Two-Sausage Camp Jambalaya
Hot sausage, smoked sausage, celery, and tomatoes over rice. Cooks in one pot on the grill grate.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 11 oz
- cal / oz
- 56
- protein
- 26 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 30 min
- total time
- 40 min
- water
- 240 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Grill grate
- Canister stove
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Hot sausage | 1 lb | bulk or squeezed out of the casing |
|---|---|---|
| Smoked sausage | 1 lb | sliced into coins at home |
| Celery | 1 cup, chopped | chop at home, it keeps a week in the cooler |
| Diced tomatoes | 28 oz can | do not drain |
| Long grain white rice | 1 cup | not instant, not brown |
| Water | 1 cup | |
| Oil | 1 tbsp | only if the hot sausage is lean |
Method
- Set the pot over the grate on a bed of coals, not open flame. You want steady medium heat for half an hour.
- Brown the hot sausage, breaking it up as it goes. Add the smoked sausage coins and the celery. Cook until the celery softens and the smoked sausage picks up color.
- Pour in the whole can of tomatoes with its juice and the cup of water. Scrape the bottom of the pot while it comes up to a boil.
- Stir in the rice, cover, and pull the pot to the cooler edge of the grate. Twenty minutes, lid on, no stirring.
- Kill the heat and let it sit covered another ten. The rice finishes on residual steam.
This is a grill-grate dinner, not a stove one. Two pounds of sausage renders a lot of fat, and that fat is what carries the tomato and the celery into the rice — a narrow backpacking pot with a screaming hot burner under it will scorch the bottom before the grains hydrate. Coals give you the low, even heat that a covered rice pot needs.
The liquid ratio is the part to respect. One cup of rice against a 28-ounce can of tomatoes plus a cup of water looks like too much, but the tomatoes are mostly solids and the pot loses steam every time you lift the lid. So don’t lift it. The ten minutes off the heat at the end is not optional; that’s when the rice goes from crunchy to done.
Packing
Both sausages travel in the cooler, the smoked one already sliced. Celery chopped into a bag the night before. Rice, and the can, ride in the food bin.
Variations
- A cut-up chicken breast browned with the sausage stretches it to eight bowls.
- Chopped green pepper and green onion go in with the celery if you have cooler room.
- Swap half the water for tomato juice or a spicy vegetable juice for more body.
https://www.huntingpa.com/threads/camp-menu-ideas.8984