recipe review: slow cooker jambalaya

a funny thing happened a couple of weekends ago: i had an entire sunday free. no plans. nothing on my calendar. no need to leave the house unless i really wanted to. this was exciting because i couldn't really remember the last time i'd had a saturday or sunday that was completely free with no errands to run or no laundry to do or not going to church or brunch or lunch or dinner or to a party or a concert or to the bar or anything. it was going to be great.

the day before this lazy sunday, i looked in the freezer for something i could cook on sunday that wouldn't really require much effort. i spotted a pack of andouille sausage that i'd bought with some vague idea of making "cajun" pasta at some point. the sausage went into the fridge to start defrosting while i went to my recipe files for ideas.

i realized that making something in the crock pot would be a great idea because i could do all of the prep either late saturday night or whenever i got up sunday morning, and it'd be done by the time i was ready to have a late lunch or early dinner. that helped narrow things down a bit.

this was the first recipe i found in on my laptop that looked promising...until i realized it had no seasoning. none. i just looked at it again while copying the link here and there is no salt, no pepper, no garlic, no herbs, nothing. obviously this would not do.

off i went to my folder of hard copy recipes, where i found this one. i didn't really want red beans and rice per se, but at least this recipe had more seasoning and other things i could make work.

what i wound up with was a combination of elements from these two recipes. here's what made it into the crock pot for 4 hours on low:

• 1 package (16 or 20 ounces - can't really remember right now) of andouille sausage, cooked and broken up into pieces
• 1/2 pound of shredded cooked chicken (the jewel near me sells "leftover" shredded chicken from the rotisserie chickens in the deli case. i've used it before for other things, like nachos, and it was fine, so i decided to buy some for this as well)
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
• 1 large(ish) sweet onion, chopped
• 2 ginormous cloves of garlic (i used a garlic press, but you could mince them the old fashioned way)
• 1 15 ounce can of red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 14.5 ounce can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes
• 2 small stalks of celery, chopped
• 1 12 ounce can of beer (i had a yuengling in the fridge, so that's what i used)
• salt and pepper (i eyeballed both - no actual measurements)
• creole seasoning, which i also eyeballed - maybe a tablespoon and some change? i dunno.
• dried thyme - this was also eyeballed but i doubt if i even used a full teaspoon, really
• a couple sprinkles of garlic powder (b/c garlic)

verdict? i should've drained the tomatoes since i was adding more liquid with the beer. i also wanted, and this will sound strange to those who are aware of my intolerance of spicy food, more spice - i probably could've added another teaspoon or so of creole seasoning without potentially injuring myself. the yield was probably closer to 6 servings than 4 - i had a couple of helpings that sunday and monday, and there are two plastic containers of it in the freezer. i made some microwavable brown rice with it, but obviously you could use whatever rice you wanted or not use rice at all.