The Forgotten Once Jambalaya Slow Cooker Recipefeatureschicken slow cooked with smoked sausage and the perfect combination of spices that make this a truly unforgettable meal!
My wife loves having jambalaya when we are in New Orleans. It’s usually one of the first meals she’ll order. If it’s not the full order of the famous rice dish, it’s one of those ‘Taste of New Orleans‘ deals most restaurants offer – you know, the one where you get jambalaya, red beans and rice, and gumbo.
On our most recent trip, after checking into the hotel, we took the short walk over to the Chartres House on Chartres Street and Toulouse Street in the French Quarter. I ordered the red beans and rice that was served with grilled smoked sausage, Southern fried chicken strips, and crusty French bread while she enjoyed their ‘A Taste of New Orleans‘ meal that included red beans and rice, chicken and andouille gumbo, and jambalaya. You could also add a fourth option: Crawfish Étouffée.
In the past, we have ordered jambalaya at the Gumbo Shop and thought that theirs was worth going back for. In fact, the Gumbo Shop is one of my favorite restaurants in NOLA. That had me thinking, who has the best jambalaya?My wife and I recommend the Chartres House and the Gumbo Shop.
Here are some other options to check out in New Orleans for the best jambalaya:
Coop’s Place
Order theRabbit & Sausage Jambalaya.This traditional Creole dish is simmered with tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, local seasonings, boneless rabbit, and smoked pork sausage. You can make it a supreme by adding shrimp and tasso.
Coop’s Place is located at 1109 Decatur Street. Just be aware that you must be over 21 to enter as it is a bar. For more information, visit them athttp://www.coopsplace.net.
K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen
Order the Cajun Jambalaya.They make it with onions, bell peppers, celery, tasso, sausage, chicken, tomatoes, jalapenos, and garlic in a rich stock; everything is simmered for hours. The rice is then folded in. The jambalaya is served with Sauce Piquant.
K-Paul’s is located at 416 Chartres Street. For more information on the restaurant, visit them athttp://www.kpauls.com.
Napoleon House
Order the jambalaya with spicy rice, chicken, and sausage.
The Napoleon House is located at 500 Chartres Street. For more information, visit them athttp://www.napoleonhouse.com.
Bon Ton Cafe
Order the Bayou Jambalaya.
The Bon Ton Cafe is located at 401 Magazine Street. For more information, visit them athttp://www.thebontoncafe.com.
Jacques-Imo’s
Order the Creole Jambalaya.
Jacques-Imo’s is located at 8324 Oak Street. For more information, visit them athttp://jacques-imos.com.
Chartres House
Order the Blackened Shrimp and Cajun Jambalaya or the ‘A Taste of New Orleans’ dinner with the jambalaya, red beans and rice, and gumbo. I really liked their red beans and rice. The Southern Fried Chicken Strips went well with the beans.
The Chartres House is located at 601 Chartres Street. For more information, visit them athttp://www.chartreshouse.com.
Gumbo Shop
Order the jambalaya. It’s cooked with smoked sausage, shrimp, and chicken. I enjoyed their red beans and rice with smoked sausage. They also offer a Creole Combination Platter that is excellent. With the platter, you get their jambalaya, red beans and rice, and Shrimp Creole.
The Gumbo Shop is located at 630 Saint Peters Street. For more information, visit them athttp://www.gumboshop.com.
Jambalaya is one of the most popular meals in New Orleans, but most New Orleanians don’t go out to a restaurant to order jambalaya – maybe Coop’s Place is an exception. Most will tell you that the restaurant versions of jambalaya are served up just for the tourists. Jambalaya is a home-cooked meal and best served there. While reading different discussion boards online about the topic of cooking jambalaya, most talking said that anyone can make a pot of jambalaya that will taste better than what any restaurant has to offer.
Though I think that the jambalaya is excellent in New Orleans, perhaps the only reason I think that it is so good is that we are in New Orleans eating it. They could be serving boxed Zatarain’s for all I know.
Back in 2012, after a trip to New Orleans, I put together a slow cooker jambalaya recipe. That recipe, the Forgotten Once Jambalaya Slow Cooker Recipe (the one below that you probably just skipped to and missed all of this) was shared all over the place – even the Huffington Post shared it as part of a slow cooker recipe roundup article. To this day, it is still getting pinned, shared, and talked about.
If this recipe is the reason that you are here to my website – hello and welcome! Please check out my other recipes! I hope that you leave a comment below on what you think of this jambalaya recipe. So far, I have gotten thousands of comments, emails, and messages telling me about how this recipe was made for parties, work functions, church gatherings, or simply for the family on a weekday night and how loved it is. It still amazes me and I love reading each message.
As a warning, this recipe has some bite to it with the Rotel with chilies, hot sauce, and red pepper. If you like your jambalaya on the milder side, don’t add the hot sauce and lower the red pepper – you can always adjust the heat level at the end by offering the hot sauce at the table. And that’s one of the best parts about this meal, not only is it easy to put together and the convenience of it cooking in the slow cooker all day is that it brings the topic of New Orleans back up to our dinner table. My wife and I talk about the Chartres House or the Gumbo Shop while we eat this. We talk about our time in the Crescent City and it brings hope that we’ll be back there sooner than later.
Undoubtedly, she’ll be ordering the jambalaya again at one of the restaurants listed above and she’ll rave how it’s the best ever, but deep down inside, I’ll know that serving jambalaya at my home, at our dinner table – even though it’s not in New Orleans – still tastes the best.
I hope that you enjoy this recipe as much as my family does. Be sure to leave a comment in the section below on what you think of it along with where your favorite spot is to get jambalaya is in New Orleans. Thanks again!
