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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum and

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Speaker 1: I'm any Reese. And today, with Marty Gras vaguely approaching,

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Speaker 1: we thought that we'd do an episode about a food

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Speaker 1: associated with that thing. Yeah, and that food is jumbalaya. Jambalaya,

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Speaker 1: you know New Orleans in general, not necessarily just Marty

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Speaker 1: grab right, So jambalaya. What is it? Well, the beds

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Speaker 1: And that's one of the reasons it's so popular. It's

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Speaker 1: a one pot dish that is popular in my book

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Speaker 1: that has a meat, often of the seafood variety or

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Speaker 1: ondoier sausage and chicken, vegetables and some rice. And these

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Speaker 1: things are customizable to whatever you have on hand. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it can be relatively inexpensive as well. No two recipes

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Speaker 1: of jumbalaya are alike. People often say the vegetables are

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Speaker 1: usually seasoning vegetables, that is, they usually cook down and

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Speaker 1: create the sauce of the dish rather than being a

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Speaker 1: featured component. And the types of meat that are appropriate

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Speaker 1: for jumbalia are highly contested, especially once you start mixing

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Speaker 1: types in some areas. Adding seafood and sausager chicken will

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Speaker 1: make folks just clutch their pearls um. From what I've read,

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Speaker 1: it really is the most traditional, though, to use whatever

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Speaker 1: you've got. Any anything goes you know, fish, shrimp, crawfish, oysters, alligator, turtle, duck, boar, venison,

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Speaker 1: whatever you got from publix. I don't know if y'all

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Speaker 1: have publics and New Orleans at any rate. Yes, anything goes, uh,

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Speaker 1: though no two pots are exactly alike. There are two

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Speaker 1: main types of jumbalia, Cajun or brown jumbalia, and creole

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Speaker 1: are red jumbalaya. The main difference apart from color, is

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Speaker 1: whether or not tomatoes are used. So okay, yeah, color

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Speaker 1: and the order that you cook your ingredients. To make

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Speaker 1: cajun jumbalia. You brown and caramelize your meat. Then you

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Speaker 1: add some holy trinity, which is onion, green bell, pepper,

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Speaker 1: and celery. Then you add your stock and your rice.

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Speaker 1: Leftover bits of browned meat blend into the stock and

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Speaker 1: give it the color and a smokier flavor. The rice

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Speaker 1: also brown's a bit on the bottom of the pan.

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Speaker 1: For creole jumbala, I we were saying earlier, this word

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Speaker 1: is gonna. The name is gonna twist our tongues and

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Speaker 1: not easy to type over and over again. Um. For

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Speaker 1: Creole jumbala you start out by cooking the meat and

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Speaker 1: the Holy Trinity together. Then you add their ice, stock

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Speaker 1: and tomatoes, bring that to a boil, cover and cook

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Speaker 1: until the rice has soaked up all the stock. It's

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Speaker 1: a little more stew like than Cajun style. You're more

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Speaker 1: likely to find Creole jumbalaia in New Orleans in the

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Speaker 1: area surrounding it, while Cajun jambalaia is more common in

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Speaker 1: rural areas. In fact, Creole jumbalia is sometimes referred to

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Speaker 1: as French city cooking and the Cajun variety French country cooking.

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Speaker 1: And there's also a sort of looked down upon white jumbalia.

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Speaker 1: This calls for cooking their ice in a savory stock

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Speaker 1: separately from the meat and vegetables. Once done, you add

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Speaker 1: them together just before serving. It's a bit of a

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Speaker 1: time saver and seen as a lazy method of preparation

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Speaker 1: that out of staters are more likely to use those

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Speaker 1: out of staters. And and if you're wondering what Cajun

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Speaker 1: and creole mean, yeah, it might be helpful if we

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Speaker 1: have a loose definition of these words in here. Cajun is,

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Speaker 1: a shortened version of Acadian. Acadians were families of French

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Speaker 1: Catholics that were kicked out of Canada by the British

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Speaker 1: for refusing to convert to Protestantism in the seventeen hundred's.

