Chicken and Hot Sausage Gumbo

Gumbo can be served as soup, with just a little rice in it, or it can become a substantial dish if you start by putting plenty of rice on your plate and then ladling the gumbo on to it.

The word gumbo really means okra/ladies’ fingers, and perhaps the first gumbo was simply a way of cooking these. Having given their name to the dish, the okra then became just an optional ingredient – at any rate in Louisiana, which is the place most people associate with gumbo. This chicken g