Kenneth Temple's Cajun Jambalaya | An Introduction to Cajun and Creole Cooking | Food Network

[Music] i'm kenneth temple and welcome to our cajun creole class today we will be preparing cajun jambalaya louisiana's famous one pot dish with creole seasoning smoked sausage chicken and one big old pot of love let's get into the kitchen and start cooking before we get started we need to make our creole spices let's make it from scratch first we need three tablespoons of kosher salt all right we also need two tablespoons of black pepper one tablespoon of garlic powder one tablespoon of onion powder one tablespoon of white pepper one tablespoon of cayenne one tablespoon of paprika and one and a half teaspoons of cumin okay now we'll combine that with a fork you can use a whisk you can stick this in a food processor and blitz it together and make it all nice and fine whatever you want but just get this nice and mixed and in creo cajun cuisine we love to have a well balanced of white pepper black pepper and cayenne pepper so it sings a harmonious note on your palette the white pepper is nice and mild the black pepper has a mild spice in the cayenne well that's self-explanatory now that our creole spices is all mixed up let's clear this out so we can begin to chop down our smoked sausage and our chicken since we're about to begin cutting out proteins it's very important that you don't cross contaminate i'm going to take some wet paper towels to make sure that my second board does not slip now if you don't have the luxury of having two cutting boards cut your smoked sausage first and then your raw chicken second then hot soapy water wash off your cutting board your knives and then get back to the kitchen first thing we're going to do is we're going to cut 24 ounces of beef smoked sausage you can use turkey sausage you can use a vegan sausage you can use andui if you can get your hands on it but don't feel any pressure to have to use any andouille sausage when it comes to cajun creole cuisine you always want to just use what's fresh and available near you but if you get your hands on some mindery sausage by all means use it so we're just going to slice these down so about a quarter inch slice don't worry if it's not perfect everybody's still gonna eat it now i remember growing up when we had the stretcher meal my mama would go ahead and take these and half them into what i call half moons now everybody's for sure gonna get some smoke sausage in a jambalaya because look you don't always have the luxury of having every single thing you need so sometimes you have to make a meal stretch and that's just one way that you can stretch the meal and by halfing the sausage it's a great way to feed a crowd and even without having this is one of those one pot dishes that can feed the cookout the catering event the game day party anything you need for a quick one-pot dish jambalaya is your go-to now let's break down our boneless chicken thighs you can use breast if you love i like boneless chicken thighs cut into one inch pieces because chicken thighs have more flavor you can use chicken tenders but boneless chicken dye saves you some time now if you really want to save a little bit of money all you have to do is do a little butchering you can get the chicken thighs with the skin on bone in rip off the skin and just take that bone off and you'll save yourself a few dollars other than that pay somebody to cut everything for you now one smoked meat that's not too popular outside of louisiana that we love is taso and taso is traditionally a smoked pork that's well seasoned and smoked the same way you would do smoked sausage it also comes in turkey now if you're trying to go a little bit healthier but that will be another great meat to add into your jambalaya to add another layer of flavor now if you want to add some shrimp you want to add some crawfish if you want to be fancy and add some lobster you know you will always add those at the very last second once we get to the point at the end of the jambalaya where we're going to fluff in our green onions that's when you'll add those shellfish items simply because they only take a few minutes to cook and the residual heat from the rice will cook those to perfection any sooner you'll end up with rubbery seafood and people will talk bad about you and since you're taking this class with me on the food network kitchen we'll have people talk about us in a bad way now that our chicken is nice and diced what we're going to do is we're going to transfer to a bowl let's get rid of this first we're gonna transfer our chicken to a bowl and then we're gonna go wash our hands and we're gonna come right back and season this chicken up now we're going to take two tablespoons of canola oil and i like to always add my oil around the rim of the bowl so as i'm tossing each little piece of chicken gets a little bit of love in it we're going to also add two tablespoons of our creole seasoning make sure you evenly sprinkle it over you don't want any boxes of chicken you want every piece of chicken to know that it's loved now i'm going to toss this with a spoon for some reason every time i mix something i stirred the bowl it's probably from my childhood watching my dad mix cakes and every time he would beat something he would turn the bowl to help the bowl and him i don't know it's like this little dance you know just dance and stir i don't know but you can see how beautifully coated each piece of chicken is this chicken knows that it's loved and it's on its way into our bellies we're going to go ahead on and preheat our pot over a medium-high heat we want to make sure that this is preheated so once we add