No ingredient is more essential to Cajun cooking than rice. Cheap and abundant, impoverished Cajun settlers were able to feed their large families with this staple. But don’t start thinking of buttered rice or rice Pilaf…to hell with dat. We’re talking about rice and gravy son. Give us our crawfish étouffée, red beans and rice, jambalaya, gumbo, sauce piquant, and just about anything else we can cover it with. If there’s nothing heaped on top of it, bring it back…we don’t want it. And Cajuns don’t buy rice in those skinny 5 lb bags you see in the rest of the country. Give us the 20 lb sack of rice.
Rice is such a big part of Cajun culture that we have a yearly festival dedicated to the greatness of rice. Here’s a tip about Cajun people for future reference: If there’s a festival for it, we probably like it.
My Momma cooked Rice & Gravy every day growing up. Except Fridays…then we had Fried Shrimp…because we were Catholic like that…even out of Lent.
Man, you guys were hard core. How did you survive on fried shrimp alone?
It was always Konriko or Mahatma and we had rice and gravy and potato salad 5 or six days a week. Other than that, there was
Gumbo
Crawfish ettoufee
Catfish Courtbuillon
Jambalaya
and if something else other than a rice main dish (like pot roast), then it came as a side dish.
It was always Konriko or Mahatma and we had rice and gravy and potato salad 5 or six days a week. Other than that, there was
Gumbo
Crawfish ettoufee
Catfish Courtbuillon
Jambalaya
and if something else other than a rice main dish (like pot roast), then it came as a side dish.
My mom passed june 08 and I really miss her…
So I moved to Houston for a brief period of time… and I was roomates with the girl from Beijing. She weould laugh at me because she said I ate rice like a Chinese person. More than anything else she saw in the US. We would get a 10 lb bag of rice that would last like, a month or 2, between us two rather small people. The region in China that her momma was from had similar cuisine to Cajun food, spicy sauces over rice…. excellent roomate as we would happilly cook and share food.