Cajun Seafood Jambalaya

Summer cooking in the great outdoors is an experience that can't be beat – especially if you have the opportunity to cook in cast iron. There's something about cast iron that appeals to cooking outside. Cast iron is nearly indestructible, which makes it the ideal tool for cooking outdoors; but there's an indescribable feeling and taste you get from cooking over a fire in cast iron that can't be matched in the kitchen. As an example, we present a huge pot of seafood jambalaya, cooked the way it ought to be cooked: in a huge cast iron cauldron, over an open fire. Cooking a pot of jambalaya this way is an experience you'll never forget!
This pot of jambalaya required a total of two and a half hours to prepare: 45 minutes slicing and dicing, an hour of cooking, half an hour to cook the rice, fifteen minutes to steam the seafood.
Pans needed: The biggest cast iron pot you can get! The great Cajun jambalaya pots come in sizes ranging from five, ten and fifteen gallons to mammoth cauldrons even bigger than that. Because of this, we're basing the ingredients here on a ten gallon cast iron pot (40 quarts). If you're using something bigger than this, modify your ingredients accordingly. For a ten quart cast iron pot, use one-third the amount of ingredients seen here. For a twenty gallon pot, double the amount!

Ingredients

(for a 10 gallon cast iron cauldron)
  • 3 onions, large, chopped
  • 3 green peppers, chopped
  • 3 stalk celery, chopped
  • 6 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 cup (8 ounces) pork fat or bacon grease
  • 1 pound diced pork or bacon
  • Other meats – if you're using additional meat in your jambalaya, such as chicken, here is where to add it!
  • 2 1/2 to 3 pounds fully cooked smoked sausage
  • 1 pound diced tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) dried parsley
  • 1/4 cup cajun seasoning, such as Zatarain's (or even Old Bay, though purists scoff at this)
  • 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) tablespoons hot pepper sauce or Sriracha sauce
  • 3 tablespoons paprika
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon pepper
  • 6 cups rice
  • 12 cups water
  • Seafood – whatever is available. Southern-style pots use lots of shrimp and crawfish, though in this instance we have:
  • 3 pounds of clams, with shells
  • 2 pounds crawfish
This jambalaya was cooked in simple steps:
Heat up the pot until it smokes.
Add pork fat and stir it as it melts.

Thoroughly cook a pound of diced pork loin, stirring constantly with your jambalaya paddle or spatula. As the pork cooks, it will be rubbery and bouncy at first. As it cooks more thoroughly, the pork becomes more tender, until it reaches the point where you can split apart two or three pieces of pork easily by pressing down with the edge of your spatula (or jambalaya paddle). In a hot cast iron cauldron, it can take about twenty minutes to cook the pork.
If you are cooking other meat in addition to the pork – such as chicken or uncooked sausage – remove the pork and reserve it. This will keep the pork from overcooking. Add your other meats and stir fry them in the same manner. Don't cook the seafood at this point; that comes at the end. Pre-cooked sausage such as kielbasa doesn't need to be cooked at this point; add that a little later.
When all of the meat is ready, return the pork to the cauldron and mix it all together.
Add diced vegetables, including the cajun holy trinity (celery, onion, bell pepper) and garlic, and mix it all together.
When the vegetables are caramelized, add tomatoes, seasoning and cajun spices: parsley, cajun seasoning, worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, paprika, salt, pepper.
Add pre-cooked sausage, and stir the entire pot for about five minutes or so to cook the sausage.
When the sausage is ready, add six cups of rice and twelve cups of water.
Stir it all together. Cover the pot, and let it stand untouched to cook the rice.
Stir the pot once after fifteen minutes. Re-cover the pot.
After another fifteen minutes (thirty minutes total), add three pounds of clams and two pounds of crawfish. Stir it all for the last time.
Cover the pot, and steam it all for ten minutes. When the clams open up, it's done.
Uncover and serve.

Jambalaya Calculator

Jambalaya is so popular and so easy to make, folks have it down to a science! Here's a link to a downloadable spreadsheet for estimating the amount of meat, rice, water and spices used to make a proper jambalaya. Here's an important quote from the spreadsheet's creator, Jay Grush, regarding the amount of rice and water used in a big pot: "One thing I did not know, but learned, is that if you are cooking in a pot over a fire, the bigger the pot, the less liquid you need. At 8 or 10 gallons, you start reducing. The surface area doesn't increase, but as the pot gets bigger, less and less moisture is escaping. If you keep using a 2 to 1 ratio, you're going to end up with wet and mushy rice."
Jambalaya Calculator: jambalayacalculator.com/

