I wanted to make dinner last night and use only one pan (and not go out to the store) so I poked around the kitchen to see what I had in stock and decided on jambalaya.
This will be a non-traditional jambalaya, though this is one of those dishes that has as many variations as there are folks that cook it, and none are truly "incorrect".
Generally, it's a dish consisting of meat (pork or chicken), seafood (shrimp, crab, crawfish), or both (often including andouille sausage) and cooked with vegetables, stock, rice, and various seasonings.
Here's what I used...
Onion, garlic, fresh thyme, kale, brown rice, bacon, hot links (sausage), chicken, flounder, canned tomato, Cajun spice, Worcestershire (pronounced; wash-your-sister xD) sauce, & chicken stock.
chop, chop, chop...
Started with frying up that chopped bacon. Mmmmmm, bacon. I use a local brand called Hills. They make great pork products including the hot links I'm using.
When the bacon is rendered and crispy I removed it and set it in the lid I'll be using later to cover the pan (really trying to limit the amount of dishes here 💯).
Then I cooked the onion and garlic, moved that over to rest with the bacon while I cooked the chicken. This is also when I added the Cajun spice. I go light at first, you can always add more seasoning at the end ;)
Then I added the hot links and the cooked veggies back to the pan.
Since this is a rice dish I'll be adding the rice then covering and cooking until the rice is done, so I'm going to cut the fish into big chunks and wait until the rice is almost done to add the fish.
Once the chicken is a bit cooked I add the rice, tomato, Worcestershire, and kale. I give that a stir and let it cook for a minute or two, then add the chicken stock (or water), cover, and set a timer for about 30 minutes (because I'm using brown rice, which takes longer than the normal 20 minutes for white rice).
Here is it with everything but the flounder, which I will now add (and forget to take a picture of 😜)
I turned the heat off after I added the fish and let it sit, covered, for about 10 minutes, stirring a couple times, and that did the trick.
Ready to serve!
