ROUSES_SeptOct2019_Magazine

you’re bacon me hungry by david w. brown, photos by channing candies If it’s game day, Tim Acosta is making a pot of jambalaya. For a noon game, he starts early in the morning — usually around eight o’clock. For evening games, he starts in the early afternoon. “I get in my outdoor kitchen, and I’m cooking,” says Tim, who is the director of marketing and advertising for Rouses Markets. For a good, easy jambalaya, he uses a three-three-three preparation method, which he says makes a nice-sized pot for a good group of people. The “threes” refer to three pounds of pork, three pounds of chicken, and three pounds of rice. (It scales up to fives as well for really large gatherings.) If you haven’t eaten lunch, stop reading right now, because this recipe is intense and will make you ravenous. When making a jambalaya, Tim likes to start with bacon. “I usually use a package of our Rouses Hickory Smoked Bacon,” he says. He cuts it into cubes and renders it down until it’s crispy, then removes it from the pot. Next, he slices up three pounds of Rouses Green Onion Smoked Sausage and adds that to the bacon grease that has been left behind. I told you not to read this if you were hungry. Once the sausage is browned, Tim removes it from the pot and adds three pounds of pork, usually Boston butt shoulder roast that’s been cut into bite-sized cubes. He seasons it to taste with salt and pepper and renders it down, as well, until it’s tender. (This is the longest part of the recipe because, after the fat renders out, it can take some time — 20-30 minutes, usually — for the pork to be fully cooked.) He then removes the pork, puts it aside, and adds onions to the pot. Once they’re translucent (about five minutes), he tops them with three pounds of diced, Rouses Boneless, Skinless Chicken Thighs. They quickly brown, and after they’re cooked to temperature, he adds Creole seasoning, then begins adding back to the pot all of the previously cooked goodies: pork, then sausage, then bacon. Now it’s time to add stock. “I like to use three quarts of stock,” says Tim. He recommends two quarts of chicken stock and one of vegetable stock (the latter for rounding out the flavor profile). He then seasons to taste, and after the pot has been simmering for a while, he adds three pounds of parboiled rice. “Get it stirred really good, and once it starts to simmer and you see the steam coming out, cover it up, put your stove on low, and don’t open the lid! ” For seasonings, he recommends Cajun Power Garlic Sauce and a bit of Pickapeppa Sauce, though he says that a jambalaya cook can safely use whatever he or she likes. “There’s no right or wrong way. I bet you on game day at Tiger Stadium, you can have 500 people cooking jambalaya, and every one of those 500 people will have a different variation — and they would all be good.” Jambalaya is ideal LSU game grub because of how easy it is to eat: All you need are bowls and forks, and everyone can help themselves. Tim has another weapon in his cuisine arsenal, though: bacon-wrapped boudin.

“Take Rouses Pepper Jack Boudin and Rouses Pecan Smoke Bacon and basically just wrap the boudin with the bacon,” he says. Use a couple of toothpicks to hold it all together. He recommends cooking the bacon-wrapped boudin on a Big Green Egg, an outdoor kamado-style grill and smoker. Get the temperature to around 400 degrees, and cook the boudin on indirect heat. In 30 minutes, you’ll have a nice, crispy boudin that has absorbed the heaven that is bacon grease. “It’s a very simple dish to do,” Tim says, but the real trick is that indirect heat. “If you use a regular grill, the bacon drippings will make it flare up, and it will burn the bacon.” Bacon-wrapped boudin is a good meal in itself, he says, because of the boudin’s rice and pork filling. The bacon’s the fireworks spectacular that puts it all over the top. It’s a perfect finger food as is, but you can serve them with dipping sauces such as Sriracha, Tiger Sauce or Pickapeppa Sauce. Whether you go with a big pot of jambalaya or you can’t even think about rice after all that boudin and bacon talk, one thing’s for sure: You’re gonna be eating real good on game day.

Tim Acosta, Director of Marketing and Advertising at Rouses Markets

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SEPTEMBER•OCTOBER 2019