Jambalaya!!!!! (If you didn’t say that in Newman’s voice, I’m not sure we can be friends.)
We went back to the Jubilee cookbook this week. This recipe was a lot less complicated than I expected. I have nicknamed it “Meat-a-palooza” though, good grief! Definitely not for the herbivores in the group! Also be warned, if you make the full recipe, it says it feeds TWELVE. That’s twelve normal people. Since I have a Jarrod, it’s probably more like eight, but still. We definitely have leftovers for the week!
It calls for cooked chicken, so I just roasted some chicken breasts with olive oil, salt, and pepper in the oven, and the leftover chicken will get shredded and turned into tacos later this week. I have also discovered that the peeled, deveined shrimp from the meat counter at Meijer is pretty good! Always good to know when you lived in a landlocked state. She also has you parch the rice (toast it) in the oven. I’ve never done that before, and it really made the texture of the rice very nice, it soaked up that broth really well! I used smoked turkey sausage as well, I try to cut out some calories where I can.
I almost always make a recipe the first time as it’s written, but think of things I would tweak the next time. There wasn’t a lot with this one! I could have probably undercooked the chicken just a tad knowing it was going back in for another 20 minutes, and I think I would add the cayenne before it went in the oven instead of after. The cayenne was just “to taste” at the end, but I think it would have been good to have the warmth cook in from the broth, maybe about 1/2 a teaspoon, then you could add more after if you wanted it hotter. A little of that stuff goes a long way, depending on who you are. I love spicy but I think over the years I’ve deadened some taste buds, so there’s that.
All in all this was pretty easy and it was for sure delicious! A side note on the beer: no, it’s not southern. But when your friends are in Wisconsin and ask if they can bring you anything back, you ask for some Spotted Cow! I thought it was an appropriate pairing for Meat-a-palooza!
Cheers! ~ Jen
