Red Beans and Rice
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Easy and quick red beans and rice! An authentic Louisiana recipe with smoky andouille sausage, the holy trinity, and the creamiest beans!
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Why you’ll love red beans and rice
- Comfort food goodness. Firstly, this dish is quintessential comfort food, consisting of thick, creamy, tender beans, smoky andouille sausage, and Cajun seasoning. The best part? The recipe uses canned beans for the speediest weeknight meal.
- Budget-friendly. Not only is this budget-friendly but it is also incredibly filling, making it an economical, high protein, and high fiber dinner for the entire family to enjoy.
- Versatile and flexible. This is an incredibly flexible and forgiving dish. It can easily be customized and adapted with different proteins, various beans and rice types, or even made completely vegetarian. You can also make it mild, make it hot, or make it fiery!
- Makes for the best leftovers. The flavors get a chance to meld and marry even more overnight, making for the most exceptional choice for leftovers and meal prep, packed with fiber and protein.
What is red beans and rice?
This is a classic Louisiana dish made with red beans, sausage, and the “holy trinity” (onions, bell pepper, and celery), typically served over white rice alongside cornbread and hot sauce.
Monday tradition
This was served on Mondays known as the “wash day” tradition, a day devoted to laundry. Cooking a pot of red beans, a slow cooked, no-fuss meal, allowed more time for chores to be completed.
How to make red beans and rice
- Cook the rice. Cook the rice to package instructions. Long grain white rice (ex. jasmine) is generally the gold standard for red beans and rice.
- Brown the sausage. While the rice is cooking, brown the sausage in batches until lightly browned; set aside.
- Add the holy trinity. Stir in the onion, bell pepper, and celery until tender.
- Cook the aromatics. Stir in the tomato paste, garlic, and Cajun seasoning until fragrant.
- Simmer. Add the red beans, chicken stock, hot sauce, bay leaf, and cooked sausage, simmering for 15 minutes covered, and then an additional 15 minutes uncovered.
- Mash the beans. Using a wooden spoon, mash the beans for a creamier consistency.
- Serve. Top with the cooked white rice, garnished with parsley, and served alongside some cornbread.
what to serve with red beans and rice
Tools For This Recipe
Red Beans and Rice: Frequently Asked Questions
Not at all! There is no need for an overnight or quick soak here. This is a super quick recipe using canned red beans, perfect for when you just don’t have the time to soak dry beans.
I recommend using small red beans or kidney beans.
Kielbasa is an excellent substitute.
The spice level can be adjusted to mild by using mild andouille sausage and omitting the hot sauce.
Absolutely! Similar to lasagna, red beans and rice taste better the very next day, really allowing the flavors to meld and intensify overnight.
Yes! You can freeze the leftovers without the rice (or else they will get mushy) in individual freezer bags. To reheat, thaw overnight and gently reheat on the stovetop, adding freshly cooked rice when serving.
Red Beans and Rice
Video
Ingredients
- 1 cup basmati rice
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 (12.8-ounce) package smoked andouille sausage, thinly sliced
- 1 medium sweet onion, diced
- 1 green bell pepper, diced
- 2 celery ribs, diced
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 ½ teaspoons Cajun seasoning, salt-free
- 3 (15-ounce) cans small red beans or kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 3 cups chicken stock
- 1 teaspoon hot sauce
- 1 bay leaf
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
Instructions
- In a large saucepan of 2 cups water, cook rice according to package instructions; set aside.
- Heat vegetable oil in a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Working in batches, add sausage, and cook, stirring frequently, until sausage is lightly browned, about 3-4 minutes; set aside.
- Add onion, bell pepper and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 3-4 minutes.
- Stir in tomato paste, garlic and Cajun seasoning until fragrant, about 1 minute.
- Stir in red beans, chicken stock, hot sauce, bay leaf and sausage; season with salt and pepper, to taste. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Uncover; continue to simmer until reduced, an additional 15 minutes.
- Using a wooden spoon, mash beans until slightly thickened, if desired; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Serve immediately, topped with rice and garnished with parsley, if desired.
Equipment
Notes
- Serve with long grain white rice. Use long grain, basmati or jasmine rice – all light and fluffy to absorb and soak up the creamy, saucy beans. Avoid short grain, sushi rice or instant rice.
- Tomato paste adds so much flavor. Tomato paste adds body and richness in small amounts without adding too much liquid. Opt for tomato paste in a tube, using up only what you need at a time without having to open up a whole can.
- Use small red beans or kidney beans. Soaking dry beans is not required here. Canned red beans (or kidney beans) allows this recipe to come together so fast, making it a true weeknight hero.
- Mash the beans. Add the finishing touches by mashing up about 1 cup of the softened beans off to the side of the pot – this is what makes the red beans and rice so thick and velvety creamy.
- Make it vegetarian. For our vegetarian friends, substitute plant-based sausage for the andouille sausage, and vegetable stock for the chicken stock.
