New Orleans Mulate's Catfish Jambalaya

TxGriffLover's Note:

Mulate's restaurant in New, Orleans takes a novel approach with jambalaya, utilizing catfish as the main ingredient. The recipe is quite easy. Try this out for your next Mardi Gras party, and you will surely get praise for being unique and creative. This recipe came from Sam's Club, October, 2008, courtesy of Mulate's Restaurant. You can also use the blackened salmon filets from Sam's Club in place of the catfish. Edited 6-5-09: The original recipe does call for 1/2 pound (2 sticks) of butter, but that is WAY too much IMO. I have cut the amount in half to 1/2 cup (1 stick).

• Total Time: 35 mins
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 25 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

• 8 ounces catfish fillets
• 4 yellow onions, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 (10 ounce) can Ro-Tel tomatoes
• 4 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced
• salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Put all ingredients except catfish into a saucepan and cook until the mixture begins to turn light brown. Season with salt & pepper while cooking.
2. Add catfish and cook 15-20 minutes longer. Mix with cooked rice and freshly chopped green onion tops. Serve hot.

Reviews

[Jenny Runs Fast]

We have a farm pond with catfish. I have not EVER found a healthy recipe that makes them taste good. So...I found this recipe and was delighted to try it! With most of the ingredients coming straight from the garden organic style....it was a SMASH hit with my family!! I doubled the recipe, used 2 full filleted catfish, 5 jalapenos, 1 cayenne, and a quart of canned tomatoes! I used one 4 oz. can of mushrooms and cut the butter in half. I also put in ALOT of white onions. Man OH MAN!!!!! DELICIOUS!!!! We have a very expensive New Orleans style restaurant here in NE Iowa and this dish would have easily fetched $20.00! Thanks so much for sharing this recipe!! WE LOVED IT!!!!!!!!! Next time I am serving it with hot corn bread and honey butter!!!!!

[Debbie R.]

Excellent; very delicious! Easy too. You have to be sure to cook until lightly brown as stated in Step 1. It doesn't look like it will, but it does turn light brown eventually. I had mine on high heat and stirring stuff around ocasionally so that nothing burned. I can't remember how long it took, but not long because I was standing there the whole time (not a lot of stamina here). If you don't do this, the taste won't be the same. Besides the taste of the vegetables themselves, once you put in the fish, some of the veges will slightly carmelize on the very bottom. Wowzers! I found out that Ro-Tel was too hot for DH...it was just the regular Ro-Tel, so if you have an eater who can't handle any heat, you need to see if Ro-Tel has a mild and get that, or use some plain diced tomatoes with whatever else is in Ro-Tel in terms of herbs/spices. One-half cup of butter is more than enough, but I don't think it would cook properly with less than this. I also used four whole onions; it turned out not to be overly onion-y as I first feared. I used baby portabella's for the mushroom. I really didn't think it was possible for something to be a real jambalaya without more tomatoes than this. I was wrong. Thanks for teaching me a great new jambalaya recipe and method! Originally was going to be made for ZWT5, but I ran out of time.

[*Parsley*]

Loved this! All the veggies make it both tasty and colorful. I agree that 1/2 cup of butter is plenty. I made this exactly as written, using 1lb of catfish. I'll be making this again. Thanx for sharing this!