069 Coby Bailey and Real Louisiana Cooking

We spotlight Captain Coby Bailey, a Navy veteran, firefighter, and talented home cook from Lafayette, Louisiana who competed on season four of PBS's The Great American Recipe. Coby offers up a classic Cajun gumbo, step by step. 

Transcript

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Doug 0:01

Hey Pittsburgh Dish listeners , Doug here . This week we're serving up a spotlight episode and kind of revisiting our summer recipe road trip, Yet again . When a really kind person that cooks from the heart comes into your life , it's nice to give them a little bit of shine . For me , that is Captain Coby Bailey of Lafayette , Louisiana . Coby is a Navy veteran , firefighter , husband , dad and an amazing home cook . Coby has competed on season four of The Great American Recipe on PBS and I'll just say he's done very well .

Doug 0:35

Personally , we've connected through social media , talked on the phone a couple of times and he was gracious enough to send me some of his Cajun seasoning . Let's give him a call and get his masterclass version of of his Cajun seasoning . Let's give him a call and get his masterclass version of a traditional Cajun dish . Good morning , hey . Good morning , Coby . How are you Doing ? Fantastic . How are you ? I'm doing really well . Thank you so much for taking some time to be on The Pittsburgh Dish . Well , thank you for having me . So , Coby , I'm calling for a couple reasons . Number one I want to thank you for this amazing package of seasonings that you just recently sent me . You have been doing , I believe , a YouTube channel and kind of creating some of these spices for a while . Is that right ?

Coby 1:21

I do . I have a YouTube channel called Captain Coby's Cajun Cooking and what we do is I try to do a step-by-step kind of tutorial on how to make fantastic Cajun food Fantastic Cajun food .

Doug 1:37

You are a lifelong guy from Louisiana , Is that right ? Oh yeah .

Coby 1:41

Born and raised . I tell everybody I can only hide in Louisiana . I talk kind of bad . So if I had to hide out anywhere I'd have to hide out over here in Louisiana .

Doug 1:52

Goodness Well , I love it . Another thing that we have in common , I mean a couple of things we both love to cook . We also have both competed on The Great American Recipe on PBS . I was on season three . You are being featured on season four . How has that experience been for you ?

Coby 2:09

That was truly an amazing experience for me . It's filled with . Sometimes when you watch it on TV it kind of looks effortless and I think the film crew they do a great job with that . That's right . But it is a lot of pressure on you on there . But it's also exciting . I played sports all through high school and even outside of high school , so that competition , I'm very competitive . So it was , you know , in a different way . I mean , you're competing against other people , but not , you know , it's not rough and tough with it , no . But the great thing about this one is and I'm sure you had the same thing and we were such good friends on there we would I would say , hey , you need some season , come get some . If it's going to help , you come get it . You know , even the , even the film crew was like we love the Great American Recipe , we love this program . It's kind of nice , it's not so cutthroat .

Doug 3:08

That's right , not as yelling at you , that's right , I don't want that either . Yeah , everyone becomes kind of a mini family with that shared experience . I want to say a couple of things I really thought you brought forward was not only your family and your Cajun traditions , but really that tradition of service you've always had . You were a retired Navy veteran and then also a firefighter for well over 25 years , is that right ?

Coby 3:32

It's been 27 years actually . I've been very fortunate in my life that I had a great group of friends that I hung around with in high school .

Coby 3:44

We were a lot like family and I think , have your kids a good group of friends that they hang around with . It was important to me . Yes , and I had that exact same thing when I joined the Navy . I mean those guys to me they're like brothers . I feel if I was in a bond and my car wasn't working , Jim from Michigan would come down here and work on my car if I went back home . I mean that . And even in the fire service , same thing . You know it's life and death with those guys . While you're in the fire you depend on each other , you know to do those things and at the end we go back , we have a good time and we cook a lot at the station . So a lot of those things are all centered around food . Not so much in the Navy , even though you have to kind of go mess , cranking what they call mess . You got to do mess duty for 90 days , so I've been cooking in every aspect of my life .

Doug 4:34

I was going to say I figured that food still brings all those good people together with you . I was wondering if you could you share one of your recipes for our listeners today .

