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Oh cool this thread is back! I made Jambalaya this weekend for the first time and it was pretty awesome. My local kinda fancy grocery store does a HelloFresh-esque meal deal every week and you get a bit of a discount vs. if you bought everything individually and this week was Jambalaya. I combined the store's low-effort recipe and the version Issac Toups made for Vice so it ended up somewhere between Creole and Cajun. Disclaimer: when I make it again I'll chop all my own stuff but I have joint issues so the ability to minimize chopping for a trial run was pretty nice. I formed the fresh andouille sausage into tiny balls and seared them and the pre-cut chicken breast (wish it had been leg quarters but oh well) off for a bit in the same pot I was going to cook in. Then I made a roux, dumped in the pre-cut trinity (supplemented with additional onion) followed by garlic and a minced chili (purchased/prepped separately). Then I added chicken stock and the can of tomatoes from the kit and simmered on the stovetop for an hour. Seasoned with ~1tbs black pepper, ~1tbs 'Cajun' seasoning from the kit, and a couple bay leaves. After the hour was up I dumped in 2 cups of rice/ the seared meats and finished in the oven for half an hour at 350. I got a bit nervous when making the roux so I only got it to about milk chocolate color, not the dark cocoa color that's probably better, but for my first go around I think it went fairly well! Turned out pretty delicious and made a fuckton of food. No pics because I forgot and also all jambalayas look pretty much the same.
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Nov 18, 2019 17:37
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| # ¿ Jun 3, 2024 01:45 |
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Discussion Quorum posted:For poultry gumbos, I like to get my roux dark but not too dark - pretty similar to what Phil Moscowitz posted above. For seafood gumbo, I like a lighter roux - somewhere past peanut butter but not all the way to milk chocolate. I stole that from Issac Toup's recipe - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3bg77/easy-jambalaya-recipe The video of him making it on the YouTube Munchies channel is extremely fun and that's where he says it's a Cajun-style jambalaya. He's really entertaining on camera.
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Nov 18, 2019 18:39
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Klyith posted:I don't think I would ever do a roux jambalaya, if only because not needing to make roux is a good reason to cook jambalaya in the first place. Jambalaya has a really good effort:reward ratio, why mess with that? I mean, the roux literally the difference between Creole style and Cajun style. It's not a matter of one being better than the other. Creole jambalaya is more Spanish influenced and is more paella-like and Cajun is more French. For what it's worth I really liked the depth of flavor I got even using a blander cut of chicken and only about 10oz of sausage. Also, the carbs are kinda the point. The Cajun version especially is a poor man's meal, it's supposed to fill you up cheap. Vegetables weren't expensive when you grew em in the garden and pigs and chickens had/have a good effort:meat ratio. Currently you can get green peppers, garlic, and onions cheap enough and chicken either goes on sale all the time or you can buy it whole and break it down yourself. The only relatively expensive ingredient is the sausage, and that's used more as a spice than anything else.
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Nov 19, 2019 12:29
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That Works posted:That could be a nod to people who don't know what they're cooking calling something jambalaya in my mind. Outside of Toups I've not seen a recipe with roux in any of the other kinda standards out there. The Justin Williams Cajun cookbook my mom has also uses roux in it's recipe. So I would say that the waters are quite clear: Cajun and Creole jambalaya are two fairly different dishes that happen to share the same name.
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Nov 19, 2019 13:55
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Klyith posted:
Fair enough. It is really tasty though, and I'd try it at least once just to compare to the tomato version.
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Nov 19, 2019 15:29
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| # ¿ Jun 3, 2024 01:45 |
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That Works posted:I'm glad it's not just me then. I feel pretty experienced here otherwise and this was throwing me for a loop. I didn't realize it was such an uncommon thing! Like I said, growing up my mom's go-to version used roux so it didn't seem that unusual to me. I guess we all learned something 
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Nov 19, 2019 16:45
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