Looking for a good jambalaya recipe

I have recently moved from Wisconsin to Louisiana and am trying to cook some local dishes. My first attempt at red beans and rice was very successful, but the I was not thrilled with the jambalaya I made yesterday.

Anyone have any tips on how to make really good jambalaya?

My dad picked up a recipe decades ago from a local chef in New Orleans. My dad apparently had the best jambalaya of his life from a restaraunt while on vacation there and decided to ask the cook on a whim. The guy actually gave up his recipe and my dad has been making it since then. My dad adds venison to his and it's an excellent dish. I'll call him tomorrow afternoon and see if I can con him into giving up the recipe.

McCall St. Brewer said:

I have recently moved from Wisconsin to Louisiana and am trying to cook some local dishes. My first attempt at red beans and rice was very successful, but the I was not thrilled with the jambalaya I made yesterday.

Anyone have any tips on how to make really good jambalaya?

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id like the recipe to your red beans and rice please!

I just searched for Justin Wilson's recipe (he's the guy that always says; "I garontee"), thinking he must have a good recipe but his recipe doesn't have any tomato in it nor any shrimp (no chopped celery either). Since Emeril is from LA I searched for one of his recipes and it looks good (or at least more like I would expect it to look). Here's Emeril's recipe.

I've made jambalaya several times but I just wing it (and it's usually made with leftover cooked chicken) so I don't have a specific recipe. But it's similar to Emeril's. Sometimes I just make it without rice and then ladle it over rice.

Maybe if you post the recipe you made someone could 'troubleshoot' it. Did you use stock and not just water?

I usually wing it, but it comes out close to what Emeril's recipe is.


I almost never add the rice to the pot/crock pot. I usually serve on rice. When I make jumbalaya, I'm the only one in the house eating it (SWMBO doesn't eat anything spicy, or with meat), and it doesn't seem to keep well with the rice already in there.

zataran's jambalaya mix and andouille sausage.

Click down below on the "similar threads" and read the one on Zatarain's ..... I got some good info out of that thread before.

I once asked a friend that was friend of a guy who won the Jambalaya contest at the Jambalaya Festival a few years back. He does not have a written recipe, he does it all by taste, but has some guidelines. Here is my expanded version of that:

1.Cook some chicken (boneless) and andouille (you can also use chunks of pork) in oil (I use corn oil) in the bottom of a cast iron pot.
2.Take out the meat once it is pretty well browned (does not need to be completely cooked), put it aside.
3.Add more oil if neede, use you judgment here. You need the oil, don't skimp.
4.Add the trinity: onion, celery, green bell pepper. (I use roughly equal amounts cutting the celery and pepper very, very fine leaving the onion rougher; maybe 1c each for a big pot).
5.Cook well, they should be soft, translucent and almost turning brown.
6.Add the meat back.
7.Here is the key: cook this mixture until "black $h!t starts to form on the bottom." (his quote). This is where you get a lot of flavor and color. If stuff is starting to burn and you don't have enough color, add a little Worcester sauce (or soy sauce in a pinch).
8.Add ~2-3 cloves of garlic and let it cook a bit. You don't want it to burn.
9.Add water according to how much rice you want to make. I just use the amounts on the pack of rice. I use regular long grain rice. It has been my experience that if you use anything else it won't taste right.
10.Once you get that water in there, you want to season it. Make your own blend, here is where I start at a minimum:
-Salt (remeber you are seasoning all that rice)
-Black pepper
-Cayenne pepper
-Garlic powder
-Onion powder
-Paprika
To a lesser extent:
-dried basil, thyme and oregano (make sure any herbs are a dried powder, I don't want to see green in my Jambalaya)
-chili powder
11.Taste the water. You have to get the spices right here, take into account that you are seasoning a lot of rice.
12.Bring to boil, add the rice and cook the rice like normal.
13.When the rice is done, take a wooden spoon and stir the pot once from bottom to top, do not over stir or it will get mushy.
14.Serve. I spice mine to my taste in the pot, but if you want you can add some hot sauce in the bowl. But, most of the Jambalaya I have had is not that hot.

This is making my mouth water, I think I am going to make some this weekend.

I make a version of Emeril's turkey and sausage jamalaya from, IIRC, his NOLA cookbook. It is great with left over roast turkey or chicken.. almost as good as his gumbo! In fact, whenever I roast a chicken, I always do an extra one specifically for gumbo or jambalaya. Or, get one of those pre-roasted ones from the store.

