Cajun-style Red Beans and Rice [View all]

[Saviolo]

So, after last week's enormous pot of gumbo, this is the last Cajun food you'll see from us for a while, I promise! But this is the side dish we served with the gumbo, and it's classic Cajun-style red beans and rice. Like so much of Cajun food, the flavour profile is based on Holy Trinity (onions, bell pepper, and celery) which is the Cajun equivalent of French mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery). And even though this recipe has a lot of ingredients in common with the gumbo, it manages to resist being samey, and comes out as a great complimentary side-dish to the big rich and flavourful gumbo.

The type of beans you use can be your favourite, it doesn't need to be kidney beans. If you like pinto beans, use'em. Likewise, the aromatics can be switched around a little in this. My hubby (the chef for all of our videos), doesn't particularly like bell peppers (they give him terrible acid reflux) and also finds green bell pepper particularly boring or insipid in dishes like this, so he replaced one of the bell peppers in the recipe with a poblano pepper. You can also adjust your seasoning however you like at the end with Tabasco, Worcestershire, or more Cajun seasoning like we used in the gumbo. Also, if you can't get andouille sausage, a nice flavourful sausage of your choice will work well in here. Anything from kielbasa to chorizo!