Not exactly authentic, but it seems about right to me. And it fits the spirit of “a mess of leftovers cooked up together” that happens in so much of my cooking.
Ingredients
3 chicken thighs or two thighs and two legs (about a pound)
2 strips bacon
12 baby carrots, sliced thinly
2 celery stalks, sliced thinly
1 medium yellow onion, sliced thinly
1 lb andouille sausage, cut into ½ inch slices
2 yellow wax peppers, and about a half-dozen tabasco or similar peppers, chopped
14 oz. can stewed tomatos, chopped coarsely (just run a knife through ’em a couple times while they’re still in the can)
1 quart chicken stock
2 boxes Zatarain’s jambalaya rice & spice
1 lb frozen, pre-cooked, pre-peeled, no tails shrimp
½ tbsp liquid smoke
salt to taste (took about 1 tsp in my case)
Instructions
Broil the chicken – you’re aiming for about 30 minutes, and just want to get it done – crispy skin is fine.
Start bacon frying.
Slice the carrots into thin coins (penny-sized), and as soon as there’s visible grease in the pan, add the carrots and cover the pan.
Start slicing the celery (about the same thickness as the carrots), and when it’s sliced, add it to the pan, giving everything a flip to mix, and re-cover.
Start slicing the onion. When it’s sliced, into the pan, toss, and continue to fry, covered, until the onions go translucent. Heck, you can even caramelize them a bit.
Set aside vegetables, leaving grease in frying pan.
Slice 1lb andouille sausage into slices smaller than ½ inch (but not too much smaller).
Fry andouille in the frying pan, then set aside, keeping the grease in the pan.
Chop peppers, and fry briefly in the andouille grease (just enough to soften them up) – add to the other vegetables.
Add tomatoes and juice to the rest of the veggies.
Pull the chicken out of the broiler and break into bite-sized pieces.
If you’re not cooking immediately, you can pack things up in quart containers – one of chicken and sausage, and one of veggies (for example if you’re taking it to a pot-luck). Throw the containers in the fridge until you’re ready to go.
When you’re ready to go, throw everything but the shrimp into a 5qt slow-cooker (crock-pot), meat first, then rice, then veggies, and finally the chicken stock.
Set it on low for most of a day, or high for a couple hours.
Check on it periodically, give it a stir, and add a little water if it looks too dry.
Add the shrimp when there’s about 15 minutes to go.
Put some Hank Williams on the stereo, or get out the fiddle and accordion.
Serve with french bread.
Enjoy!
Preparation time
30 minutes
Cooking time
2 hours in the slow-cooker
Feeds
a whole mess of folks (it’s over a dozen one-cup servings)
Served for the first time at the 2005 holiday pot-luck at work. People seemed to enjoy it, eating about a gallon of it, and leaving me with less than a quart to bring home for a future dinner.
I also preserved my peppers in sherry this year, so there was about a half-cup of sherry got into the pan when I was frying the peppers. It seemed like a good addition.
So named both because it’s one of the dishes I routinely use for pot-lucks, and also because the ingredients can vary based on what I happen to have on hand at the moment. See also last year’s recipe, which is fairly different, and yet very much the same.
Ingredients
2 boxes Zatarain’s Jambalaya mix (rice, not pasta)
1 qt chicken stock
1 12-oz can tomato paste
1 lb cooked shrimp
1 lb browned burger (I prefer venison, but beef will work just fine)
1 lb andouille sausage (Johnsonville makes a surprisingly good one, but better is, well, better)
1 large or 2 medium green bell peppers (toss the seeds and stems)
1 baseball-sized or ½ softball sized white onion
4 ribs celery
1 leftover cooked carrot
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp black pepper, ground
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp red pepper flakes (not dust – cut back to 1tsp if it’s finely ground and not flakes)
1 tsp oregano
Instructions
Dice vegetables, and sauté in bacon drippings, butter, or (as a last ditch) olive oil. Celery goes in first, then the onions, then the green peppers, and finally the (already cooked) carrot. Total time should be just until the onions start to go translucent. Throw into the bottom of a pot, and then pour any grease back into your sauté pan.
Cut andouille into ¼″ thick slices and brown in the leftover grease from the veggies until both sides of the medallions are dark brown. You want to be into serious maillard reaction here. Dump it into the pot, and pour the grease back into your sauté pan.
Brown the burger in the leftover grease from the andouille, seasoning it with about half of the spices. Into the pot with it once it’s all browned. If you use venison, you’ll have very little grease left at this point, but drain any excess grease.
Dump both boxes of Zatarain's, the tomato paste, the chicken stock, and the remaining spices into the pot. Add two cans’ (from the tomato paste) worth of water.
Turn it on low for a couple hours and cover it tightly. You want the water to go into the rice, not out into the air. If you have a crock pot (5 quart is the absolute minimum size), you can set it on high for the first two hours, especially if steps 1-3 were the previous night. If you’re doing it all in one shot, set the crock-pot on low. Keep it at a low simmer for up to 2.5 hours, or as little as an hour if you’re on a stove-top. Stir it about every half hour and check on it. When the rice has absorbed all the liquids, it’s ready to eat.
Add the shrimp. It’s already cooked, and you just want it in there long enough to warm up. Fluff the rice as you mix in the shrimp, and turn off the heat. Let sit for five minutes so nobody gets a cold shrimp or burns their mouth.
Preparation time
about an hour
Cooking time
1 – 3 hours
Feeds a whole mess of people. Ten as a main dish, or up to forty at a pot-luck where everyone brought too much food.
I think of steps 1-3 as “prep” can be done the night before if you’re doing this for lunch at work. Just put everything into either a 1-gallon zip-top freezer bag or some tupperware, and fridge it overnight.
You can also use other vegetables, too. I used a carrot this time because I had one leftover from Monday’s supper. You can substitute a can of spam (cubed into 1/2″ pieces and browned) or a pound of chicken (thighs are best, also browned) for any of the listed meats. If you don’t use andouille, you will want to double the red pepper and paprika. You can cut the salt back to as little as 1tsp since the Zat’s mix has salt, but 1 tbsp is about what I end up using when I “season to taste”. Spice amounts are a good place to start, but taste the liquid every time you stir, and adjust if you think it’s missing something.