Guest Post: Primo’s Red Beans & Fries

Time for another guest post from my cousin Primo, straight from his pad in NOLA!  Seemed perfect to post on a Monday!

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It’s Monday and that means it’s red beans & rice day down here in New Orleans. In the 19th century, Monday was laundry day in the city. Without washing machines, the women of the house had to wash all of the household’s laundry painstakingly by hand, leaving little time for cooking.  So dinner had to be something that could cook without being fussed over.
Enter the red kidney bean, brought to New Orleans by those fleeing Haiti’s slave rebellion. The beans needed to soak overnight before cooking. After soaking and draining them, housewives simply set the beans on the stove with fresh water to boil until tender, and then added a delicious helping of sautéed “trinity”– the Cajun/Creole cooking base of diced onions, celery and bell peppers.  This would typically also be combined with leftover ham from Sunday’s big family dinner.
While I love red beans and rice, I wanted to mix things up a bit and put a small twist on a local staple. While Monday is ‘red beans and rice day’ down here, it’s Monday Night Football for  the rest of the country. Football and finger foods go together like, well, red beans and rice. Thus, red beans and FRIES were born.

(FeauxNote: if you’ve made up a big batch of red beans & have some leftovers, this is a great way to use them up.)
INGREDIENTS:
Frozen waffle fries (or if you have a mandoline, you can make your own)
1 can Blue Runner red beans
1 lb smoked sausage (traditionally andouille or tasso, but use what you like best)
1/2 – 1 cup of trinity (diced bell pepper, celery & onion)
Green onions for garnish
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 400F and when at temp, throw in your French fries (waffle fries hold up best for our purposes; Alexia makes some seasoned waffle fries, and Great Value sells a generic for about $2.00).

While I have the luxury of a modern washing machine, I decided to cheat and use a can of Blue Runner creamed red beans for experimentation purposes (and because I felt lazy). (FeauxNote: I can get Blue Runner at Wal-Mart in Missouri, but if you can’t find them, you can try this Crockpot recipe.)

While the beans heat up on the stovetop, dice a link or two of your favorite sausage—andouille in my case (FeauxNote: Johnsonville makes a New Orleans style smoked sausage if you can’t find real andouille near you) and drop the sausage in a medium skillet or saucepan to begin heating up and releasing that delicious fat. Enter your “trinity”. Again, I cheated and bought a container of pre-chopped veggies.

Add as much or as little to taste. Sauté those fine ingredients together until your onions become translucent. At this point, your peppers and celery will retain their crunch for a good texture contrast. Remove from heat.
Place a good base layer of your fries on a plate (platter if serving family style). Add a layer of the trinity/sausage. Heap your creamed red beans on top (FeauxNote: I added the Blue Runner beans to the pot and mixed it all together, rather than keeping them separate & layering—still tastes awesome). Lastly, garnish with some freshly diced green onions from your window garden…

…add a dash (or 5) of hot sauce, and serve.

Oh, and watch out for aliens posing as butternut squash. (Compliments of Feaux’s Hubs.)

Since the serving size on this varies (especially if you’re sharing with a group), I won’t attempt a NutriFacts sheet, but just use your brain—stop when you’re full.

Hey….I didn’t say it would EASY.  But just TRY to have some restraint.

Have a great week, folks!

Product Review: Blue Runner Jambalaya Base

 

During my last excursion down to Louisiana, I noticed that Blue Runner (creator of the oh-so-yummy “this can’t possibly be from a can” canned ready-to-serve Red Beans & Navy Beans) now offer sauce bases for making jambalaya, shrimp creole, gumbo, & etouffee.

It’s a rather large can & was at Dorignac’s in Metairie for $3, so I said “why not” and snagged it along with my other Louisiana contraband (seriously, I hope there’s no law against smuggling foods across state lines.  I weigh my bags before I leave my house to make sure I’m at least 10-15 lbs under the bag weight limit, since I always know I’m coming back with a stockpile of my favorites):

(Ignore that Pumpkin Dunkin Donuts coffee—I could probably get that in Missouri, but I saw it on the shelf while I was picking up my Community Coffee & couldn’t resist.  Oh, and for the record, I CAN get CC’s coffee in Missouri, but it’s about $2 cheaper in Louisiana.)