Coby 4:46

I would love to , and one one thing I did when I got to the show . I wanted to make sure that when people think about Louisiana they always think about gumbo and crawfish and jambalaya . So I wanted to make sure I made those things on the show to showcase what people have a general idea about Louisiana and kind of the right way to do it . You know there's a lot of spinoffs of jambalaya and they put some crazy things in there . I would never , not never eat that , but I'm like man , I don't know about that , but everybody has their spin . So what I would like to do for you today is just give you a good traditional Cajun gumbo . All right , Chicken and sausage gumbo , that sounds perfect .

Coby 5:30

That is the most made gumbo down here in Louisiana . It's cheap . I did do a seafood gumbo on the show but it's a little pricey when you start getting the seafood . We all know that . You know kind of hurt the wallet a little bit . But chicken and sausage fairly simple . Okay , you have to start out with a roux . All you need is equal parts . So if you're going to do I always make two cups of flour , all-purpose flour with two cups of coconut oil and you can use whatever you like . I try to do the coconut oil . It just burns cleaner and hotter a little bit faster . I like that . And what you're going to do when you're making that roux you have to stir that continuously and you want to get that just a little bit darker than peanut butter .

Doug 6:18

Oh , that's a good tone . I like this . I like cooking where I get a visual .

Coby 6:23

Just realize this the darker your roux , the darker your gumbo . Okay , so if you go lighter , you're going to have a light gumbo . If you go a little bit darker , you'll have a darker gumbo . But a good rule of thumb is just a little bit darker than a peanut butter . Now you got to be careful and you got to stir this constantly so that you don't burn it . If you burn it , everything's going to taste burnt . So that's why you got to kind of stir constant , make sure your corners of your pot is getting stirred , you know pulled up all those things .

Coby 6:50

You got to stay on that . Okay , what else you need to do is have your two onions and one bell pepper cut . I would cut that before I start my roux , and that way , when you get your roux to the color that you want , you turn it off and you dump your vegetables in there immediately , kind of helping to soften those veggies .

Coby 7:10

Oh , it's going to soften . It's going to soften , but what it's going to do is going to stop that cooking process of that and it won't get you root darker and burn it . That's a great tip , right ? So once you , once you get that done , you'll see it , it'll be cooking for another good five , maybe 10 minutes . You'll still start cooking down those veggies . Ok , then you can add , you probably about , I would say , a gallon of water and you stir that together and you're going to have to get that . You have to wait till that water starts boiling . Once the water's boiling , you can kind of you can kind of let it go a little bit , cause it's going to boil that root out . But if , if you let that water set or the root set on the bottom , it's going to burn on the bottom . So again , you can't constantly stir that until that water starts boiling pretty hard . Okay , once that's done , you have to let that boil for at least one hour , one hour minimum . The longer the better , but one hour minimum .

Doug 8:02

And right now we just have the roux , the water and those veggies , that's it .

Coby 8:06

Okay , wow . So while that's boiling , you need an hour . You're going to take your chicken and you're going to season it with some preferably some Captain Coby's .

Doug 8:17

You know we'll link to that , We'll remind folks of that , that link at the end . So yeah , we'll get the Cajun seasoning on it .

Coby 8:24

I like to put a little mustard . Mustard is a fantastic binder and it's so flavorful , so you don't have to drown it in mustard . Get a good mustard on your chicken , season it heavy with your Cajun seasoning and you're going to put that in the oven for one hour . Oh okay , so while your water's boiling , your chicken is also cooking in the oven for one hour , all right , and when you get to that one hour mark , you'll take your chicken out and what happens is you'll brown that chicken . If you don't brown your chicken , you can put it in raw . It's not wrong to do it that way . But once you let that chicken cook for longer than an hour , then it just starts falling apart in your gumbo .

Coby 9:05

Yeah , or you can do boneless , skinless , however you like , but that brown food , that roasty flavor too would add something to the gumbo , for sure , Absolutely .

