Cajun jambalaya served with vegan sausage, kidney beans and brown rice. This spicy take on the Louisiana classic is packed full of flavor and takes no time at all to make.
As much as I try to improve my cooking, I still find myself often reverting to just chucking a bunch of ingredients into a pot and letting them do their magic.
It all started when I was at university and I was given a rice cooker as a going away present. When it came to dinner, I threw in vegetables, meat, and stock cubes with the rice, and I’d just let it cook.
Yes, I know. Really simple. But it worked!
I think what’s great about this type of cooking is that, besides the fact that it suits someone as lazy as me, recipes can easily be scaled up or down in size to suit the number of people you’re cooking for. They also make for brilliant leftovers.
I am always looking out for one-pot recipes, and I’m really glad I came across this amazing cajun vegan jambalaya recipe.
I should say at this point, I’m not actually vegan. However, I love finding ways to limit my meat and dairy intake, and I love it when recipes like this find creative ways to replace what would normally be a meat ingredients.
This recipe manages to take comforting staples like kidney beans, onions and rice, and blend them with cayenne and paprika. It matches together beautifully.
Expert Tips
Show patience with this recipe. Yes it is really simple to put together, but you will need to let it do its thing and allow all the ingredients to cook together at a low heat. This will allow all the beautiful flavors of the onion, cayenne and paprika to work together and permeate the vegan sausage.
Also be sure to allow the rice to cook properly. This will allow it to soak up the broth water, and also absorb the flavors of the other ingredients.
If you would prefer to have meat in this recipe, then just swap out the vegan sausage for your choice of chorizo, or regular pork sausage.
Also, I have vegetable broth listed in this recipe, but this can also be changed to chicken broth.
Cajun Vegan Jambalaya
Ingredients
- ½ lb vegan sausage sliced
- 15 oz red kidney beans drained and washed
- 3 yellow onions chopped
- 2 cups uncooked brown rice
- 2 celery stalks chopped
- 1 green bell pepper chopped
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 3 bay leaves
- olive oil
- 4 ½ cups vegetable broth
- ¼ cup shallots chopped
- ¼ cup parsley chopped
- ½ tsp paprika
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- salt and pepper to taste
- hot sauce to taste
Instructions
- Add olive oil to a large saucepan or pot over a low heat. Then add two of the chopped onions and cook, stirring occasionally, for 30-40 minutes or until the onions have browned (be sure not to burn). Make sure that the heat is very low so that the onions turn a lovely brown color without burning.
- Stir in the remaining chopped onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic and bay leaves. Add ½ cup of the vegetable broth, cook for 20-30 minutes.
- Stir in the hot sauce, parsley, shallots, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper. Cook for 5 minutes while stirring and adding a little more vegetable broth.
- Stir in the rice. Add 4 more cups of vegetable broth and turn up the heat to bring the mix to the boil. Cover and reduce the heat back to low, leaving it to simmer for 40 minutes or until all the rice has cooked and the liquid has disappeared. Stir occasionally.
- Once cooked, remove from heat and keep covered for 10 minutes.
- Warm a skillet over a medium heat and a little olive oil and the vegan sausage. Sauté until the sausage has browned and turned a little crisp.
- Add the sausage and kidney beans to the main pot and stir to mix it in evenly.
- Serve up with parsley and your choice of hot sauce!
Nutrition
FAQ
Is jambalaya the same as paella?
Despite both being rice-based pan dishes, jambalaya and paella are strikingly different. Jambalaya uses long-grain rice while paella uses short-grain bomba rice from Eastern Spain. Furthermore, jambalaya is either brown or red (depending on if the recipe is Cajun or Creole) while paella is a brilliant yellow color due to its use of La Mancha saffron.