- Pair with cornbread. Serve with a scoop of white rice and a side of cornbread, a quintessential pairing!
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Can I give you 100 stars. WOW !!!!! This recipe is so deliciously amazing that it has been added to my kitchen cookbook. This is my go to meal when I need my NOLA fix. Yes I will be signing up.
This has become a go to!!! Love this dish.
This was great and SUPER easy to make. Thank you so much! My husband asked me to make sure I save this one and put it in my cook book.
Enjoyed what I made but can’t help but wonder if I did something wrong. Mine did not end up looking as red as the one in the picture. Mine was more of a brown color. Also I used organic canned dark red kidney beans. I’m thinking these were not the right type of bean lol.
Any ideas as to why mine looked so different?
Matt, You can actually buy canned beans called Red Beans. They are not as big or as thick skinned as kidney beans. Walmart for sure carries them; Safeway too, I think. Maybe the brand of tomato paste lent to the color being not so red. But hey…if it tasted good, who cares! I hope that helps.
I made this using canned and rinsed red beans instead of Kidney beans and thought it was wonderful! Posting on another group I was admonished by a cook who was in New Orleans because I did not use Kidney beans; though I found people and sites backing both versions. Various explanations of the why and wherefore of Cajun versus Creole recipes. I had never heard of and have since I found that I might be able to get it here in North Texas (H-E-B) or by ordering online, so I might add some pickled pork to the preparation in the future.
Absolute banger of a recipe.
There’s a lot of RB&R recipes out there, but this is by far the easiest and most flavorful I’ve found. Bookmarked!
I used butter instead of oil to cook the holy trio (onion, celery, pepper) and added pre-cooked sausage at the very end.
I made this today and it is delicious! We don’t eat meat so I just followed the rest of the recipe until I got to the stock. Oh no, I only had a cup and a half of veggie stock. Went with that anyway and I think it just made for an even more concentrated and tasty sauce. We will be having this again.
Yum, yum, yum, and yum; one for me, one from my husband, and two from our tummies. Oh, this was so good. Thank you. Definitely a keeper.
My family loved this recipe!! Prefect for Mardi Gras Day
This is a good recipe to make from scratch. It was easy if onion celery and green pepper or chopped up in advance. My Cajun seasoning was salty, so I held back and added my own blend of cayenne, chili powder, and Spanish smoky paprika to taste. As a last step, I rinsed and drained a can of red kidney beans and mash them before adding to the pot. This served as additional thickening for the dish. I like serving the rice on the side or sparingly over the top so this is a great way to serve red beans and rice!
Made this for Mardi Gras and it was absolutely delicious!! I used smoked kielbasa and browned some more to add to each serving. Also made sure to scoop out the cup of beans to mash them well for extra creaminess. Served bowls with generous 1/4 cups of basmati & chopped fresh parsley, and big chunks of your go-to cornbread on the side. This is a total keeper for any time of year. So good, i was looking for more even though it lasted me for days. Thank you so much for this!! xx
Excellent. I prefer for the celery, bell pepper and onions to be super soft, so I simply cooked longer. I used jasmine rice instead cooked with chicken bouillon. Will do this one again!
So yummy
All the picky eaters loved it
This is the best red beans and rice I have ever had, hands down. So flavorful and easy to make. I’ve been to New Orleans four times and have never had red beans and rice that compare. Side note, if you can get your hands on it, savannah sausage andouille is fantastic. The only other that I think compares is Registers in the panhandle of FL.
Don’t make this! It is TOO DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!! We used smoked turkey wing instead of sausage, cut the salt in half and used the cauliflower rice. Absolutely fabulous! Even my picky “I only want peanut butter and jelly!” sandwich eater ate some without complaint.
First time making red beans and rice without it being from zatirans ha. This was a good hearty supper. The family loved it! I made it this in my Dutch oven/crockpot that is removable. I added bacon In there to add some Smokey notes and followed the rest of the recipe. Will make again! Thanks!!
Wow. This was SO so good. I doubled it, to make extras for lunches this week.The only change I made was to use cilantro-lime rice to top the red beans with. We are happily eating leftovers!
Excellent recipe. My only change was to add a tsp of oregano, thyme, and ground sage.
Damn delicious!!
Made this tonight and it was perfect. Didn’t add hot sauce because the andouille sausage was spicy enough for my kids. We LOVED it and this is the PERFECT quick red and rice recipe! Took me 15 minutes to get everything into a pot. (A timesaver is to use half a package of frozen prechopped trinity veg mix or creole mix-a mix of celery, onion, and green bell peppers)
I made a triple batch of this last week – two to give away to friends and one to keep for ourselves. I mostly followed the recipe, but we used regular white rice instead of basmati, and for one friend used kielbasa instead of andouille. RAVE reviews all around. We just finished the last of the leftovers and my husband and I already want it again. Definitely going into the regular rotation!