this chicken it begins to almost fry it so we can get this beautiful fine on the bottom of our pot now fine might not be a word that you're familiar with but it's all those little brown bits that most amateur cooks wash away when they're cooking which is nothing but full flavor of love and that's what we're going to use to build this cajun jambalaya base by base layer by layer deliciousness by deliciousness now that our pot is nice and hot we're going to add 2 tablespoons of oil now let's add our chicken that's what you want to hear if you don't hear that sizzle take it out and let your oil get hot just a few seconds longer now stir your chicken to make sure that all of the chicken is covered with the oil and this is just going to ensure that each piece of chicken begins to fry exactly how we want to now if you notice that your chicken is starting to cook too fast just reduce your heat just a little bit but we still want some good high heat so this chicken can essentially fry oh yeah ah you can smell instantly as soon as the chicken begins to cook that beautiful aroma just starts to dance all on your palate you can taste it in the back of your mouth but always just make sure you stir the chicken every now and then just to make sure it's not sticking or burning this smells amazing now growing up jambalaya will serve the creole style which is similar to the african jalal france i really never liked the red rice it always reminded me of ketchup rice it wasn't until i got in culinary school that i learned about this cajun jambalaya it's rich deep meaty flavor that was just so amazing i had to get my hand on it perfecting this recipe it took seven years and we'll get into what my first jambalaya looked like year one so as you begin to stir your pot you'll notice these little brown bits on the bottom of your pot this is the fine this is the flavor that we're looking for fine flavor flavor fine that's what we're looking for smelling good smelling delicious now i got a bigger spoon let's take our chicken out this chicken is smelling very delicious but do not be tempted to eat it it is only cooked halfway through and the reason why we're only cooking the halfway through is because it has to cook for another 30 minutes in the jambalaya and it's going to do all the extra work for us now let's add our sausage and we're going to cook this for about another five minutes until it's nice and brown give it a stir to make sure it's coated with the fat [Music] good cooking right here now what we have here is we have creole seasoning chicken flavor and fat all of that flavor is now being infused into our smoked sausage this is how you layer your flavors okay now the very first time i made this jambalaya i did not have any of these techniques my jambalaya really looked like a rice pilaf with specks of orange pepper and sauces in it it tasted good but it wasn't jambalaya so i had to go into a deep search and ask my teachers who was cajuns how did they really develop this flavor and this is the technique that i was taught to get the flavor profile it's all in the font and a little tomato paste too which we'll add later beautiful looking good a few more minutes i'ma stop touching it so it can actually begin to fry up and get nice and brown so cajun creole cuisine you'll find the holy trinity well-seasoned food and love in it but just know that the creoles are a little bit more refined than the cajun city folks and country folks still love good cooking and now you begin to see some browning on our sausage this is exactly what we're looking for and look at the bottom of that pot you may think that that's burnt i know that's flavor waiting to go into our jambalaya all right there right there oh let me show you can you see that one you see that one that's black and smoked sausage oh yeah that's good look at how beautiful this looks now one thing to keep in mind you don't want to over fry your sausage the big thing that we're going after is this fond on the bottom of the pot we're adding this to our chicken bowl because all of this is going right back into the pot and finish cooking later see all this here took me seven years to figure that out you do it once sure you can cook you do it over and over and over now you have perfected the dish and this is what it took seven years for me to finally understand how to get that nice fine on the bottom of my pot now you may be a little nervous but once we add our onion celery and bell pepper it's just gonna suck all that up and infuse with flavor and then this jambalaya is on its way to your belly slide this out and let's get ready to start chopping our onions celery and bell pepper now there's several ways you can chop a bell pepper but i want to show you all the fancy chef way when you're trying to impress your friends what you want to do is you want to just cut off the top cut off the bottom and then you want to make a nice little incision on the bell pepper then what you're going to do is press down on the bell pepper and just slowly roll the bell pepper out okay and then you get rid of the pith you get rid of the stem and you're good to go fancy right yeah fancy and then from here what i like about this style is from here we just have our bell peppers in one spot that we can chop it down now you can use an orange you can use a yellow or you can use a green bell pepper i like to use a red bell pepper because it gives some color it gives some flavor some flavor to our final dish and so we're just gonna keep on chopping but don't think we're just throwing these guys away we're gonna break these guys down too so i like to just stack them all up in one bunch if you're not comfortable with cooking