Last night I made jambalaya for dinner. Jambalaya is rarely considered a health food but I cleaned it up a little bit and it was delicious! The only thing that was a little unhealthy was the chorizo sausage I used: it had dextrose in it. You can improve that by using extra chicken, shrimp or a different sausage that's not so processed.
Doesn't that look delicious? It's so easy to make, although slightly time consuming.
My recipe wasn't necessarily authentic. Rogier can't eat tomatoes so I didn't used diced tomatoes.
Recipe:
Ingredients (serves 2-3)
2 chicken breasts
1 cup chorizo sausage- cut into pieces (can sub for more chicken, shrimp or a different sausage)
250g (1/2lb) mushrooms
1 red pepper
2.5 cups chicken broth-divided
1 cup brown rice
1 tbs cajun seasoning-divided (more or less to taste)
cracked black pepper
oil (use your preference- because I was cooking with chorizo I chose to use a spray coconut oil because when the chorizo warms it realizes a lot of grease. If you're not using chorizo use 2tbs of the oil of your choice)
Method
- Cut the chicken into chunks
- Heat a large frying pan and spray with oil- cook chicken until done (7-10min)
- Add the chorizo pieces to the chicken
- While the chorizo and chicken are cooking cut the mushrooms in quarters and dice the pepper
- Add the mushrooms and pepper to chicken and sausage
- Sprinkle about 1/2 of the cajun seasoning and some cracked black pepper onto the mixture and cook for 3-5 minutes until the mushrooms begin to soften
- Remove the mixture and set aside (you can simply place it in a bowl or you can set it on paper towels to absorb some of the extra grease)
- Add the rice to the pan and mix it in the left over grease
- Add 2 cups of the chicken broth to the rice, add the remaining cajun seasoning to the rice and water, stir thoroughly, cover, and bring to a boil and then let simmer until 1/2 to 2/3 of the water is absorbed
- After some of water has been absorbed by the rice add the chicken mixture back to the pan with the remaining 1/2 cup of chicken broth
- Cover and cook until the rice is tender- add more chicken broth or water if needed
- You can add more cajun seasoning at this point or extra cayenne pepper if you like your food spicier
This recipe is made healthier than a regular jambalaya because I used homemade chicken broth and homemade cajun seasoning so it doesn't have any additives, and by using brown rice. This is the cajun spice recipe that I use. It's delicious. Homemade chicken stock is also ridiculously easy. You can easily google a recipe, but all I did was take the remainders of a picked whole chicken and put it in a stockpot covered in water. There were enough spices from what I had covered the chicken in that I didn't even need to add any to the water! Next time I will probably try and add more vegetables to the pot. Maybe I'll try some onion, spring onion, or even some broccoli.
One of my favorite parts of this journey is all the things I'm getting to try and experience, especially adapting delicious recipes to be healthier.
Yesterday I went to the market and picked up some fruit and vegetables.
One of those containers of strawberries is already gone..whoops
I desperately wanted to by the cherries too, but I decided to wait until next week because I still have tons of fruit.
Rogier and I also made homemade beef jerky yesterday. Seriously the stuff is addicting. I can't tell you how to make it because that's Rogier's project, but I can tell you that it's possible to do without a dehydrator and that it's more delicious than the crap you buy at the store.
Tomorrow I have plans to go to body combat. It's a martial arts class. Thursday is usually an off day but I'm going to try and go 5 days a week to the gym during my detox/cleanse.
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