So when my husband & I offered to host our weekly church group meeting at our house a couple weekends ago, I figured that would be as good a time as any to test out the jambalaya base on my guinea pigs err…friends!

The instructions were simple: Open can, pour into large pot, add 1 lb pre-cooked chicken & 1 package smoked sausage, along with 2.5 cups of uncooked rice.  Stir, bring to boil, then let simmer for 20-30 minutes.

And so we did.  I used spicy smoked sausage, and cooked up some chicken breasts (I seasoned the chicken with cajun seasoning prior to cooking), cut them up into bite size pieces, and then tossed everything in.  I was a little skeptical of the sauce base, as it had a slight vinegar-y odor and just seemed so…canned.  You know how canned soup just has a very “canned” look & taste to it?  That made me a little nervous, but fortune favors the bold, so I strode on. 

All the trinity veggies and garlic are already included in the can.  So all you have to add is the meat & rice.  (though, I had some dried green pepper I needed to use up, so I threw that in there as well—but that was more out of “spring cleaning” than necessity. There’s a good bit of veggies in the sauce.)

Then I hit another road block—brown rice.  I threw 2.5 cups of uncooked brown rice into the pot, not white rice.  I started cooking about an hour before people were scheduled to arrive, so I figured that was plenty of time to allow for the additional cook time that brown rice requires…man, was I wrong.  When people started showing up, the rice was still totally crunchy.  Thankfully, our friends are very understanding (and had brought munchies) so we hung out & snacked in the kitchen while I hovered over my stockpot, using all my kitchen wiles to force the rice to cook faster.  I turned up the heat & periodically added a little extra water, stirring every few minutes. 

After a total cook time of about 1.5 hrs, the rice was finally fully cooked & we started serving.  We had 10 people eating total, and everyone got at least one moderately sized serving.  And it was delicious.  The flavors were fantastic.  I think I added a little bit of hot sauce and some extra cajun seasoning, but aside from that, all the seasoning in the sauce was perfect on its own.  Our guests really loved it too (though only two of them aside from me had ever had authentic jambalaya—but they both said it definitely tasted like Louisianan).

(Stock photo—I was so busy entertaining guests that I forgot to take a pic.)

So there you go.  If you happen to stumble upon a large blue can of jambalaya base from Blue Runner, it’s worth a try.  And if I would have used instant or parboiled brown rice, I’m sure it would have cooked up in the regular 20-30 minute time frame that the can recommends.

 

For the record, my first 2012 work trip to Louisiana is next week!  And this time, my hubby actually gets to come with me!!! (We had a free companion ticket that had to be used before May, and my boss OK’d it so long as there wasn’t any additional costs to the company.)  My hubs has only been to Louisiana once (for spring break about 10 years ago) so I’m really looking forward to him meeting my friends and trying all the fantastic food with me!

We’ll be posting restaurant reviews & photos, so keep your eyes peeled!  (Not literally.  That’s gross.)

Blue Runner Red Beans & Rice!

 

This isn’t really much of a recipe, so much as an unpaid advertisement. 

At one point I was planning on featuring Blue Runner canned beans as “Tuesday Timbit” since it’s one of my favorite Louisiana products.  In fact, I usually smuggle at least a can or two of it back with me when I go to Louisiana for work, since it wasn’t available up here.

And then I went to my local WalMart last week, & saw stacks & stacks of Blue Runner beans sitting on an endcap for 92 cents.

I love Blue Runner.  It’s New Orleans in a can!  So if you see them at your local store, GRAB THEM.  Shove 4 or 5 cans in your cart & high-tail it home.  (PS—pick up some smoked sausage while you’re at it.)

For a super fast meal, slice up a package of smoked turkey sausage & brown it in a large skillet.

Reduce the heat, and add 1 large can or two small cans of Blue Runner New Orleans style spicy red beans.  These are already perfectly seasoned.

Steam some brown rice (rather than white rice, for the added health benefits).

Serve the beans & sausage over rice.  Or, if you’re not a huge fan of rice, cornbread also works great.

Garnish with fresh chopped green onions.

Your family/friends/anyone who stuffs this food in their face will thank you for it.  And you did it in less than half an hour (or however long it takes your rice/cornbread to took.  Use Minute Rice—it’ll be done even faster.)