Cooking: Sausage and Shrimp Jambalaya

Happy Fat Tuesday yall!

Well for the occassion and since Justyn's been working late this whole week, I decided to make Sausage and Shrimp Jambalaya from Chef John's blog (http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2008/05/creole-sausage-and-shrimp-jambalaya.html). His recipes are always spot on and delicious! You really have to be a dumb ass to mess up his recipes. On that note, I was kind of a dumbass with this recipe and now that I'm tasting it.. I have to say that I did a pretty good job.

Dumbass Messup # 1: I was looking at his recipes trying to decide whether to make Shrimp Etoufee or the Jambalaya and when I went to the store, I ended up getting ingrediants for BOTH recipes.

Dumbass Messup # 2: I didn't realize my mistake until too late.

Dumbass Pro-tip: Make sure you prep ALL your ingrediants before starting. Scrambling to prep while things are already cooking is dumb.

But actually, it turned out OK. Both recipes are similar enough where it was OK to mix ingrediants.

I started off by browning the smoked sausage (I couldn't find andouille) in a couple tablespoons of butter.

Then once the sausage was browned, add the spice mixture (paprika, cayenne & cumin). Mix that together and then add the canned diced tomato. At this point, it should smell ready to eat. Like yummy!

Add you veggies and bay leaf and give it a stir.

And then the brown rice and chicken stock. I snuck in some frozen okra at this point. If you want it to keep its green color, you might want to add this at the same time you add the shrimp.

I let everything simmer for 45 minutes per Chef John's directions but you really need to adjust the cooking time depending on a lot of factors. How hot your stove gets, the type of brown rice.. you know that kinda stuff. Mine ended up taking about 55 minutes. I then added my shrimp, and cooked that for another 10 minutes.

Done and plated. Time to nom it up to celebrate Fat Tuesday all by myself :(.