Chicken Gumbo

**sweetu** · by **sweetu** on Sat Jan 03, 2009 2:35 pm

Ingredients

* 1 whole chicken, about 4 pounds
* 1 tbsp salt
* 2 liters water
* 1 cup celery, chopped
* 1 tbsp butter
* 1 bay leaf
* 2 tbsp chopped parsley
* 1/2 tsp dried leaf thyme
* 2 cups okra (bhindi), sliced and boiled 10 minutes
* 1 tbsp filé powder
* 5 cups hot cooked rice

Directions

1. Cut up the chicken and boil in salted water until tender.
2. Remove chicken from pot. Pour broth into another container; return 6 cups of broth to the pot.
3. If you don't have 6 cups of broth, add canned broth or bouillon.
4. Remove chicken from bone and cut into bite-sized pieces.
5. In a skillet, saute celery in butter; add the bay leaf, parsley, and thyme and cook for 2 minutes longer.
6. Add add celery mixture and okra to the chicken broth; simmer 10 minutes.
7. Add the chicken and heat through.
8. Just before serving, add the filé powder.
9. Serve on hot cook rice in soup plates. Serves 6 to 8.

Note: If you don't live in US, it might be tough to find filé powder (dried sassafras leaves powder) which primarily works like a thickening agent. Just increase the quantity of Okra which has enough thickening power of itself.