Chicken and Sausage Jambalaya

(in a 16 quart cast iron pot)
I've since used this recipe a number of times to prepare chicken jambalaya in a Bayou Classic 16-quart (4 gallon) cast iron dutch oven. The ingredients used here are:
  • 2 onions, large, chopped
  • 2 green peppers, chopped
  • 3 stalks celery, chopped
  • 6 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1/2 cup (4 ounces) lard, pork fat or bacon grease
  • 1 pound diced pork or bacon
  • 5 to 6 pounds chicken pieces
  • 3 pounds fully cooked smoked sausage (kielbasa is a popular jambalaya sausage, but you may want to mix this with linguica or andouille!)
  • 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) dried parsley
  • 1/4 cup cajun seasoning, such as Old Bay or Zatarain's
  • 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 tablespoons hot pepper sauce or Sriracha sauce
  • 2 tablespoons paprika
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon pepper
  • 5 cups rice
  • 10 cups water
This 4 gallon cast iron pot is very thick and heavy, weighing 35 pounds (with the lid) even before adding the food!
This jambalaya is cooked in the same manner as listed above. No seafood is added to this jamabalaya, but otherwise it's cooked the same way.

Jambalaya in the Kitchen

(in a #10 sized cast iron dutch oven)
January 26, 2016: I'd committed myself to making jambalaya to bring to work tomorrow. As it turned out, the boss asked me to head out on a road trip for the rest of the week. This definitely meant there would be jambalaya tonight: a clean-out-the-fridge and use what's thawed out jambalaya. Because of this, some of the ingredients in this jambalaya were a little different than the traditional Cajun choices. For starters, we used some of the duck fat left over from Xmas. This was used to cook three different kinds of sausage: sweet Italian, hot Italian, and andouille sausage; along with five chicken drumsticks. This was mixed in with the holy trinity (celery, onion, garlic), green peppers, and Cajun seasoning; plus two cups of rice, and four cups of water. One reason why jambalaya is so popular is because it's so easy to make! That, plus being absolutely delicious. As anyone who makes jambalaya will tell you, it isn't true jambalaya unless you make a ton of it. This was cooked entirely on the stovetop, in a Birmingham Stove and Range "Century Cookware" 1960s #10 sized dutch oven. This dish was based upon this recipe, though the seafood was left out and chicken cooked in the beginning, right after the sausage.
The ingredients for this pot of jambalaya used one-third the amount listed above:
  • 1 onion, large, chopped
  • 1/2 green peppers chopped
  • 1 stalk celery, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1/4 cup (2 ounces) lard
  • 2 1/2 pounds of sausages (in this instance, we used 1/2 pound sweet Italian, 1 pound hot Italian, and 1 pound andouille sausage)
  • 2 pounds chicken drumsticks
  • 6 ounces diced tomatoes
  • 1 tablespoons dried parsley
  • 1 tablespoon cajun seasoning
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tablespoon Sriracha sauce
  • 1 tablespoon paprika
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 tablespoon pepper (because I love pepper)
  • 2 cups rice
  • 4 cups water

Jambalaya in a 15 Gallon Cast Iron Cauldron

And finally, here are the ingredients for making chickan and sausage jambalaya in a huge 15 gallon cast iron cauldron. Despite the amount of these ingredients, the cauldron was only about two-thirds full! That's because I made it entirely by myself. If a crowd of people were to take part in making this jamabalaya, you could increase the ingredients even more and fill it all the way to the top. The measurements for these ingredients were determined using the Jambalaya Calculator. This uses a 15 gallon cauldron, and it produced enough jambalaya to make the pot 66% full. In volume, that's ten gallons of jambalaya!
  • 31 pounds of meat!
I rounded this down to 30 pounds, because that's still a lot of meat! For my jambalaya, I made 7 pounds of homemade andouille sausage, and used 2 pounds of bacon, along with 21 pounds of chicken.
  • 12 pounds of rice!
  • 14 quarts of water!
This is based on the Jambalaya Calculator's instructions: when you use a cast iron pot of 8 gallons or larger, the water-to-rice ratio needs to be reduced. This isn't the typical 2-to-1 water ratio. But it's worked great on the occasions when I've used this formula to make jambalaya in this 15 gallon cauldron.
  • 2 pounds of onions
  • 7 bell peppers
  • 9 celery stalks
  • 1/2 cup dried parsley
  • 1/2 cup cajun seasoning, such as Zatarain's (or even Old Bay, though purists scoff at this)
  • 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 cup hot pepper sauce or Sriracha sauce
  • 1/2 cup paprika (or smoke paprika)
  • 1/4 cup salt
  • 1/4 cup pepper

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