Tyler and I love our house. But there is one thing we really dislike. Our freezer. We have this awesome SubZero fridge...but the freezer, well, it is small. And we don't like it. We have to shove things in there and rearrange like we're playing a never ending game of Tetris. We're about to break down and buy a deep freezer for the garage. Needless to say, I'm constantly trying to use as many of the items in our freezer as I can since we can't really fit anything in there. Some of our friends gave us some frozen venison sausage, and all I could think was where in the freezer was it going to fit! Well, it didn't fit, so it went in the fridge, which meant I had to use it.
Now I would typically use an andouille sausage or a turkey sausage in my jambalaya, but since we had the venison, that's what got used. I guess it was a good mix of Texas meets Cajun. You can use whatever sausage you like best. (Splurge for the andouille!) Here we go:
Jambalaya
2 tablespoons peanut oil, divided
1 tablespoon Tony Chachere's
Sausage (the recipe calls for 10 oz, but you can put in as much as you like)
1 lb chicken breasts cut into 1 inch pieces
1 onion diced
1 small green bell peper diced
2 stalks celery diced
3 cloves garlic minced
1 16 ounce can crushed Italian tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon file powder
1 1/4 cups uncooked white rice (not instant rice)
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
Heat 1 tbsp of peanut oil in a large pot over medium heat. Season the sausage and chicken with Tony's. Saute the sausage first until browned. Remove and then add 1 tbsp peanut oil and then saute the chicken pieces. Remove.
In the same pot, saute the onion, bell peper, celery, and garlic for a few minutes. Stir in the tomatoes then add the red pepper, black pepper, salt, Tabasco, Worcestershire, and file powder. Add the chicken and sausage back to the mixture and cook for 10 minutes.
Stir in the rice and chicken broth and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 - 25 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed.
Super easy, right? Enjoy!