Here’s how I make the Forgotten Once Jambalaya Slow Cooker Recipe:
Mix together the Rotel tomatoes with chiles, chicken broth, tomato paste, and seasonings. Then add the diced trinity to the Rotel mixture.
The boneless chicken thighs go in first.
Then the smoked sausage.
It’s all topped off with the Rotel and trinity mixture. Cover and cook on HIGH for 8 hours.
(Cook longer if you plan on using frozen chicken)
Once the slow cooker was done, I used a ladle and took out as much of the liquid as I could. I then – very carefully now – used oven mitts and took out the stone insert and drained out the remaining liquids.
I drained the liquids from the slow cooker through a strainer to catch the bigger chucks; but as you can see, there were 2 cups of liquid from the slow cooker.
I used the liquid from the slow cooker to cook the rice. Check the directions on the package of rice for cooking instructions.
Shred the chicken and mix the contents of the pot together. As you can see, there is no liquids in the bottom of the pot.
The rice came out perfect and is now infused with the flavors from the liquid that had cooked in the slow cooker.
Add the cooked rice back into the slow cooker folding it in and making sure the all of the ingredients are well mixed.
Here you have it: Eric’s Famous Slow Cooker Jambalaya. It’s bound to be unforgettable! Just serve it with hot French bread, offer hot sauce and Creole Seasoning at the table, and enjoy!
Place the chicken in the bottom of the slow cooker, then top with the sausage. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the tomatoes, stock, tomato paste, and seasonings; add the diced vegetables to mixture. Pour the tomato mixture over the chicken and sausage in the slow cooker.
Cover, and cook 7 to 8 hours on Low, or 3 to 4 hours on High.
Once the slow cooker has finished, there are a couple of options with the rice:1. Ladle out as much of the liquid out as possible - but saving the liquid. Once I have all the liquid out that I can get with the ladle, with oven mitts, I carefully pull out the insert and drain the remaining liquid. I then cook the rice, according to the package instructions, using the reserved liquids from the slow cooker.TIP: I place the container to catch the liquids in the sink and use the edge of the sink to help support the insert. I use a strainer to catch any of the bigger pieces that happen to fall out of the slow cooker while it is tilted. 2. Cook the one cup of rice separately. When the rice is done, fold the cooked rice into the slow cooker.3. You can use instant rice with 30-minutes remaining. Make sure that the rice is well mixed with the other ingredients before covering the slow cooker.
{Optional Step} After the rice is added, with 30-minutes of cooking time remaining, this is the point you would add thawed shrimp to the slow cooker.
Garnish with chopped green onions, serve with warm French bread; offer hot sauce and Creole Seasoning at the table. Enjoy!
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Eric Olsson is the food blogger of RedBeansAndEric.com. He publishes new recipes and interviews weekly. He has developed recipes and written articles for the famous Camellia brand in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has been mentioned in Louisiana Cookin‘ magazine and has had recipes featured in Taste of Home magazine – with his Creole Turkey recipe being runner up in their annual Thanksgiving recipe contest. He lives outside of Detroit, Michigan, with his wife and four children.
When preparing dried red kidney beans, the FDA recommends soaking them overnight, then boiling them for a 30 minutes. Since most slow cookers do not reach the boiling point (212°F), beans prepared in them without soaking and cooking them first will carry the toxic lectin.
Now you should be able to knock small spoonfuls off without it sticking (like glue) together. If I had to make a choice on which side of “right” I had to live with, it would be the fluffy end. Let me also say that if the dish comes out too sticky, the rice was overcooked.
Cooking dried beans in a slow cooker is incredibly convenient. Just throw them in with a bit of a broth and several hours later you'll be rewarded with some creamy and tender legumes. But if you try this method with red kidney beans, you risk giving yourself a severe case of food poisoning.
Put beans into the slow cooker and add enough water to cover beans by 2 inches. Turn cooker to HIGH and cook beans until they're tender and cooked through, about 5-6 hours for unsoaked beans. (You can also cook the unsoaked beans on low, which would take about twice as long.) Drain beans.
Use the Right Ingredients: Authentic jambalaya typically includes ingredients like andouille sausage, chicken, shrimp, bell peppers, onions, celery, and tomatoes. Use these traditional ingredients for the best flavor. Season Liberally: Cajun and Creole seasoning blends are essential for flavoring jambalaya.
One of the biggest complaints when making jambalaya is that the rice ends up mushy. And there's two main culprits of this – choosing the wrong type of rice and over-stirring. For this recipe, you want long-grain white rice, like basmati or jasmine. Don't use short-grain rice.
Jambalaya, on the other hand, is a rice dish. Your average recipe contains about double the amount of liquid to rice, but the liquid cooks down. Jambalaya shouldn't turn out watery or mushy. Recipes with tomato sauce will turn out a little wetter, however, almost as wet as risotto, and that's totally normal.
Before cooking, all dried beans need to be rehydrated by soaking. The 10- to 12-hour overnight soak is the easy and always effective method, but you can quick-soak beans by bringing them to the boil for one minute, then covering the pan and letting them sit for one hour.
Modern cooking websites often say it doesn't matter. In a way, they're both right. Soaking beans can help improve the texture of the final product once the beans are cooked and reduce the gas produced when the food is being digested. But it isn't necessary to soak them.
True Or False: You Always Have to Soak Dried Beans Before Cooking. False. "It's absolutely not necessary to soak dried beans overnight (or any appreciable length of time) before cooking. Soaking will not speed up the cooking process by any measurable amount of time.
But, then I learned something astonishing: You can actually skip soaking beans over night, and actually you should. Not only does it shorten the amount of time until you have ready-to-eat beans, it also produces a more flavorful end result.
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