do this in portions [Music] my stomach is having a conversation with my palate because i can just smell the fine in the pot and i know it's about to happen because i've made this just so many times it's about to be a part of y'all it's about to be a party look at how beautiful that is my culinary struggles to be happy i got my knife skills on point and now we're gonna do the same thing with our edges you don't want to throw this away but if you don't feel like chopping this part up this would be something great to add to some stock somewhere down the line scraps of vegetables are great thing to use in homemade stocks oh yeah now jambalaya is amazing because you can feed a whole entire village with it but it's also amazing because it feeds everybody no matter if you're vegan pescatarian a meat eater you can always make it to anybody's preference that loves to eat good old food it also stores well and freezes very well too but in my house it never really lasts that long to make it to eat the spot chopping down the celery so the holy trinity is louisiana cooking onions celery and bell pepper if you do anything else if you throw a turn up in here if you draw a carrot up in here i don't even know why you would draw a turnip in here but if you're doing anything outside of these right here you are not truly making cajun creole cuisine this is the base this is the mother of all things cajun creole and don't forget about the love okay now a spanish onion is preferred because it has a mild sweet flavor not as sweet as a vidalia onion and not as strong as a white onion but if you can only get your hands on a white onion use that but never use a vidalia onion because then you're going to end up making dessert you're going to have a jambalaya dessert because of the sweetness of the vidalias okay now it's very important when you're breaking down the onion chopping means breaking down that you leave the root intact the root keeps the onion from falling apart as you chop it okay that's very important i cannot tell you how many novice cooks i see cut off the top and the bottom then wonder why they almost lost a finger well that's because the very thing that was holding it together you took it off so always keep the root on okay yes i say root and if you're new to cooking new to chopping just follow the little lines in the onions and that'll help you just get a nice even dice oh yeah look at all of that look at all of that good flavor fresh ingredients locally sourced about to go into this pot of love into our belly okay now let's cut on our fire again because we cut it off while we did our chopping cut it back up to a medium heat in a matter of seconds as we add the onions celery and bell pepper as they begin to release their moisture it's going to begin to pick up all of this beautiful fine and begin to incorporate itself as one family full of flavor full of love oh yes cajun jambalaya delicious now we still have all of this good extra oil left into our pot so we don't need to add any more oil all the oil that we need in this recipe is already in our pot and floating around in our chicken and sausage too now that our pot is nice and hot let's add our vegetables get on and i always like to add just a little pinch of salt just to help the vegetables sweat faster so just stir this give it a little second and we'll begin to pick up all those flavors now as the vegetables release their moisture we're going to take our spoon and begin to scrape the bottom of the pot to help pick up all of that fine to help incorporate it with our vegetables see how it picks up nice and easy the vegetables are doing all of the heavy lifting now while that's cooking let's break down our garlic so garlic comes in a variety of sizes no garlic is made the same add as much as you like as little as you love i requested six garlic cloves in here but you see this jumbo one right here this is at least two and a half garlic by itself so this is perfect for me so i'm just gonna take my garlic and smash it smash it then we're gonna go ahead and start chopping it down so as you're working your garlic into this nice chopped mince just keep an eye on your vegetables in the pot to make sure that they are not sticking but you will notice that by the steam that's being released in the pot at the same time there we go and it's very important to scrape scrape the bottom of that pot a wooden spoon works best so you can get all of those brown bits and as you can see just look at it coating our vegetables seasoned with love smells like a party in here so while the vegetables are steaming the steam is a good visual cue for you to know that your vegetables are beginning to get nice and translucent once they stop your vegetables are starting to burn we don't want our vegetables to burn we want them to get nice and translucent it's looking good so what i'm gonna do now is add two teaspoons of creole seasoning to this and this is one of the biggest secrets to cajun creole cuisine layering your flavors this allows you to take a bite out of something and realize how amazing it is then take a second bite out of it and realize you wasn't lying to yourself blare those flavors allow the herbs and spices to begin to wake up as it hits the oils this is the key to cajun creole cuisine layering your flavors because if you just dump it in there once it'll taste good but adding it a little bit at a time just builds depth upon depth upon depth of deliciousness you hear that that's the sound of the vegetables cooking down that's perfect that's right where we want it to be so now we're going to add our garlic one bay leaf one teaspoon of dry thyme and one teaspoon of cayenne now if