Most proper techniques for thickening chinese sauces and such is by reduction and usually adding some sort of honey, molasses, sugar, hoison, yuzu etc. But sweet and sour sauces can be acceptably thickened with corn startch. But thats not a traditional or authentic chinese technique or ingredient though as corn was originally from the New World and the Chinese were cooking for hundreds of years before corn ever made it back that far east.
Okra thickening of gumbo does exist but its not a favorable practice anymore. Sure there are lots of techniques out there for preparing anything, but should you use all of them? Lets just be honest, the very original tomato sauces were mainly roux thickened. Now that practice is totally nonexistent today pretty much and it is greatly frowned upon and not considered a classy technique at all by chefs. Despite that the original French recipes for tomato sauce called for a roux, in these modern times it is said that if you have to add a roux to a tomato sauce you must have done something terribly wrong in your execution. When Esscofier revised the 5 mother sauces he pretty much ruled out the roux thickened version of tomato sauce and instead listed it as a reduction and pureed thickened mother sauce. And this is the exact same case with okra thickened gumbo, yeah its out there and it can be done but there are other practices that have all but phased that technique out.
And back to the Chinese thickening techniques, with cold sauces and dressings and as well as some hot sauces are thickened with oil by forming a stable emulsion. But like I said a huge majority of their sauces are thickened by reduction and usually they accelerate that technique by adding an ingredient that is high in carbs and dissolves easily. But most of the sauces in East Asia period are very thin and light so most of them require little to no thickening. And most of the ones that are thicker are done with a glaze technique which never involves cornstarch. I mean you can go by wikipedia if you want, I have quoted wikipedia on this forum before. But I'm going to stick with what I learned in culinary school, textbooks, cookbooks, other chefs Ive trained under and worked with, general on the job training, experience in the industry, living fairly close to Louisiana, growing up, living and working with a high number of Creoles and people from Louisiana. Plus my mentor chef who was born in raised and lived most of his life in downtown New Orleans and who currently resides in Alexandria, Louisiana.
But Buck460, I will not dispute your point of gumbo being able to be considered a stew. It is prepared using similar technique, it has similar consistency, and has the same concept of a dish. So you do have a point there. And I couldn't agree more with you that gumbo means different things to different people but it still has certain universal standards that should always be followed. But I would say that it is open to a wide, open, and diverse interpretation. Also I think that the region you are in places a huge role in that also.
And yes I am from Texas.
@Boogershooter, well I live just 5 minutes north up the road from I-10. But I-10 is just a stones throw south and it goes directly through my neighborhood. I drive on it everyday to work and back.
