March 2002 issue CL Jambalaya

[heatherfeather]

This was very good! It was in the reader recipes section of the new issue of CL (March 2002). I was really skeptical about the brown rice because my DH normally won't touch brown rice with a ten foot pole. However, it was realy quite good and pleasantly spicy (although we added a sprinkle of Emeril's Essence at the table and a shake of cayenne) He actually loved it - ate almost 3 bowls full! A good recipe and really quite easy to make too.

I used short grain brown rice and realized that the recipe calls for long grain brown rice . It took about 1 hour for the rice to get tender (unlike the 30 minutes in the recipe) but I wonder if that was due to the short grain brown rice. I just used what I had and didn't care if I had to add some time. I also didn't have any Ro-Tel in the house, so for the can of tomaotes with chiles I used a slightly larger can of DelMonte's new "Zesty" diced tomatoes, which has chiles in it (theirs is about 14-ish ounces and the Ro-Tel is 10-ish ounces). I just added the whole can and didn't wory about the couple of extra ounces of liquid and it came out fine.

Isn't it amazing that another brand finally caught on to the concept of chiles in canned tomatoes. Ro-Tel had that market cornered for so long that now most poeple refer to Ro-Tel tomatoes as simply "Ro-Tel" in much the way many call a tissue a "Kleenex" even if is technically a 'Puffs' brand.

[sushibones]

My impression was that brown rice takes twice the time to cook as white rice. I think that at least 45 minutes is more like the normal cooking time for brown rice. I don't think any kind of brown rice cooks in 30 minutes unless it is labeled "quick-cooking." I think Uncle Ben's makes a quick-cooking brown rice.

We have switched from Ro-Tel to other brands of tomatoes with jalapenos. My DH makes a dip with cream cheese and ro-tel tomatoes, but after I substituted a larger can of another brand because the Ro-Tels were so expensive, he decided to switch. The Ro-Tels also seems to have a lot of liquid. DH even prefers Albertson's brand to S&W brand. Now I just keep a couple of cans on hand for when I need to spice up a recipe.

[heatherfeather]

Ro-Tel...expensive?? Wow - they have always been the cheaper tomatoes in my grocery stores. (I also shop in military commissaries a lot, so this explains some of it.) I had a coupon for the DelMonte brand this time, which is why I had some on hand. I thought they were very good - same taste as Ro-Tel, and I like the bigger can. Plus - I don't think I've even seen a coupon for Ro-Tel, but I get coupons for DelMonte products all the time.

I wonder if CL has an error in the recipe - I have never bothered to look into different varieties of brown rice. I always just bought the typical bag of raw brown rice on the shelf. I didn't even notice whether there was a long grain or a short grain version until this recipe. It is funny -I buy all different varieties of white rices and you'd think it would have occurred to me sometime that brown rice came in different varieties too. :) I guess I just don't eat as much brown rice as I ought to! Anyway - I wonder if it was supposed to say "instant" brown rice or something. It was not even remotely close to tender when I checked at the 30 minutes mark.