On weekends, we try to take advantage of having the time around the house to make a slow cooking recipe. Often those are recipes for soups, stews, Yankee Pot Roast, or standing rib roasts. Yesterday we decided to make a light Chicken Jumbalaya recipe.

Many Jumbalaya recipes are loaded with fat from bacon and sausage. Often the recipes use large quantities of these fats, such as 1/2 cup bacon fat, or 1/2 cup sausage drippings. We try to avoid fats in meals, and especially the saturated fats found in bacon and sausages. So our Chicken Jumbalaya Recipe uses minimal oils, and a light chicken andouille sausage. The meats in our jumbalaya are only chicken and chicken sausage. The resulting meal was excellent, but you can add shrimp to the recipe to increase the flavor.

One of the reasons our jumbalaya was tasty without seafood was our choice of chicken meat. We used chicken thighs, pre-cooked them in a little garlic, and allowed them to cool so we could remove the chicken meat from the bones. That all takes a little time, so you need to cook the chicken thighs at least 2 hours before starting the recipe for Chicken Jumbalaya.

This is a made from scratch jumbalaya recipe, and the only short cut we may have taken is the use of Nina Chopped Garlic instead of chopping garlic cloves ourselves. We use Nina chopped garlic all of the time because you simply measure the right amount, and you’re done. A half teaspoon of chopped garlic is the equivalent to a clove of garlic. Nina Chopped Garlic is chopped finer then the way we usually chop garlic, so the garlic flavor is more pronounced then what we get from our chopping of fresh garlic cloves. If you try it, you’ll see what we’re talking about.

Chicken Jumbalaya Recipe

• 5 chicken thighs
• 1/2 – 1 tsp chopped garlic (about 1 -2 cloves fresh garlic)
• 2 stalks celery, finely chopped
• 1 green pepper, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 1 cubanelle pepper, finely chopped
• 4 or 5 Amy’s Chicken Andouille sausages
• 1 can whole tomatoes
• 3 cups low sodium chicken broth
• 1 1/2 tsp chopped garlic
• 2 tsp McCormick Cajun Seasoning
• 1 tsp Tabasco Sauce
• 1 1/2 cups basmati rice (or white rice)

1. A few hours before planning to start cooking the Jumbalaya, cook the chicken thighs in 1 tbsp canola oil, along with 1/2 to 1 tsp chopped garlic. Turn frequently, and cook for 10-12 minutes, or until thighs are cooked through.
2. Remove chicken thighs from pan to a plate covered with a couple layers of paper towels. Let drain, and cool 10 minutes, then place thighs in a reclosable plastic bag, and place in refrigerator.
3. After chicken thighs have cooled to refrigerator temperature, about 1 1/2 hours, remove the meat from the thighs and discard bones. Cut the chicken meat up into 3/8 to 1/2 pieces.
4. Add 1 tbsp canola oil to a large saucepan. Cook 1 1/2 tsp chopped garlic, diced onion, green pepper, cubanelle pepper, and celery over medium heat for 5-8 minutes until transparent. Don’t allow the garlic to burn.
5. Cut the chicken andouille sausage into 1/4 inch slices, and add to the pan. Cook for 3 -4 minutes, stirring often.
6. Add the cajun seasoning, Tabasco Sauce, can of tomatoes, and 3 cups chicken broth. Bring to a boil, and simmer covered for about 10 minutes.
7. Stir in basmati rice, and cook for another 10-12 minutes. Check after 8 minutes and add additional water if needed. If using regular white rice, cook for 20-24 minutes checking water at 15 and 20 minutes.

Wow! The holidays are over and we’re back at work. There’s less time now, so what to cook for dinner? The leftover turkey is long gone, and we need something that is quick and easy to cook, yet fits our healthy and tasty requirements. So tonight it’s Buffalo Chicken Breasts with wild rice, carrots and celery.

This is a really quick and easy meal to make. It’s much healthier for you then Buffalo Wings. You can make it even healthier by removing the skin from the chicken breasts before seasoning them (the skin is what makes the Buffalo Wings so high in fat and it’s hard to avoid on the tiny wings). But on the chicken breasts there is choice, so please don’t eat the chicken skin — it’s absolutely full of fat — that’s why it tastes good.

What you need:

• Split Chicken Breasts
• Durkee Buffalo Wing Seasoning

To make:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Wash and pat dry the desired number of chicken breasts. Then sprinkle thoroughly with with the Durkee Buffalo Wing Seasoning. Make sure to sprinkle with breasts on all sides. Don’t use too much seasoning, just make sure the surface of the breasts are coated.
3. Line a baking pan with foil to make cleanup easier.
4. Place the seasoning chicken breasts in the pan.
5. Bake for one hour.

