Jambalaya is one of my favorite Cajun dishes. Since I’ve made the dish a few times, I realized that it could easily be transformed into a soup! This recipe is filled with delicious Cajun flavors. I’m fortunate to have a local butcher that makes great Cajun sausage which I used for this recipe. It’s not the same as Andouille sausage which is smoked and usually sold pre-cooked. Instead, this sausage is sold uncooked/unsmoked and is flavored with Cajun seasoning. It crumbles apart easily so it makes for a better sausage for soup. If you can find this type of Cajun sausage great, but if you can’t there’s always Andouille sausage which is tasty as well.
When I made this soup I was out of shrimp and didn’t have time to pick some up. In a pinch, I decided to use a traditional ingredient found in, believe it or not, Vietnamese cooking. The secret ingredient to this soup is…wait for it…fish sauce! I know, it sounds crazy but it really is a great way to get some of that briny/salty flavor into the stock without having to shuck and boil several pounds of shrimp shells. If you prefer to use shrimp for the stock, go for it, but this was a handy way to get that good flavor in a pinch. Not having shrimp in this soup wasn’t that big of a deal for me since I felt that all the necessary flavors were there. I served the soup with Cornbread Muffins which made a great side dish (and for dunking!)
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