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Speaker 1: A lot of them ended up in New Orleans. Creole,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, refers to the French, Spanish, African

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Speaker 1: Caribbean ancestry you find in New Orleans and Louisiana in general.

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Speaker 1: But back to Jumbalaya, Yeah, it comes from Louisiana probably,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about that more. It was sort of relegated

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Speaker 1: to Louisiana until the nineteen eighties, but it has French, Sannish, Caribbean, African,

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Speaker 1: and Native American influences. The name itself is believed to

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Speaker 1: come from the French chimban or Spanish himn, meaning ham,

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Speaker 1: the French contraction allah meaning in the style of and aya,

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Speaker 1: a word from an African dialect meaning rice. But but

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Speaker 1: this is most likely just a myth because the African

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Speaker 1: language is never specified, and a survey of many African

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Speaker 1: languages return no words sounding like a are ya that

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Speaker 1: means rice. Another piece of folklore about the name asserts

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Speaker 1: that a traveler in New Orleans arrived late one night

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Speaker 1: at an inn, and since there was very little food left,

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Speaker 1: he asked the cook, whose name was Jean, to sweep

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Speaker 1: something together. And the local dialect the word for sweep

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Speaker 1: something together is bellae, so he would have said Jean balier.

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Speaker 1: I guess sure. The Oxford English Dictionaries sites provincial figurative

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Speaker 1: word jambalaya, which ends in ai a meaning jumble, as

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Speaker 1: the source. Because New Orleans was and is a port city,

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Speaker 1: all these different cultures in Cuisines mingled together to give

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Speaker 1: us jambalaya. It's a fairly similar dish to the Spanish piea,

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Speaker 1: and that kind of brings us to the history. But

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Speaker 1: first quick break for a word from our sponsor, and

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Speaker 1: we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you. So in

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Speaker 1: two the French claimed a wide territory in North America

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Speaker 1: that they had come to known as the Louisiana Territory

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Speaker 1: for King Louis, and in six they founded New Orleans.

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Speaker 1: In the early seventeen hundreds, plantations along the Mississippi River

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Speaker 1: began growing rice is, largely at the time to provide

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Speaker 1: staple food for slaves who had experience working with these

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Speaker 1: grains in West Africa and cr rice episode for more

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Speaker 1: on that. Over time, different regions of the South would

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Speaker 1: cultivate rices with different characteristics to Louisiana. Specialties that developed

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Speaker 1: and persist today are della and toro. Both are long

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Speaker 1: grain and help give jambalaya some of its characteristic flavors

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Speaker 1: and textures. Dela is aromatic, smells sort of like roasted

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Speaker 1: nuts or popcorn, and toro is stickier than most long

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Speaker 1: grain rice, giving it a nice chew when it's cooked.

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Speaker 1: By the early to mid seventeen hundreds, French chefs in France,

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Speaker 1: working at the time for wealthy households and keeping their

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Speaker 1: recipes a little bit close to the chest, had begun

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Speaker 1: using mere pois to flavor their soups and stews. That's

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Speaker 1: their version of seasoning vegetables, consisting of onions, carrots, and celery,

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Speaker 1: and legend has it that got its name from a

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Speaker 1: duke of the Marpois region. From seventeen sixty two to

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Speaker 1: eighteen hundred, the area we know today as Louisiana was

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Speaker 1: ruled by the Spanish. The Spanish had taken the place

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Speaker 1: of the previous rulers of the French. The story goes

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Speaker 1: that some home six Spanish living in the French Quarter,

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Speaker 1: we're trying to recreate a dish from home, but they

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Speaker 1: had to improvise with the ingredients available to them in

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Speaker 1: the Louisiana Bayou and presso Chango. Saffron, the spice that

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Speaker 1: gives paia that yellowish hue, was difficult to come by

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Speaker 1: in the New World, so the Spanish subbed it out

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Speaker 1: for tomatoes. Well di but okay. Also, beginning in the

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Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds, the Spanish had begun using New World foods

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Speaker 1: in their sofrito, which is their versioning of seasoning vegetables mix.

