JACKSON, Miss.–This is how Mississippi brings people together with a secret recipe, red beans and rice. It was Red Beans and Rice celebration number 20 Saturday and all the money raised went to Stewpot Ministries, food for people who might not eat otherwise. The story of red beans and rice is the story of the people who make it, like Deana Boyles and crew at the Ross and Yerger Insurance booth.
For her, the best recipe is the team work.
“We sat around yesterday and got everything ready ahead of time and cried a lot over the onions,” she said.
Her crew serves more beans than rice. “You can’t serve too much rice, it’s not the Cajun way.”
And for Terry McDonald at the Atmos tent, well, he gets the cookware involved.
The Whole Story:
“When you cook your sausage, all the flavor gets in the bottom of the pan. When you put your onions and your water and the seasonings in there, it comes off the bottom and gets in the onions and the vegetables,” he said.
And don’t forget the andouille.
And then there’s the eating, the music, and people being together.
And then you run across the occasional oddity. If you’ve never heard of a pounce, well, brace yourself. Meet Jacob Lejeune. He’s from Eunice, Louisiana and was hanging out and cooking his favorite pig dish. It’s a pig stomach, stuffed with pork parts.
That’s right, I ate some.
“Of course, you’ve got to defrost ’em, go through and clean ’em. Pull the fat off, Pull all the deformities out. You soak ’em with the sausage meat and then you sew it up and we smoke ’em for 12 to 16 hours,” he said.
And the actual stomach was kind of chewy. Nope, didn’t taste like chicken, at all.
Jacob Lejeune’s business is in Eunice, La. and is called Lejeune Sausage Kitchen.