One key I have found is to use a quality sausage. This really adds a lot of the flavour/character of the dish. I prefer it with a "real" (or as close as we can get in Memphis) andoulie sausage, but that is too spicy for my children. A good compromise for us is Costco's chicken andoulie sausage. I also do not like shrimp or sea food in general, so don't add any of that.

What I'll do is saute 1 onion, 1 stick of celery, 1 green and/or 1 red bell pepper, maybe a carrot if I have one. Whatever I have laying around, basically. When tender add several smushed cloves of garlic and salt, some Emeril's cajun seasoning and a pinch of cayenne, to taste! Add about 1 lb of sliced sausage, and brown. Add 2-3 cups of rice, enough chicken stock (and sometimes, a can of crushed tomatoes) and the roughly chopped cooked chicken. Bring to a boil, cover and cook till rice is done, about 20 mins. Fluff with a fork and serve.

I have to make it fairly tame, so serve with a good bottle of hot sauce on the table!

Wow, thank you everyone. I think I see the biggest area where I went wrong- I stirred my rice and it turned out creamy like risotto.

Also, I now remember watching on tv a show about the jambalaya contest. It was interesting how the ingredients for the competition jambalaya were so limited. No tomatoes, for example.

I think I'm going to try a version without them.

For all the years I lived in Louisiana, I never had tomatoes in Jambalaya.

So, you gonna report me to the JJCP (Jambalaya Judge Certification Panel)?

Beerrific said:

For all the years I lived in Louisiana, I never had tomatoes in Jambalaya.

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I have been looking at some more recipes and about half have tomatoes (and/or tomato paste) and half don't. After a little more digging it appears that Cajun Jambalaya (aka brown jambalaya) does not have tomatoes but Creole Jambalaya (aka red jambalaya) does.

From this page:

It's a brown jambalaya, typical of Cajun-style jambalayas rather than the tomato-based Creole jambalayas of New Orleans.

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The wiki 'Jambalaya' page also agrees.

I had always thought Jambalaya was a Creole dish (not Cajun) so maybe that's why I thought it always had tomatoes. I always make Etouffee (also Creole) without tomatoes so I think I just associated one 'with' and the other 'without'. I'm sure this is all covered in the JJCP cert.

I see. And that explains it, all the people that I have had jambalaya from were cajuns. And to that end, I still will never put tomatoes in mine.

all this talk...

making zataran's jambalaya mix and andouille right now. usingers, btw. gotta keep it local!

zie feinste wurst!

WAS gonna make chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese, pancetta, kalamata and basil with a lemon risotto....but the wife is sleeping thru dinner.....

I would love an awesome jambalaya recipe .

Reminds me of the first time SWMBO made gumbo for me. She went to put the okra in and I hear her cussing and some thing went into the trash.
me "Whats wrong?"
her "The okra is bad, I have to get more!"
me "Whats was wrong with it?"
her "Its covered in slime!"

I laughed my butt off.

Here is what my momma done made when I was a kid.


onion
3-4 ribs celery
green bell pepper
3 tomatoes
garlic
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper

polish kelbasa sausage
Ham, the kind that is flat in water
Shrimp

2 cups good rice

Brown the meat, set a side. Saute the onion celery and green pepper until translusent. Quater and add tomatoes, cook for a few minutes, drain and retain the liquid. Add meat and rice, use retained liquid and add water as per directions if you have .5 cup of liquid and you need 3 cups water for the rice add the liquid and 2.5 cups water. Bring to boil for a minute turn to low and cook for prescribe time, add shrimp the last 5 minutes.

I would love an awesome jambalaya recipe .

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Here's a bunch of 'em.

Some things are common to practically all of them (trinity, garlic, cayenne) and some other stuff you have to decide which direction to go (sausage/ham/both, chicken or not, shrimp or not, tomatoes or not).

FWIW, I would always use chicken stock instead of water (and adjust the salt accordingly).

SpanishCastleAle said:

FWIW, I would always use chicken stock instead of water (and adjust the salt accordingly).

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As I was typing the recipe/guide above, I wondered why I had never used stock. I am sure your very traditional jambalaya chefs don't, but I am not as good as them, so I am using stock next time.

Beerrific said:

As I was typing the recipe/guide above, I wondered why I had never used stock. I am sure your very traditional jambalaya chefs don't, but I am not as good as them, so I am using stock next time.

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You should add a little salt when you saute the trinity (helps bring moisture out, or so AB says) but you may not need much if any after that.

SpanishCastleAle said:

You should add a little salt when you saute the trinity (helps bring moisture out, or so AB says) but you may not need much if any after that.

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I don't like to add salt at that point, because it does bring out the moisture and that inhibits the nice color formation.