The Jambalaya Calculator

September 15, 2014 Chuck Food, New Orleans 3 Comments

What’s that? A post, you say? The first one in over a year? *clutches chest* <voice=”Fred Sanford”>I’m comin’, Elizabeth!</voice> An actual old-school weblog post — links with commentary! Well, I’ll be dipped in hot sauce.

Yeah, rumors of my death or abduction by aliens has been greatly exaggerated. Wesly and I would both like to get some more posting done on here, despite the fact that weblogging is more or less dead. We’ll see. Anyway.

What could possibly inspire me to make a post after over a year? THIS! A guy from New Orleans has created a Jambalaya Calculator.

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The Jambalaya Calculator is a labor of love devoted to a Louisiana specialty. It’s the equivalent of a detailed cookbook, but an interactive one, in several ways. For starters, it’s crowd sourced from expert cooks.

Instead of a hardback book or an e-cookbook, the calculator is in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, one that could only have come from Louisiana — the land of big-batch outdoor cooking of all kinds. Want to make jambalaya for 150 of your nearest and dearest? Change the numbers in the pink cells. You will need 60 pounds of meat and 24 pounds of long-grain rice.

The Jambalaya Calculator lets the user sort the recipe according to several criteria: The size of the pot, by number of quarts or gallons to prepare, by serving amounts in various sizes.

It’s for the brown style of jambalaya favored across most of southern Louisiana, not the red Creole style of New Orleans. (Sigh.) It’s OK though, I do like me some brown jambalaya too.

This could come in very, very handy.

 

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3 Responses to “The Jambalaya Calculator”

  1. Brian said:

    Sep 15, 14 at 6:59 pm

    Maybe I’m a bit too generous with the meat. I use 5-6 pounds of meat (1-2 lbs sausage/ham, 1-2 lbs chicken, 2 lbs shrimp) and three cups of rice.

    Also, I use only three cups of stock, cook the rice for a few minutes before adding the stock, and bake it in the oven for 40 minutes after it comes to a boil.

    I guess mine’s not that authentic, but it always gets rave reviews, and my wife won’t let me experiment with it. I want to add tomatoes, but she “likes it just the way it is.”

  2. Jay Grush said:

    Sep 15, 14 at 11:02 pm

    Chuck, don’t be discouraged if you like the red New Orleans style jambalaya. With the Jambalaya Calculator, just count your tomato product toward your liquid total and you’ll be fine. I sure do like me some red jambalaya, too. Check out the download in the Lagniappe section for the list of cookbooks that have red jambalaya in them. Good ammo to use against those that say tomatoes don’t belong in jam.

    Jay

  3. Rob said:

    Oct 02, 14 at 6:47 am

    Hey!

    Good to see you, Chuck. Glad you posted.