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Speaker 1: This new version included sweet onion, scarlet, bell peppers, and tomatoes,

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Speaker 1: so they would have been pretty comfortable with trying tomatoes

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Speaker 1: by that point. Oh but hey, we also have native

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Speaker 1: Central American cultures to thank for the addition of cayenne

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Speaker 1: peppers to the mix, which, like bell peppers and tomatoes,

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Speaker 1: they had been using in their cuisines for millennia, and

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Speaker 1: which Columbus Columbus spread to Europe and beyond starting in

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Speaker 1: the fifteen hundreds. Giving further support to the Paiea theory

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Speaker 1: is the fact that the first recipes for Jambalayah used

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Speaker 1: a variant of Spanish trees, so called char. But then,

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Speaker 1: starting in seventeen sixty four, Acadians being exiled from British

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Speaker 1: controlled parts of what's now Canada began arriving in Louisiana.

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Speaker 1: It's thought that they brought with them traditions of making

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Speaker 1: a smoked and seasoned pork sausage called and dewey, which

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Speaker 1: had in turn been brought over to the America's from

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Speaker 1: what's now France and Germany. Eventually, these ideas melded with

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Speaker 1: local Southern sausage making, giving us the creole and occasion

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Speaker 1: on dewey, which is a sausage that's spicy like choice

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Speaker 1: but smoked like Franco German charcuterie. And dewey is frequently

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Speaker 1: double smoked. Both the meat that's chopped up to go

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Speaker 1: into it is smoked, and then once it's been stuffed

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Speaker 1: into its casing, the whole thing is smoked again, which

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Speaker 1: makes it tough, which means it's extra nice in stews. Also,

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Speaker 1: just f y i and dewey can apparently be used

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Speaker 1: as an insult in Continental French, means that you're like

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Speaker 1: like lazy. Oh so it's kind of close to on me.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I like it, yeah yeah um. And also, hey,

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Speaker 1: some Acadians who came through the Carolina's also knew things

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Speaker 1: about rice, and we're excited about growing it in Louisiana.

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Speaker 1: We get the first written instance of jambalaya in eighteen

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Speaker 1: thirty seven's Zamor de Vanus vol by fortune or for

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Speaker 1: to nuts Um. The upstairs neighbors were making a din

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Speaker 1: all kinds of people, rich and poor. It was a mishmash,

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Speaker 1: which the word for that was jambalaya of red and

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Speaker 1: ebriated faces. It was first published in Provence, and it

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Speaker 1: was included in his next book as well, which came

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Speaker 1: out in eighteen forty, but for some reason, the spelling

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Speaker 1: of jambalaya changed. The l was replaced within our no

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Speaker 1: apparent reason. In May eighteen forty nine issue of The

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Speaker 1: American Agriculturalist, featuring the first English mention of jambalaya in

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Speaker 1: a recipe for hopping Johnny, which is cash range um

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Speaker 1: since the recipe is definitely for jean balia and not

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Speaker 1: hopping john In eighteen seventy five issue of The New

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Speaker 1: Orleans Times wrote about Jambalaya, that it was spelled in

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Speaker 1: French Jean Billiard, but the dish is of Indian origin.

