Gumbo is an easy, great food to make. It does, however, take time. It's a lot like the curry recipe on this site. There's not much to it, if you do it right, but it takes a long time to make. Just like the curry is all about the onions, the gumbo is all about the roux.
A roux is nothing more than flour and fat cooked together. In this case, it's flour and vegetable oil. You can use peanut oil, but I didn't have any for this recipe. This is the #1 most important ingredient in your gumbo, so don't mess it up.
Luckily, there is a fool-proof way to make roux. Traditionally, roux was made by putting flour and oil in a pan, and stirring like hell for about 20 minutes. This is very time consuming, but it works. However, the roux is very easy to burn, and burnt roux is good for only 1 thing. Throwing away.
That said, here's my gumbo recipe (the ingredients are in the order they are used):
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