Coby 9:13

So you're going to take your chicken , you're going to put it in your water mixture with the roux . You're watering your roux together . Okay , dump all that in there . And then you're going to take all the grease that's left over from that chicken , from the chicken . You're going to dump that in your gumbo too . Oh yes , and in your gumbo too , oh yes . So , and a lot of people are like , oh my God , what's happening ? But you need that chicken fat and that flavor that's going to bring some flavor into your gumbo .

Doug 9:39

Yes .

Coby 9:40

Okay , so while that's cooking you go ahead and you get you a good smoked sausage whichever kind that you like , the smokier the better and you chop that up and you put it in your gumbo and you let that cook for one hour and then , right at the end , you take your grease out .

Doug 9:57

Okay , like skim it off the top , you mean .

Coby 9:59

Yeah , skim your grease off the top . It's going to have a good little , you know , maybe like a half inch of grease over the top . Okay , take that out . And then you taste your gumbo , you taste your gravy . You taste your gumbo , you taste your gravy , you taste your juice . It's like a soup . This is made like a soup , yes , and if you think you need more seasoning , well then you just add it , you season it to taste from there . Perfect , cook you some rice , yes , and serve that over rice .

Doug 10:25

It sounds amazing , Coby . Thank you so much . I want to make it for sure .

Coby 10:35

Well , I'll tell you what the first cold front that comes , probably in october , is . When we get a cold front , it's only going to get to probably 57 degrees over here . Yeah , yeah , all the gumbo pot is going to be rattling everybody's waiting for that one no cold spell to make a so good . But uh , I love that . Yeah , so that's , that's really how that goes . In fact , my wife made a gumbo a couple weeks ago . She said I'm just hungry for it . Yeah , even though it's 109 degrees heating index over here .

Doug 10:56

You guys got and you got the humidity down there , I'm sure , oh , it comes with it .

Doug 11:02

Coby, let's just remind folks again one more time . You have been competing on season four of the Great American Recipe on PBS . If folks have missed some of the season or they want to watch my season , season three , they can always stream it on the PBS app and they can also find you on YouTube at Captain Coby's Cajun Cooking and then we were talking about that seasoning . If folks want to actually buy your Cajun seasoning , I think it's Captaincobys . com , is that right ?

Coby 11:30

That's right , and I a lot of people . There's so many different spellings of Coby . I am 54 years old . When I was a young kid nobody was called Coby . It was such a , I say unique name I kind of didn't like it at first . I love it now but since the fame of Kobe Bryant there's a . There's a lot of Coby's out there . I'll spell it for y'all it's C-O-B-Y , so it's Captain C-O-B-Y , cajun Cooking and same thing as CaptainCobyscom .

Doug 12:01

All right perfect .

Coby 12:02

If you want to go to the website . And we have all kinds of stuff . We have seasoning and pumpkin seeds and all kinds of things .

Doug 12:07

I've had those pumpkin seeds and they didn't last very long either . So thanks again . They're all pretty good .

Coby 12:13

I'd like to tell your listeners , if you don't mind , that if you're having a little trouble and you're not , you're not quite sure on how to make the gumbo , I do do a step-by-step how to make a root and I also do a step-by-step how to make the gumbo on my YouTube channel . So if you're not quite sure , you want to follow it . Gumbo on my YouTube channel . So if you're not quite sure you want to follow it , follow along and I promise you you'll have a fantastic gumbo .

Doug 12:36

Well , you know , we will post links to that on our blog as well , so people can find you and your step-by-steps Appreciate that . Yeah , Sounds perfect . Kobe Bailey , I just want to say thank you once again for taking some time to be on the Pittsburgh Dish , wishing you all the best and again thanks for all that Cajun cooking so delicious .

Coby 12:53

I love it and I hope to bring a little bit of Cajun culture up there to Pittsburgh where you at . I love it . Well , thank you so much .

Doug 13:07

Appreciate it . Thank you for having me on . If you enjoyed the show , consider buying us a coffee for this episode or supporting the show monthly . You can find links to those options at the bottom of our show description and if you want to follow my own food adventures , you can find me on social media at Doug Cooking . That's our show for this week . Thanks again to all of our guests and contributors , and to Kevin Solecki of Carnegie Accordion Company for providing the music to our show . We'll be back again next week with another fresh episode . Stay tuned .