you're on the edge on if it's too spicy you can omit this step or you can add a half a teaspoon or quarter teaspoon but one important thing to remember is rice is going to absorb all of this flavor and you always want to over season your rice dishes because the rice is just going to absorb everything you put in it this is another thing i learned in the seven years of developing this recipe what i thought was enough really wasn't because the rice absorbed all of that flavor and i was lacking flavor it tasted good but it wasn't what i wanted by doing these steps here we're building that flavor into it and ensuring that we have a delicious pot of jambalaya now we're going to add two cups of parboiled rice and i love parboiled rice because it just guarantees that you're going to always have a delicious pot of jambalaya you can use brown rice if you want but you're going to have to rinse off the starch three times before adding it to the pot par boiled rice just guarantees delicious rice every single time stir the pot to make sure that the rice is evenly coated with all of this love now i'm going to also add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste and the tomato paste is going to add color and a depth of umami flavor to this dish this is totally different from ketchup rice because we only have a little bit of tomatoes when i do a creole jambalaya style rice now i'm using crushed tomatoes and tomato paste to build up the base of my sauce this here is all about the fond and the creole jambalaya is not about the fine but it's more about that depot flavor in the tomato base see country folk versus city folk all right now i'm gonna also add two tablespoons of worcestershire sauce i'm going to add my chicken and sausage back to the pot i'm going to add the remaining seasoning stir to combine now i want you to pick your favorite new orleans song that you have in your head because that's the tune that your palate is going to be singing really really soon oh yeah oh oh yes i'm excited and we're also going to add four cups of low-sodium chicken stock the reason why i like adding low-sodium chicken stock is because i want to control how much salt goes into my dish so after your jambalaya comes to a boil cover it reduce your fire set your timer for 30 minutes hit the pause button and then we'll see you back after that my timer just went off my house is smelling like a party is about to happen but before we open up this top let's chop down our green onions i always like to take off the tops because they've been out longer so they begin to wilt don't make a pretty of a dish as we would like so if this is two bunches it's too much for you to chop all at once take your time and do one bunch at a time you want some nice even small slices and if you're ever looking to perfect your knife skills green onions will be the vegetable of choice i would recommend because they don't roll all over the place when you're trying to chop them and it'll also help you get your knife motion in a good rhythm rock the bow baby take your time young man and wash them fingers make sure you also slice the white part of the green onion okay it's all flavor all right now that that's nice and slice time for the big reveal look at that look at that now we're just gonna add half of these in this is where i like to add the white part in and i like to save the green for my final garnish and just take a fork and just begin to fluff it okay and this fluffing just allows everything to get more steam through it and allows the rice to release you know the rice been all on top of each other now they get to stretch out and all those granules begin to breathe more look at that beautiful color you always want to stir your rice with a fork because it helps comb through the rice if you use a spoon it smashes your rice and this is not smash jambalaya so now we're going to cover this and let it cook for another 10 minutes with no heat it's been 10 minutes and my stomach is growling look at how pretty this is why we use red bell pepper look at how it begins to pop in this dish so when we folded in the green onions that would have been your perfect time to add your shrimp your crawfish your lobster your crab meat any of those shellfish that you love oyster's one of those weird things i wouldn't recommend putting oysters in the jambalaya but anything else go for it i can see the chicken is nice and tender you can see the kernels of rice is all nice and separated now we're just going to garnish with a little bit more green onions across the t op find me a fork and let's give this a try and green onion little chicken do you see all those colors look at the chicken the green onion the sausage the well cooked rice now we have to do is just give it a little taste hold on got the camera that's the camera this is so good the rice is nice and tender the chicken is just shredding and falling in your mouth the sauce just has a little nice crispiness on it this is cajun jambalaya at it's fine you

Channel: Food Network

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Keywords: food network, food, cooking, recipe, how-to, how to make, tutorial, cook, chef, directions, ingredients, eat, recipes, easy recipes, easy recipe, food network recipes, best, simple, quick, Kenneth temple, Louisiana classic, southern food, FN, family dinner, family meals, creole, Cajun Jambalaya, Cajun food, Cajun recipes, Jambalaya recipe, Jambalaya, how to make Jambalaya, Louisiana food, Louisiana, one-pot dish, one-pot dinner, fond, meat, Creole Seasoning, chicken, beef sausage, Southern, Cajun

Id: O8TTbedtCVk

Length: 28min 38sec (1718 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022