I Tried the One-Pot Jambalaya Potatoes Recipe Taking Social Media by Storm and It’s a Weeknight Dinner Home Run

An ideal weeknight dinner takes minimal time and effort to make, uses ingredients you already have on hand, and (of course) tastes amazing. And, for me, one-pot (and one-pan!) meals are a great example of that. So when I saw chef Candace Barclay’s Instagram Reel showcasing her recipe for one-pot jambalaya potatoes (inspired by chef China White), I had to try it.

I love a one-pot dish (because, hello, fewer dishes to clean) and cooking a lot of food at once so there’s enough to eat for lunch the next day and beyond. And no sooner than I closed out of Instagram, I went to my local grocery store to pick up key ingredients that I didn’t already have on hand, ordered some spices from Barclay’s website, and got started.

Get the recipe: One-Pot Jambalaya Potatoes

You’ll start by quartering and cutting the potatoes into quarter-inch-thick slices, then soaking them in ice water for half an hour. “Whenever you’re preparing potatoes homemade, you want to soak all of that starch off,” Barclay said in the reel. Drain the water, then add in her spice mixes: Hoodoo Creole, Garlic Galore, and Blazin’ Bull. Throw in some chopped bell peppers, sweet onion, and grapeseed (or avocado) oil and mix it all together. Barclay uses her hands, but I used a spatula and it worked just as well.

When the potatoes, bell peppers, and onions are evenly covered in seasoning, add them to a hot skillet with grapeseed oil and butter. Fry for a few minutes, then add some water to the pan and cover it to steam the veggies and help them cook faster. Remove the vegetables from the pan, then cook your proteins one by one. Brown the sausage and set it to the side, and repeat with the chicken and shrimp.

Once everything is cooked, add the vegetables back into the skillet over medium heat, sprinkle some cheese on top, then add the sausage, chicken, and shrimp. Sprinkle more cheese over everything for good measure, then cover the pan to let the cheese melt. Lastly, top the jambalaya potatoes with bacon bits and sliced green onions. Barclay said that you can also add some hot sauce “if you’re feeling a little bit fancy.”

First off, these potatoes are delicious. This doesn’t surprise me considering the ingredient list (potatoes, sausage, chicken, shrimp, cheese, and butter), so how could it not taste good? The smoky sausage, the gooey cheese, the sweet red bell peppers, the fresh crunch of the green onions, and the Creole seasoning all come together to create a comforting dish that’s packed with flavor. 

My one issue with the recipe is that even though it claims to be a one-pot recipe, I found it easier to cook my proteins in a separate pan. If you do this, it’s no longer a one-pot recipe, but it means that you don’t have to transfer the potatoes out of and back into the main pan. 

1. Don’t be afraid to use substitutions. While you can pick up Barclay’s spice blends from her online shop, you can also use spices you already have in your pantry to flavor this recipe. I used Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning and garlic powder in place of the Hoodoo Creole and Garlic Galore, as these spices weren’t in stock when I was buying ingredients.
2. Adjust the seasoning to your taste. Barclay’s recipe is packed with spices, but you can adjust the quantities to suit your taste and spice tolerance. When I made the recipe, I halved the seasoning quantities and it was still super flavorful.
3. Prep the proteins before you start cooking. Even before heating up a skillet, I prepped all my proteins so that I wouldn’t have to worry about them while the potatoes were cooking. I sliced the sausage, rinsed and seasoned the shrimp, and cut the chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces. If you don’t want to get raw chicken juice all over your cutting board, use a pair of kitchen shears to cut the chicken instead.
4. You’re gonna need a bigger pan. This recipe yields a whole lot of food. While I was initially planning on using my trusty cast iron skillet, once I saw how much room the sliced potatoes took up, I decided to use my Always Pan. Even with the larger and deeper pan, the lid just barely closed once everything was layered in. If you have a smaller household, halve the recipe, invite people over, or prepare to have lots of leftovers.