Serve with Wild Rice, chopped celery, carrots and Ranch Dressing.

Often times during the holiday season we have leftover roast chicken or turkey around and don’t know what to do with it. We’ve created an excellent recipe for using those leftovers, and flavored with Old Bay Seasoning. We’ve named it Old Bay Chicken and Noodles, and it’s scrumptious. The recipe is basically egg noodles, Old Bay Seasoning, chopped left over chicken or turkey, a white sauce and Gruyere cheese.

Old Bay White Sauce with Gruyere Cheese

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp white flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tsp Old Bay Seasoning
• 1 cup Gruyere Cheese, shredded

1. Melt the butter in a 2 quart non-stick sauce pan. Then add the flour, and cook over medium-low heat about 2 – 3 minutes stirring constantly.
2. Add milk, and continue stirring until sauce begins to thicken.
3. Add Old Bay Seasoning and stir well.
4. Add Gruyere cheese, and stir until melted. Remove from heat.

Recipe for Old Bay Chicken and Noodles Old Bay

• 1 1/2 to 2 cups leftover cooked chicken or turkey, chopped into 3/4″ chunks.
• 8 ounces dried egg noodles
• Old Bay White Sauce with Gruyere cheese (above)

1. Heat 2 quarts of water in a 3 quart pot
2. Prepare the White Sauce with Old Bay and Gruyere cheese.
3. While the white sauce is cooking, cook the egg noodles according to the directions on the package.
4. Heat chicken in microwave, or add to white sauce and continue to heat until all is warmed.
5. When egg noodles are done, drain into a collander.
6. To serve, place some egg noodles in a bowl, add chunks of chicken, then top with the white sauce, and stir to distribute sauce well.

New at Spice Place is Tone’s Asian Grill & Stir Fry Seasoning. This spice blend is a complete Asian Szechwan seasoning with everything you need to make a great stirfry without having to chop garlic, ginger or peppers. It’s also has a very low amount of sodium, so if you’re careful with adding other ingredients this spice blend is well suited for making a low sodium meal. We were quite impressed with the taste of this spice blend from Tone’s and how quickly & easily we were able to create a real Asian meal at home using a frozen stir fry vegetable blend.

We have a recipe for Stir Fried Chicken and Vegetables on the product page. We sort of followed this recipe in making our meal, but as we usually do we change this and that to our tastes and what we have around. So we took a look in the refrigerator, and saw we had Shrimp left over from our Old Bay Steamed Shrimp so we adjusted the amount of chicken called for in the recipe to about 1/2 pound and added 1/2 pound of the leftover shrimp. We also do pay attention to how much salt we use, so we omitted the Tones Chicken Base and substituted a 14.25oz can of Health Valley No Salt Added Chicken Broth for the water called for in the recipe^*. There’s no need to measure the chicken broth as the can holds just about 2 cups of broth. We’re also health conscience with our choice of oils to cook with and will either use Canola Oil, or Olive Oil, and only as much as needed to keep foods from sticking to the pan.

The first thing you need to do before starting the stir fry recipe is start cooking 1 cup of dry rice. We prefer Basmati rice to the Asian rices, and in our opinion Basmati rice goes equally well with this recipe. But cook whatever rice you prefer. Making rice is quite simple, just heat twice the amount of water as rice to a boil [2 cups water to 1 cup rice], then add the rice, cover tightly and simmer until the water is absorbed. Most rices take about 20 minutes to cook, execpt we find that Basmati rice cooks in about 10 minutes, maybe a little longer. We set our timer when cooking Basmati to 10 minutes, and watch it carefully after that. It’s also best to let rice sit for 5 minutes before serving. If you’re trying to get everything done at the same time, the total cook time for most rices is about 25 minutes [20 over heat, and 5 minutes resting], and Basmati rice takes about 15 minutes [10 minutes cooking and 5 resting]. The cooking time for the Asian StirFried Chicken and Vegetables is about 15 minutes.

We found that we didn’t need to add all of the Asian Seasoning and Chicken Broth to the pan. So use care and add only enough so that you’ll season the meat, and have about 1/2 cup extra liquid in the pan to thicken into a sauce. If you end up with too much liquid in the pan, try to drain off some instead of trying to thicken the extra liquid as you may end up overcooking the vegetables. When the stir fry is done, move the stir fry to a large serving platter and serve with the cooked rice. The recipe makes 6 servings.

^* If you make the recipe exactly as described, each serving will have about 540mg sodium.