Ok, so this is the first recipe I've put up, and it's going to be an experience for both of us. First of all, enjoy cooking and constantly taste your food because you're making what you like not what I like. That's one of the perks of being the chef (that and you can ask someone else to do the dishes)!

So as for ingredients go, it depends on the size of the pot you're working with and the number of people you want to serve. If you have a "big ol' pot" then add more of everything, if you are making a small pot then...where's the fun in that? Gumbo just gets better as it sits in the fridge for a few days or even a week, invite some friends over and enjoy!

Gumbo is a two step process which requires a fair amount of care, especially in the creation of the roux. Make sure you can pay close attention to that part, as for adding all the other ingredients and making the soup you can be a little tipsy by then. :)

It's a good idea to work in a pair if you can, that way one person can monitor the pot while the other person is chopping away at all the veggies and meat you want in there. Get, give or take, the following ingredients together:

A roux (pronounced rue) is a french soup base made up of approximately the following: half cup of oil, a couple sticks of butter, 2 onions diced finely, a bunch of celery also diced up, about 2 cups of red wine (pinot noir works well), a tablespoon of bouillabaisse, and at least a cup of flour.(Alternatively to butter, try bacon fat, cause everything's better with bacon).

Dice up the onion while you heat up the oil and butter in your large pot. Once the butter/oil is nice and hot (throw a drop of water in there, if it spits and crackles it's hot enough but not so hot that it burns the butter and starts smoking), put in the onions and celery and the bouillabaisse and cook over high heat until the onions are almost completely clear. At some point during this add the red wine and stir constantly, that's the key when working with high heat to stir a lot. After the onions are nice and clear keep the heat high and, a little at a time, mix in the flour until it is spread evenly throughout the mixture. At this point turn down the heat and get to the soup part.

The soup part ingredients: 2 cups finely diced fully cooked ham, 30 or so cooked shrimp with the shells removed completely and the tails cut off, about 2 pounds of sausage fully cooked and cut into thin slices (about a quarter of an inch), 2 cups cooked okra diced up, 2 or 3 finely diced tomatoes, half a clove of garlic diced finely, 4-6 sprigs of thyme leaves, diced green onion, salt and pepper to taste (probably a teaspoon or so of each depending on you, like I said, taste it along the way to make sure you like the flavor and adjust as needed).

Once you have your roux, and you've diced up all your ingredients, it's really fairly easy you just throw everything up to the thyme in the pot and turn it up to high heat. Add water until your pot is full or (if you're pot is huge and you didn't increase the ingredients add about 6-8 cups of water) Also you can thin it out more later if you think it's too fatty/greasy. Once it starts to boil turn the heat down to 2 give or take depending on your stove (should maybe bubble, but not be at a rolling boil any longer) and you can even put it on low and put a lid on it if you've got time.

The longer the better, but I'd give it a minimum of 45 minutes at relatively low heat to let the flavors blend. At this point add the green onion and salt/pepper it up until it tastes right to you. You can always let it sit for longer, I'd suggest making it early in the day and reheating it for dinner for maximum flavor and blending.

Not too tough, eh? And you have an amazing soup you can impress all your friends with. It can be served alone with bread or over rice. If you have any gumbo file (ground sassafras leaves, pronounced fee-lay cause it's creole) you can add that too but do it at the time of serving because it will thicken up the soup considerably and can make the combination of file and okra a little too powerful (but it's still good I promise!).