Does anyone else like Zatarains Dirty Rice mix? My husband and I ate it all the time in college when on a budget, and we haven’t had it in years. I decided to make some because it is delicious. If you haven’t had dirty rice before it is simply ground beef, rice and seasonings all cooked together. After watching a chef on Top Chef make dirty rice from scratch I have always wanted to try doing that. Today is not that day though, so I used the mix. 🙂 We usually top our dirty rice with some Tabasco or other hot sauce. I wanted to serve some kind of vegetable side dish with this, and I came across cajun corn maque choux.
I had never heard of this dish before, but I liked the idea of all the vegetables, with just a little bit of andouille sausage. There seem to be a fair number of variations to this dish. After looking at a bunch I chose to use corn, tomatoes, green bell pepper, onion, sausage and green onions. A lot of recipes called for frozen corn, but I don’t love frozen corn so I used fresh corn. I think you could add some chopped jalapeno to this too for a spicier dish and it would be great.
Dirty Rice + Cajun Corn Maque Choux
Ingredients
For the dirty rice:
- 1 box Zatarain's Dirty Rice mix
- 1 lb ground beef (or pork, turkey etc)
- 2 1/2 cups water
- 1 tbsp oil
For the corn maque choux:
- 1 small onion chopped
- 6 ears fresh corn
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 plum tomatoes diced
- 1/4 lb andouille sausage Cut into small pieces
- 3 scallions sliced
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Make the dirty rice:
- Brown the ground beef in a large sauce pan with a lid. Add the water, oil and seasonings. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and cook for 25 minutes.
For the maque choux:
- Sautee the sausage in a skillet in 1 tbsp oil until golden. Remove from the pan. Add onion and cook until softened. Add the corn, tomatoes, and peppers. Cook, stirring occasionally for a few minutes until veggies are crisp/tender. Season with salt and pepper and top with scallions.
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