Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season known for overindulgence, (or to be less friendly gluttony) and staple foods like turkey, mashed potatoes, biscuits, deviled eggs, yams, green bean casseroles, etc. The holiday season can be a minefield for people living a low carb/keto lifestyle.
This year Josh and I weren't able to make the trip to WV to spend Thanksgiving with our families. I know what you're thinking, the two of us must have sat down to a perfectly keto-fied dinner chockfull of turkey, mashed cauliflower, deviled eggs, fried brussel sprouts, cheesy biscuits, etc., but that's not what happened. We had celebrated Friendsgiving the week before and figured we'd just eat out on the actual holiday. Well, that didn't quite work out either. We woke up Thursday, went to the movies (we saw Murder on the Orient Express), and then realized almost every restaurant and grocery store was not open for business. So, we went home and raided our freezer.
This brings us to the jambalaya. Our freezer was full of a bunch of random frozen veggies and a whole lot of chicken and fish. After taking everything out of our freezer and raiding our fridge, we realized we were holding almost everything we needed to make a low carb keto friendly jambalaya. So, we did ... and it was delicious.
Ingredients
1 package of Italian sausage
2 packages chicken thighs (roughly 3 lbs)
1/2 bag of shrimp (roughy 1 lbs)
2 cups riced cauliflower (we use 2 bags of frozen via emilia organic riced cauliflower from Costco)
1 tomato
1/2 onion
1/4 cup olive oil
6 garlic cloves
1 red bell pepper
1-2 cups Chicken stock (or as needed) - we use homemade
2 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp oregano
Directions
1. Oil pot, brown chicken and sausage. Need that those delicious flavorings on the pan that we'll scrape up later on. Set meat aside.
2. Add more oil as necessary, saute garlic until golden brown. Then add onions and peppers until soft. Add cauliflower and let it cook for a bit (our cauliflower was frozen so I had to heat it up a bit before putting in everything else).
3. Add crushed tomato and spices (black pepper, oregano, cayenne pepper). Add enough stock to keep it a stew-like consistency. The issue here is that normal jambalaya has rice which absorbs a bunch of the water plus some starch to thicken it. SInce we have a bunch of vegetables, it's hard to get that consistency lest we ass some sort of gumming agent like xanthan gum.
4. Cut up meat into bite-sized pieces and simmer 10-15 minutes.
5. Add shrimp and simmer until shrimp is cooked (adding shrimp last to not overcook it).
That's it, you have a delicious low carb jambalaya you can enjoy for days!