Ya Ya Liah: Sausage and tomato chowder on rice sorta

Both Gumbo and Jumbalaya require a lot more time and attention to detail than I'm willing to muster.  They also both require bib overalls and a pretty thick accent, Ah Gare-Ohn-tee.  Dangit, now I have to apologize to all of my southern and Louisianan friends.  Is Louisianan a word?  I guess it is, my spell check says so.  Truth be told my biggest crush is on Harry Connick Jr. His NoLa accent isn't as thick now but when I was a kid and he was a young man he could have turned me to butter just by saying Jumbalaya.  There was also that kid from Baton Rouge in college.  His name was Rusty St. Cyr.  I know he was pretty gorgeous but I honestly can't remember exactly what he looked like but his accent was akin to hot salted caramel running down the back of a dripping ice cream cone on the 4th of July.  Plus there's his name!  Could a name be any MORE Bat-On Rouge?  Do I still have to apologize?

I think you get the point that my knowledge of the cultures that gumbo and jumbalaya hail from have surprisingly little to do with their cuisine.  But tonight I had to manage a meal with some Hungarian sausage that had to get cooked, and then tomatoes started rolling around my brain, and then I thought I'd like to make soup but NO, I want to serve it over rice.  It started to sound not quite like jumbalaya and not quite like gumbo.  I'm not a fan of gumbo.  I like the fact that the sauce is a roux thickened sauce and that its served over rice and chock full of tasty sausages, chicken, and/or sea food, but the roux is too dark for me.  I really love jumbalaya but I am pretty good at screwing up rice that isn't cooked in my rice cooker and since Bobby Flay managed to burn his rice and not cook it through at the same time, I certainly wasn't going to be taking any risks.  A sort of very inauthentic hybrid took shape.  I had the sausage, the tomatoes, the roux, the rice, the spices, but I'd do my own thing and I'd call it "Ya Ya Liah (liar)"  Get it?!

I would like to reassert my assertion that this is really not Jumbalaya, Gumbo, Creol, Cajun, Southern, or authentic of anything resembling anything.  It's more like when you see that guy in a car a couple of lanes away in the grocery store that kind of looks like Toby McGuire until you get closer and he looks more like that kid in the Never Ending Story.  Just me?  Ok, carrying on.  

I started by chopping up an onion, dicing a couple of carrots, and dicing up some of those small colored peppers I had in the freezer then sauteing them in some olive oil.

I totally ganked this pic from the internet

Then I threw in the Cajun seasoning, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, and a little salt and pepper and letting it cook on medium low for about a minute.  I added a Tablespoon of butter, let it melt, then put in a couple tablespoons of  flour to create my roux. Then I threw in my sliced sausage.  Upon reflection I really should have cooked my sausage, taken it out, and then started my veg in the same pan.  Lesson learned.   Next it was just a matter of throwing in my diced tomatoes, chicken broth, milk, and testing for seasoning while I let it simmer and cook my rice (in my rice cooker of course).

If you start the rice after the stuff is all in the pot then the sauce should be pleasantly thick by the time the rice is finished.  Serve the Ya Ya over the rice and add some hot sauce if you'd like, and there you go.  

Ingredients:

1 lb hungarian sausage or your favorite fresh or smoked sausage sliced thin and cut in half moons

1 medium white onion diced

2 carrots peeled and diced

3 or 4 mini colored peppers, one of each color is nice, seeded and diced

1 Tb Olive Oil

2 Tb Cajun Seasoning 

2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp red pepper flakes (optional to taste)

1 Tb Butter

2 Tb flour

1 can diced tomatoes

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup whole milk (If you must, walk your own path, even if your path looks like white water.  Just don't expect the same creaminess)

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 cup uncooked rice

In a medium pot heat 2 Tb olive oil over medium high heat.  Add sausage and cook until browned and cooked nearly through if using fresh sausage.  

Lower heat to medium and remove sausage, set aside.  Add onion, carrots, and peppers and cook until onions are translucent, about 5 min.  Add Cajun seasoning, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes.  Cook 1 more minute.  

Add 1 Tb of butter and cook until butter melts then add 2 Tb. flour.  Cook stirring incorporating the flour and then about a minute longer.  You want to cook off the floury taste but don't want to put much color on the flour, a nice pale caramel is about as dark as you want to go.  You might start getting some tasty bits sticking to the bottom of your pan. That's good!  

Bring the heat back up to medium high and deglaze (add) your can of tomatoes scrapping those tasty bits off the bottom of the pan.  Add chicken broth and sausage to the pan.  Bring to a boil stirring frequently, add milk and then lower to a simmer.  Stir occasionally scrapping the bottom to make sure nothing sticks.  

If you're using long grain white rice that isn't parboiled then start it now.  You're rice and Ya Ya will finish about the same time.  If you're using instant - please don't use instant - then let your Ya Ya simmer for about 10 minutes before you start your rice.  How long you simmer it depends on how thick you want it.  It's going to be like a nice thick soup or thin chowder but simmering longer will give you a thicker consistency.  If it gets too thick for you there is no shame in adding more broth or some water.  Just don't let that stuff stick to the bottom and burn and you can let it go for as long as you like.  

Serve over the cooked rice with a shake of Frank's and you're set to go.  

How to be cheap or Making the Most of a Whole Chicken

A box of chicken broth costs anywhere from a few dollars to 5 bucks if you're fancy.  That means if you spend five bucks on a whole chicken and everything goes horribly wrong and all you end up with is 24 oz. of chicken flavored water, you still came out ahead.  Coming out ahead where my money and my food is concerned is basically how I have to live if I don't want to sustain myself on Ramen and the kindness of other's.  Wait, I kind of do that too.


