass of wine (they won’t allow us to BYOB at the cookoffs, but there will be beer on site). My work here was done… and I’d done it all by myself.

Tasting Notes:

I don’t want to tip my hand to any competitors that may be reading this, but our tasters agreed that the consistency of the gumbo was just fine. Our biggest concern was that the turkey wasn’t as flavorful as our traditional Thanksgiving turkey. We think this is because we used such a large bird, and it was still frozen when it went into the brine. The internal temperatures were fine when we cooked it, but it just didn’t soak up all the juices. Meat to vegetable ratios were good – it wasn’t too tomato-y. We are not fond of Hillshire Farms smoked sausage – generates way too much grease. Spice levels checked out among everyone – from our Louisiana friends, Veronica and Liz, to our more tender taste-buddies, Kellee and Rockin’ Bob. Oh and we cleared five gallons of gumbo – 10 people brought their Tupperware and we had only about 2 cups of gumbo left. We will thaw that as a comparison to taste against Test Cook #2, scheduled for this Saturday at noon. Full dress rehearsal – one week before the cookoff.