These spicy gluten free jambalaya stuffed baked potatoes are a delicious dish for your Mardi Gras celebrations. If you love using baked potatoes as your base for flavorful combinations, this fun recipe is for you!
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One thing I miss since relocating to California is celebrating Mardi Gras.
Dancing around to fabulous music, wearing bright colors, and getting cool plastic necklaces tossed at you during parades? Priceless.
In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is a major holiday. The season is celebrated during the two weeks prior to Fat Tuesday, and typically includes parades and family gatherings where food plays a major role.
Jambalaya is one of those classic, well-known New Orleans dishes that has come to symbolize Mardi Gras.
Jambalaya is a Louisiana Creole meat and rice dish that has origins from both France and Spain. Some even refer to it as New Orlean's version of paella. There are several good cajun spice mixes you can buy. For this recipe, I used Zatarain's. Zatarain's Creole seasoning is gluten free and tastes delicious!
I wanted to go a little out of the box with a recipe using Jambalaya. Since my family loves baked potatoes, I decided to stuff them with Jambalaya and see what they thought :-).
Ways to cook a potato:
There are several ways to bake a potato, in the oven, in the microwave, and on a grill. Each can lend a different flavor and texture to your baked potatoes.
- Oven: To bake your potato in the oven, use a fork to make slits in the top of the potato. Bake at 400 degrees for 45-50 minutes.
- Microwave: Known as the quick and easy cheat for baked potatoes, you will want to use a fork to poke holes in the top of the baked potato. This is very important so hot air will vent out of the potato. Place the potato into a microwave-safe dish. Microwave on high for 5 minutes, turn it over, add a few fork holes to this side and microwave an additional 5 minutes until the potato feels soft.
- Grilling: Poke a few holes in the top of your baked potato. Wrap each potato in aluminum foil. Place on the grill for one hour.
- Air frying: It is so easy to air fry a potato. You get all of that delicious baked flavor in a fraction of the time.
What kind of potato is best for baking?
For this recipe, you will want to use russet potatoes. They are larger to hold more filling, and they have a creamy taste that is perfect with the spicy Jambalaya.
**And if you love potato recipes as much as we do, you will definitely want to try these Cream Cheese Mashed Potatoes and this Super Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes with Bacon recipes!**
While your potatoes are cooking, let's make the Jambalaya! Cook the pepper and onions in olive oil and garlic. Add in shrimp and sausage. You can add chicken as well if you like.
More Fun Stuffed Baked Potato recipes to try:
📋 Recipe
Jambalaya Stuffed Baked Potatoes
Ingredients
- 4 large russet potatoes washed
- 1 pound uncooked shrimp
- 3 Andouille sausage links chopped
- 1 red bell pepper sliced thinly
- 1 small onion chopped
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme
- 2 teaspoons Zatarain's Creole Seasoning
- salt and pepper to taste
- sour cream
- pepper jack cheese shredded
- scallions
Instructions
- In pan, heat olive oil on medium heat with garlic.
- Add onion and peppers and cook 3 minutes.
- Add shrimp and sausage.
- Cook 5 minutes.
- Add seasonings and cook an additional 10 minutes.
- In a microwave oven, pierce potatoes skin and cook potatoes for 8 minutes.
- Slit down the middle.
- Add jambalaya.
- Top with sour cream, pepper jack cheese and scallions.
- Serve hot.
Nutrition
(*This post was updated from an older post I wrote in February 2016.)
Rebecca Hubbell
I absolutely love Baked Potatoes and this is such a fun (and tasty) way to serve them up!
Sandi Gaertner
Thank you so much Rebecca 🙂