The Weeknight Kitchen · One-Pot Dump Dinner · Serves 4

Cajun Shrimp
& Sausage Rice

Name: Cajun Shrimp & Sausage Rice
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Cajun
Ingredients: 15 ml olive oil; 340 g smoked andouille sausage; 150 g onion; 150 g green bell pepper; 80 g celery; 9 g garlic; 1 tbsp Cajun/Creole seasoning; 200 g long-grain white rice; 1 can diced tomatoes; 360 ml low-sodium chicken or seafood stock; 454 g frozen raw shrimp; 30 g green onions; 10 g fresh parsley; Hot sauce, at the table

A smoky, one-pot Cajun rice dinner built on a bag of frozen shrimp and smoked sausage — the rice cooks with the trinity and tomatoes, then the shrimp go in frozen at the end. Instant Pot or stovetop.

~35 min total Instant Pot / stovetop method One pot cleanup

Spoon cost

Time ●●○○○ Some Doing

Instant PotGluten-Free

Servingsamounts scale to match

Units

Ingredients

Cook the rice and sausage first — add the shrimp frozen, at the very end. Shrimp cook in minutes and go rubbery under pressure, so they only go in once the rice is done; there's no need to thaw them. Give them just 4–6 minutes in the hot rice, until pink and curled into a loose C (a tight O means overcooked). One more thing for the Instant Pot: rinse the rice, and after you add it, pour the tomatoes on top and don't stir — keeping a layer of liquid on the bottom and the starchy rice off the metal is what dodges the dreaded Burn warning.

Method

Cook's notes

Buy raw, not pre-cooked shrimp. Raw frozen shrimp (21–30 count) cook right in the rice and stay juicy. If all you have is pre-cooked, stir them in off the heat at the very end just to warm through, 1–2 minutes, or they turn to rubber.

Rinse the rice. Rinsing off the surface starch keeps the grains separate and, in the Instant Pot, helps prevent sticking and the Burn warning.

Don't finish the shrimp on a high Sauté. Once the rice has drunk up the liquid, the bottom of the pot scorches fast on a high Sauté. Cook the shrimp in the residual heat instead — fluff and scrape the rice off the bottom, stir in a splash of stock or water, and rest the lid on top — reaching for Sauté on Low only if they need a nudge, stirring the whole time.

Go easy on the salt — it comes from three places. The seasoning, the smoked sausage, and the stock are all salty, so it adds up fast. Start with 1 tablespoon of Cajun seasoning (Tony Chachere's is especially salt-forward), use low-sodium stock, and don't add any table salt until you taste at the very end.

Want more spice without more salt? This is the real fix, because in the shaker the salt and the flavor are welded together — Tony's is about 85% salt by weight, so a tablespoon of it brings roughly 10 g of salt along with the spice, and there's no way to ask for one without the other (why that is). Use our Salt-Free Creole Seasoning instead (a scant ¾ tsp here — it's concentrated) and salt the pot yourself. Tony's own No Salt version works too. Failing either, add cayenne, black pepper, smoked paprika, and a few dashes of hot sauce at the end — all heat, no extra salt.

Sausage swaps: andouille brings the real smoky-spicy Cajun note, but any smoked sausage or kielbasa works; chicken andouille makes it lighter.

Serve with a wedge of skillet cornbread and plenty of hot sauce.

More frozen-shrimp dinners: the bright Garlic Butter Shrimp & Orzo, a festive Cajun Shrimp Boil, or the coconut Goan Shrimp Curry.

Easier, if you like

Bagged frozen trinity: many stores sell a frozen diced onion/pepper/celery "seasoning blend" — dump it straight in for a true no-chop version.
Pre-cooked shrimp make it even faster — thaw and stir in off the heat at the end for 1–2 minutes.

Gluten-free as written; check two labels

Gluten-free: naturally gluten-free — just confirm your smoked sausage and Cajun seasoning are GF (most are).

Lighter: use chicken andouille and brown rice (add liquid and time on the stovetop; the Instant Pot needs a longer pressure cook for brown rice).