I’m still on my mission to cook up every single recipe in the Paula Deen Southern Cooking Bible, so this weekend I made Paula Deen’s Jambalaya. I’m not very familiar with Louisiana cuisine, but I needed something easy after a long day of grading essays for a student competition, so I decided to try out this Creole version of jambalaya. And I was not disappointed!

Here’s the picture!

The first thing to recommend this jambalaya recipe is the fact that most of the ingredients are just dried spices that are already in most everybody’s cupboard. After a long day, it’s a very easy throw-together one-pot meal.

The second thing to recommend this recipe is that it’s not expensive to make. As the cost of groceries is a major source of concern for many Americans these days, affordability is a key factor in deciding which recipes stay in the rotation and which ones exit stage right. I often look at my Southern Bible cookbook and wonder where I’m going to go for the loan I’ll need to make some of the crab and lobster dishes.

The most important thing to recommend this recipe is that the jambalaya is just plain yummy. It’s hearty and spicy and oh-so-filling.

I want to tell you about one major modification you’re going to need to make. The original recipe calls for a cooking time, in total, of 25-27 minutes. To be honest, it’s going to take fully twice that long for the rice to get really tender. I mean… if you’re a weirdo who likes undercooked rice, I guess this recipe could work for you as-is, but I like my rice with no bite, so I had to extend the cooking time. I extended the cooking time after adding the sausage and then added the shrimp at the end, as the recipe suggested, cooking them in the sauce for an additional 7 minutes.

I also added an extra 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper because I was feeling adventurous. Next time I make this, I will stick with Paula’s recommended 1/4 tsp rather than the 1/2 tsp I used.

I served this jambalaya with Paula Deen’s Family Reunion Deviled Eggs (they have a wonderful secret ingredient I’ll tell you about in my next post) and blueberry bread.

It was a great night of eating at my house, y’all!

The recipe is available on Paula Deen’s website. Here’s a link to it!

https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/jambalaya-2/