Lake Area’s Favorite Cajun Vittles — Your Top 5 (With Recipes!)

This is a quick easy way to feed a bunch of your friends and family -- and it cooks up in no time.  You can use sausage, pork, beef, or any seafood you want to make your own personal Jambalaya.  Personally, I am a pork and deer sausage kind of man!

Wanna cook it?  Well, here ya go:

Cajun Jambalaya

Yield: 8 Servings

• 2 lb. Sausage cut 1/4 in. thick
• 1 lb. Boneless chicken
• 1 1/2 large onions
• 1 bell pepper
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 5 cups of water
• 3 tb of salt
• 1/2 ts Cayenne pepper
• 3 bay leaves
• 6 oz. Tomato paste
• 1 lb. Peeled shrimp
• 3 cups raw rice

Sauté sausage, chicken, onions, bell pepper and garlic until sausage and chicken are browned.  Add the water, salt, cayenne, bay leaf and tomato paste. Bring to a boil with the lid on. When water boils add the shrimp and the raw rice. Stir and lower fire.  Let rice simmer, stirring every five minutes until jambalaya rice is cooked.

Oh yeah, and it is sooooo good!  So get your favorite meat or seafood and try it out. Let me know how it comes out!

Oh yeah, it's every Cajun's favorite snack -- hot, fried, seasoned Cracklins. C'est bon sha! Time to cook it up:

Cracklins

•  1 lb. of frozen pork skin 
• some salt
• enough oil to fill a frying pot about half way
•  some paper towels

Heat the oil in a pot over medium-high heat. Cut the pork skins into 1/2" pieces. Fry the pork skins in the pot until they are a golden brown (about 5-7 minutes). Remove the pork skins and place them on the paper towels to drain.  Season with salt and other Cajun seasonings.

A crowd pleaser coming your way.  Every one loves them some Red Beans & Rice, and today it come in at the #3 spot on the countdown.  Here is how to cook it up:

Red Beans & Rice

• Ingredients
• 1 pound red kidney beans 1 large onion chopped
• 1 bell pepper chopped 1 garlic clove minced
• 1 pound smoked sausage cut in 1/2 inch pieces 1 ham-bone with some meat on it Optional but wonderful to use
• 1 bay leaf red pepper to taste
• salt and black pepper to taste water to cover beans

Wash beans. In a large Dutch oven or cast iron pot, cover in cold water and soak overnight. When ready to cook, add the onion, bell pepper, garlic, bay leaf and ham-bone. Add enough additional water to cover the beans at least 3 inches above their marker. Cook slowly stirring occasionally until beans are tender. Time will vary from 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  In the last 30 minutes of cooking mash some of the beans to thicken the gravy. Add the smoked sausage and season to taste with salt and pepper. The heat may be increased to evaporate excess water if the beans have a too watery gravy or water added to make more gravy. Do stir to prevent sticking. Serve over steamed rice.

Its fall and when the weather starts to get cold, then its time for a good ole fashion Chicken & Sausage Gumbo! There ain't nothing better than a good hot bowl of gumbo with tater salad on a cold Louisiana day!! Here is how to do it:

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo Recipe

• 3 lb. Chicken breasts, split in – Half and boned
• Salt to taste Pepper to taste
• Garlic powder to taste
• 1 lb. Smoked sausage
• 1/2 c Vegetable oil
• 1/2 c All-purpose flour
• 1 c Chopped onion (1 lg)
• 1 c Chopped pepper (1 lg)
• 1 c Chopped celery (2 ribs)
• 7 c Water divided
• 1 ts Black pepper
• 1 ts Chopped garlic (1 clove)
• 1/2 ts Cayenne pepper

Season chicken breasts lightly with salt, black pepper and garlic powder. If possible, do this the day before you cook the gumbo. Next slice sausage into 1/4-to-1/2 inch pieces. Make roux, using a cast iron or very heavy skillet that is very clean. Place oil in skillet over high heat – oil should be at stage where it just begins to smoke – and gradually stir in flour, using a long-handled spoon. Roux will take about 3 to 4 minutes to cook and must be stirred constantly so that it does not burn. If you see black specks in the roux, it has burned and you must start over again. As you make the roux, it will change in color from cream to tan to brown and then to dark red-brown. Remove from heat. Stir in onions, green peppers and celery, stirring constantly until roux stops getting darker. Bring to stove once more, and cook over low heat about five to seven minutes, stirring constantly. In a large pot, bring 6 c of water to a boil, and add the roux, stirring to dissolve it thoroughly. Carefully add chicken and cook about 30 to 40 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. Remove chicken, and set aside to cool. De bone chicken, and cut into bite-size pieces. Add sausage, 1 c water, 1 ts black pepper and chopped garlic and cayenne to the pot, and simmer for 35 to 45 minutes, uncovered, stirring frequently. Taste, and add salt, if necessary. Stir in the chicken, and remove the gumbo from the heat. skim surface to remove fat that sausage gives off during cooking. Serve over rice. Yield: 6 servings of Cajun chicken and sausage gumbo.

Now, don't that sound good on a good cold day when the football game is on? That's how we do it here down in South Louisiana!

Every one waits every year for January to come around because that is when Crawfish season starts. Get you some sacks of crawfish, some seasoning, a big ole pot, some adult beverages and your good friends and you got yourself a crawfish boil. If you don't know how to boil crawfish ... well, first I'm taking away your coonass card away.  But don't worry, I've got a recipe on how to do dat!

Boiled Crawfish Recipe

• 3 lemons sectioned
• 3 onions, sectioned
• 2 cups rock salt
• 3 tablespoons red pepper
• 1 medium jar prepared mustard
• 2 bags dry crab boil nix
• 30 pounds live crawfish
• 2 cans beer
• Table salt
• New potatoes
• Corn on cob

Place 30-quart pot filled with water over high heat. Add lemons, onions, rock salt, red pepper and mustard. Add crab boil. Mix, breaking bags and boil 10 minutes. Add crawfish, corn and new potatoes. Return to boil 7 minutes, adding beer the last 2 minutes. Cover pot. Turn off heat and allow to simmer 3 minutes. Remove crawfish and apply table salt before peeling. Heap crawfish, corn and potatoes on platter.

After you do dat, no one walks away hungry!