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Speaker 1: But the recipe they described was for hopping john. So

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Speaker 1: there's some confusion here about these two recipes. That same year,

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Speaker 1: the Cultivator and Country Gentleman printed a spelling of jambalia

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Speaker 1: that was a bit all for at least it is

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Speaker 1: to how we currently spell it, jumba joom balia. If

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Speaker 1: I had to pronounce it all of the all of

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Speaker 1: the syllables. Yeah. Yeah. The eighteen seventy six Louisiana as

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Speaker 1: it is had a similar misspelling June bal Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: there was confusion about the spelling as well. Jambalaia made

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Speaker 1: its first cookbook debut in the Gulf City Cookbook, published

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Speaker 1: by the Ladies of the St. Francis Street Methodist Episcopal

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Speaker 1: Church in South Mobile, Alabama, although it was under jam

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Speaker 1: Bolaya two space between jam and balaya. Yeah, they were

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Speaker 1: closing in. We were getting close to the modern day spelling.

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Speaker 1: And there's a whole side theory that jam valia actually

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Speaker 1: may have originated in Alabama. Yeah, and that the Cajuns

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Speaker 1: and Creoles in Louisiana didn't really know about it until

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Speaker 1: the nineteen fifty two Hank Williams country song Janvalia came out.

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Speaker 1: What the first two cookbooks that appears in came out

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Speaker 1: of our have connection to Mobile and not New Orleans.

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Speaker 1: The French did found Mobile in seventeen o two two

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Speaker 1: and they stuck around until seventeen sixty three, and then

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Speaker 1: from seventeen eighty to eighteen fourteen Mobile was part of

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Speaker 1: Spanish West Florida. So it does have a similar Franco

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Speaker 1: Spanish thing going on. I'm not saying one way or

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Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, yeah, no, no food food stuff disavows

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Speaker 1: and in partisan part in this, We're just letting you

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Speaker 1: know that this is a theory that exists out there. Yeah, alright, okay,

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Speaker 1: moving on. Yeah, we both have our hands up late

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Speaker 1: please um. Tomatoes and especially canned tomatoes, may have been

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Speaker 1: cemented as an ingredient in Creole style jambalaya starting in

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Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties. That's when a huge number of Sicilian

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Speaker 1: and other Italian immigrants began arriving in New Orleans fleeing

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Speaker 1: political persecution and corruption under a new regime in Italy.

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Speaker 1: About two d ninety thousand Italians would come to live

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Speaker 1: in New Orleans by the nineteen twenties, adding their foods

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Speaker 1: and tastes to the culture there, and thanks to its

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Speaker 1: ease of preparation and cheapness, jumbalaya was popular at large

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Speaker 1: events like church gatherings or political rallies. Meanwhile, in eighteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: six one A Meal Ze Terrain, Yes that Ze Terrain,

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Speaker 1: opened a grocery store in New Orleans. In addition to

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Speaker 1: various commercial goods, he also sold his own root beer,

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Speaker 1: Creole style mustard, and seafood boil. The root beer was

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Speaker 1: the real money maker, and by nineteen hundred had opened

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Speaker 1: a factory to produce it and his expanded products and

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Speaker 1: spice blends and eventually boxed rice blends. After a couple

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Speaker 1: of corporate switchovers through the twentieth century, they were bought

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Speaker 1: by McCormick for a hundred and eighty million dollars in

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Speaker 1: two thousand three. They still make boxed jumbalaya rice mix

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Speaker 1: and frozen jumbalaya on traded stuff like that. The North

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Speaker 1: got its first taste of jumbalaya during World War Two,

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Speaker 1: and African Americans and Southerners migrated to cities to take

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Speaker 1: jobs left open by soldiers or for work at war

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Speaker 1: production plants. Uh. And though you might think of New Orleans, Um,

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Speaker 1: I hope we I forgot about that whole debate about

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Speaker 1: how that's pronounced. Um, when you think of I'm Jambalaya. Gonzalez,

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Speaker 1: Louisiana is the self proclaimed jam Black capital in n

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Speaker 1: This was made official when Governor John McKeithen declared it

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Speaker 1: to be the Jumbala Capital of the world. It is

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Speaker 1: the home to the annual Spring Jumbalaya festival to this day. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Somebody you might recognize the name of Chef Paul Prudom

