One of my favorite southern meals is Jambalaya. With 5 fragrant spices, this one-pot meal will make your whole home smell fantastic, in addition to being delicious! Read on to learn my tips and tricks for making 5 Spice Jambalaya.
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Jambalaya is a slow cooking rice dish that shares origins with paella from Spain. It can have all sorts of different meats – shrimp, chicken, crawfish, Andouille sausage, etc. Shrimp and Andouille sausage are my personal favorite combination. Traditional jambalaya also makes use of the “Holy Trinity” of vegetables – onions, celery, and bell peppers. These are all highly aromatic vegetables when sauteed, and they provide the base of the flavor for the dish, in combination with the 5 spices that I think are the most quintessentially cajun: paprika, cayenne, cumin, bay, and thyme.
5 Spice Jambalaya – Tips & Ingredient Highlights
The distinctive flavor in this dish comes from the smoked paprika. Regular paprika will do in a pinch, but smoked paprika adds a heavenly, rich smoky flavor. It’s one of my favorite spices, and you can buy it on Amazon, or at some large supermarket chains. Use it in chili, paella, or rub it on your next roast – it’ll be good no matter what. Just make sure to buy the sweet version and not the hot version. I made that mistake once and seasoned a giant batch of oven roasted potatoes with it liberally – we were eating firey potatoes for days.
While canned chicken stock will work just fine in this recipe, I prefer to use either homemade stock (which I sometimes have a stash of in the freezer), or Better than Bouillon concentrate, which I always have around. I particularly like the Better than Bouillon products because they allow you to control and adjust the flavor to liquid ratio. For some recipes I want a heavier umami flavor without adding a lot of liquid, and you can accomplish that easily since it’s concentrated down.
5 Spice Jambalaya
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp butter
- 14 oz Andouille sausage, sliced
- 1 tbsp paprika, preferably smoked paprika
- 1 1/2 tsp cumin
- 2 tsp ground thyme
- 1/2 tsp cayenne, or to taste
- 2 green bell peppers, diced
- 3 stalks of celery, sliced optional
- 1/4 cup green onions, sliced
- 1/2 cup red onion, diced
- 15 oz diced tomatoes
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 cups uncooked brown rice
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 16 oz uncooked shrimp, peeled and de-veined
Instructions
- Dice the onions and peppers, and slice the Andouille sausage.
- Place butter and sausage in a large stockpot or dutch oven over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally for 5-6 minutes until sausage begins to brown.
- Add in the paprika, cumin, cayenne, and thyme and cook for an additional minute.
- Add the red onion, green onion, celery, pepper, tomatoes, bay leaf, and some salt to taste. Stir to combine.
- Add the brown rice and chicken stock and turn the heat to low. Cover and cook until rice is just tender, about 45 minutes.
- Stir in the shrimp, replace the lid, and cook for 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper if needed, and serve hot.
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