This process will give you cooked chicken meat and about 48 oz each of chicken broth and chicken stock.

Now, what the heck is the difference between stock and broth?

Broth is basically really flavorful water.  You can add it to nearly anything to get some extra flavor instead of water.  Use it to cook your ramen, rice, spaghetti sauce, anything really.  You can also use it to make sauces and soups.

Stock is richer in texture and has a silky mouth feel.  You will notice that it cools into a gel like substance.  Ok, not gel like, actual gelatin.  It's great to use when you want a rich texture in your sauce, soup, stuffing, dressing (both salad and that thanksgiving kind).  You can also add some water to it and use it in place of broth if you are out of broth.


You're going to start with a whole chicken, and of course it's going to be the cheapest one by the pound.  If you're fussy about organic then go for it but then we can no longer call this post "How to be cheap" but maybe we can call it "How to make buying that organic chicken worth it".  You don't have to worry about buying a roaster, or a boiler, or a broiler, or whatever.

If you just want some chickeny flavored water or stock then you can stop here but that would be silly.  If you have aromatics around you're going to want to add them.  We are talking celery, onion, carrots, dried or fresh herbs such as thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and peppercorns.  As long as you don't go to one extreme or the other amounts don't really matter.  Use the cupped palm of your hand to measure.  

Finally, you're going to need a Slow Cooker.  If you don't have one you will need a large stock pot, but the good news is that it won't take as long.  If you're using a stock pot you'll want to bring it up to a boil then lower it down to a simmer for a couple/few hours.  The stock pot method will result in less but richer liquid at the end so add a bit more water than you would in the slow cooker.  You will also need to skim the foam from the top during the first 30 minutes or so in the stock pot.

I want to reiterate the title of this article: How to be Cheap.  If I were making stock to impress Alton Brown (my BFF) I would likely not try to take this chicken so far, but it's serviceable for my home kitchen.  I can always add flavor at the other end of my cooking process.  This is a two part recipe.  The first is to get your broth and your cooked chicken you can set aside and use for other dishes such as chicken salad, soups, etc.

For the Broth and Chicken:

1 4 LB Whole Chicken
2 large carrots broken into 2 or 3 pieces
2 stalks celery broken into 2 or 3 pieces
1 whole onion cut in half (skin and all)
1 tsp dried thyme or a few springs of fresh thyme
1 tsp dried parsley or a few springs of fresh parsley
1 TB whole peppercorns
1 bay leaf

Thaw your chicken if it's frozen and check the cavity for "innards".  You want to put the innards in your slow cooker but you don't want to cook whatever they're packaged in.  Sometimes they aren't packaged in anything, in which case throw that whole chicken in the slow cooker.

Add the rest of your ingredients to the slow cooker and fill with enough water to cover your chicken.  If it comes too close to the top of your cooker it's ok to put less water in, but I promise it won't overflow.

Cook on low for 6-8 hours or on high for 4-6 hours.

Carefully remove the cooked chicken from the slow cooker at the end of your cooking period and set it in a colander above the slow cooker to allow the juices to run off.  This step prevents you from having to mop up chicken juices from your counter and/or floors. If you have a dog, skip this step.  I'M KIDDING!

Remove the chicken to a large cutting board to cool.  Meanwhile place that colander over a bowl or dish large enough to hold your broth.  If you don't have something large enough you may need to use more than one. If your bowl has a pour spout, all the better.  Pour the contents of the slow cooker (minus the chicken) through the colander or a sieve if you have it, into your container.  Put what you caught in your colander back into your slow cooker.

Now let's take care of that chicken.  Being careful to separate the bones, cartilage, and gooey bits from your chicken meat, remove the meat from the chicken.  At this point I like to keep the dark meat separate from the white meat, and I like to keep the breasts as whole as I can.  Wrap your chicken in saran wrap and aluminum foil, label it, and freeze it if you don't plan to use it right away.

To make the Chicken Stock


Throw everything but the chicken flesh back into the crock pot.  And by everything I mean EVERYTHING: bones, skin, and gooey bits.  I also like to add about a cup or two of the broth back in to the slow cooker to give my stock a bit more flavor.

To the slow cooker add fresh aromatics in the same portions you did with the broth.  If you don't have anymore, don't let it stop you.  You'll just have to add more flavor when you use the stock to cook with later. Fill the slow cooker 1/2 to 3/4 full of water.  The more water you add the less concentrated your stock will be.  Cook for another 8-10 hours.  You really can't overcook it at this point though.

Once it's fully cooked you'll want to drain the stock into a container using a sieve or colander again just as you did the broth and you can discard everything else.

You can store your broth and stock in Freezer Bags or Mason Jars (they freeze well).  I would suggest labeling them with magic marker before adding the broth and stock though.  Greasy and sharpie don't mix.  You will want to freeze this if you don't plan on using it in the next few days.  I would also highly suggest freezing it in portions that are useful to you.  Once it's frozen it's hard to extract a 1/2 cup at a time.  If you tend to use stock or broth in smaller amounts I'd suggest freezing some of it using cheap ice trays.  Simply freeze it in the trays over night and then pop them into a freezer bag for easy access later.

*Thanks to my friend Helen for pictures of the ingredients and process.  And thanks for testing out the post on your own chicken.