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Speaker 1: helped popularize Cajun and Creole cuisine in the nineteen eighties

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Speaker 1: and it expanded from a regional thing to an American

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Speaker 1: thing to an almost worldwide thing. He may have also

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Speaker 1: been the one to popularize or maybe even invent, the

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Speaker 1: term holy Trinity for the mix of celery onions and

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Speaker 1: green bell peppers that are the base of Jumbalaya and

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Speaker 1: other Creole and Cajun dishes. It's now a popular option

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Speaker 1: for military ready to eat meals and maries for pticularly

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Speaker 1: after Hurricane Katrina. Yeah, and uh, that's pretty much our

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Speaker 1: history of Jombalaya. It's really a heartwarming kind of story

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Speaker 1: of all of these cultures kind of contributing something to

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Speaker 1: to this amazing, delicious dish that I can't eat because

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Speaker 1: it has bell peppers in it. But I don't know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's sort of it's sort of lovely. A

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Speaker 1: lot of places I read described it as the melting pot,

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Speaker 1: like the ultimate melting pot. Yeah, and it's in a pot.

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Speaker 1: It is. It is then too. So we've got a

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Speaker 1: little bit more for you here. But first we've got

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Speaker 1: one more break for a word from our sponsor, and

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Speaker 1: we're back. Thank you, sponsor. So Um Jumbalia science well um.

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Speaker 1: Nutrition wise, Jumbalia is a carb bomb from all that

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Speaker 1: rice because, unlike gumbo orfe, rice is the main component

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Speaker 1: of the dish. But jumbala is also high in protein

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Speaker 1: and fats, meaning it will fill you up, and if

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Speaker 1: you eat it with a side of vegetables, you can

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Speaker 1: make it a more balanced meal. Cole slaws traditional you

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Speaker 1: might want to go easy on the mayo. A few

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Speaker 1: tips for making a tasty jumbali at home. Definitely use

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Speaker 1: a cast iron or enameled cast iron pot because those

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Speaker 1: suckers get real hot and they hold the heat really well.

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Speaker 1: Plus you won't worry about scraping up all your fancy

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Speaker 1: non stick pans before you do anything else. You should

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Speaker 1: toast your spices whole if you've got them, or pre

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Speaker 1: ground if that's what you're working with. That's your your peppercorns,

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Speaker 1: your cayenne, anything else. Some recipes call for water as

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Speaker 1: the liquid, but you should use chicken stock if you

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Speaker 1: want it to be extra tasty. And you're not vegetarian,

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Speaker 1: Well did that thing too? Yeah, definitely, thank you. Um

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Speaker 1: you could use vegetable stock instead, that would totally work, exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: totally do that. Um. Also, and perhaps most importantly, once

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Speaker 1: you have added the rice to the mix, do not stir.

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Speaker 1: Stirring is over. You want to fold or turn it

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Speaker 1: the way that you would like, a like like whipped eggs. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This keeps the rice from break, from breaking up or

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Speaker 1: from getting all mushy, and you should only turn it

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Speaker 1: like two or three times. You're you're incorporating, not mixing.

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Speaker 1: People were very stern about this. It sounds like a

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Speaker 1: serious business. It is. Yeah, I have you know, I

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Speaker 1: didn't know what folding was until about two years ago.

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Speaker 1: Just kind of It was one of those words I

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Speaker 1: just never thought to look up, so when a recipe

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Speaker 1: said it, I would just sort of make You can't

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Speaker 1: see the motion I'm making, but I kind of just pop. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a good word for it. I just plopping around. Yeah. Well, um,

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Speaker 1: it's it's going to be a little bit difficult to describe.

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Speaker 1: But when you fold something, you want to take a

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Speaker 1: you want to take a spatula and kind of scrape

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Speaker 1: it along the outer edge of a bowl, like reaching

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Speaker 1: down in along the side of the bowl until you

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Speaker 1: hit the bottom, and then you kind of pull up

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Speaker 1: what's at the bottom and you fold it back into

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Speaker 1: the center of the bowl, and then sort of repeat

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Speaker 1: that in the in the opposite in the counterclockwise direction,

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Speaker 1: in order to fold the stuff from the bottom up

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Speaker 1: to the top and vice versa. I see, yeah, I hope.

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Speaker 1: I hope that made sense to anyone who couldn't see

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Speaker 1: the gesture. I've made sense to me. Well, I could

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Speaker 1: see it, but also I still I still struggle with it.

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Speaker 1: We'll have a folding will have the folding episode. Oh

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Speaker 1: my gosh, I know everyone would be super pumped for that. Um,

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Speaker 1: but that's jumbalaia, and I hope that this has gotten

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Speaker 1: you all hungry, Like I'm really hungry right now, and

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Speaker 1: I feel bad that you can't have any jumbal ile

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Speaker 1: or not not real jumbalia. I could. I could make

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Speaker 1: some with like celery and carrots and it wouldn't be real,

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Speaker 1: but you know we could. Protect also probably can't eat

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Speaker 1: in do these sausage, Well, you can, you can use

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Speaker 1: other things, that's the whole point. Indeed, Anyway, time for

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Speaker 1: a listener mail Uni wrote, I recently listened to your

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Speaker 1: podcast on Durian and I could not have pulled out

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Speaker 1: my phone to write you quick enough. And the podcast

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Speaker 1: you mentioned how someone said Durian is best served with

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Speaker 1: Coca cola so you can burp and enjoy it longer.

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Speaker 1: That suddenly brought back nightmarish flashbacks. So the first time

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Speaker 1: I tried Durian in Vancouver, my boyfriend and I decided

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Speaker 1: to be adventurous and tried dury and ice cream. The

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Speaker 1: taste was actually not bad if you could get past

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Speaker 1: the scent. As mentioned, It was a bit like custard,

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Speaker 1: but with hints of onion and garlic. We made the

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Speaker 1: mistake of having a soft drink after to try and

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Speaker 1: wash them. Not so pleasant after taste away. Needless to say,

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Speaker 1: we were burping in the car on the way back

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Speaker 1: to Seattle. The births were so bad we had to

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Speaker 1: drive with all the windows open. So I wish you

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Speaker 1: luck on your first time trying it, and I suggest

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Speaker 1: not all caps having a Coca Cola with it. Oh

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Speaker 1: my goodness. Yeah, okay um. Speaking of soft drinks, and

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Speaker 1: Michael wrote in thanks for another great podcast, just getting

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Speaker 1: in touch about the throwaway comment about being convinced the

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Speaker 1: coke tastes better and McDonald's it's not in your head.

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Speaker 1: It's because the syrup water ratio accounts for the melting

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Speaker 1: of the ice, so if you drink it before the

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Speaker 1: ice is melted, it will be more concentrated than normal coke.

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Speaker 1: I hope that's a fun fact nugget for the next

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Speaker 1: time someone asks it is it makes so much sense you,

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Speaker 1: Michael like like, I read this and it kind of

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Speaker 1: blew my mind. Me too. That's this is like a

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Speaker 1: paradigm shifting. It made so many things fall into place

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Speaker 1: for me. I feel Lauren will be bringing up this

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Speaker 1: fact many times, oh so many times. Yeah, so yeah,

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Speaker 1: thank you. Guys, thank you for writing in yes, and

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Speaker 1: if you would like to write to us, you can

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Speaker 1: do so. Our email is food Stuff at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. We're also on social media. You can

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Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and Twitter at food Stuff. Hs

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Speaker 1: W stands for how Stuff Works. We're also on Instagram

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Speaker 1: at food Stuff. Thank you so much to our amazing producer,

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Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope

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Speaker 1: that lots more good things are coming your way