This Louisiana-inspired soup brings together the tastes and textures of two classic Cajun dishes – Dirty Rice and Red Beans and Rice – and combines them into a delicious and hearty soup. Using a pre-packaged dirty rice mix makes this a fairly easy dish to prepare, as you can let the rice cook directly in the soup. Most packaged dirty rice mixes call for ground beef, but traditional dirty rice generally involves cooking sausage along with chicken livers or chicken gizzards, which are used here. You could easily substitute a pound of diced boneless chicken breast, chicken thighs or chicken livers for the gizzards or use a Cajun-style link sausage such as Andouille or ground beef in place of the ground sausage. But it won’t be quite as “dirty!”
- 1 pound chicken gizzards, rinsed and diced fine (I used a food processor to chop them finely)
- 1 pound ground sausage
- 1 large onion, diced
- 2 stalks celery, diced
- 15-ounce can red beans, drained and rinsed thoroughly
- 8-ounce box dirty rice mix (Zatarain’s, Tony Chachere’s and Luzianne dirty rice mixes can be found at most grocery stores)
- 2 quarts beef broth
- Brown the gizzards and sausage in a large skillet over medium heat and drain fat, leaving about 1 teaspoon in the skillet
- Remove the meat and place into a Dutch oven or soup pot
- Add the onion and celery to the skillet and cook in the reserved grease for 5 to 7 minutes, until they are soft but not brown
- Drop the cooked veggies into the soup pot
- Dump in the beans and add the dirty rice mix to the soup pot
- Stir everything together
- Pour in the beef broth and bring the soup to a boil
- Reduce heat to simmer, cover and let cook for about 25 minutes – until rice is fluffy
- Taste for seasoning, adding salt and freshly cracked black pepper as desired
- A good splash of hot sauce is recommended
Looking for the perfect pot to cook up your next batch of soup? I recommend the Lodge Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven. It comes in 11 different colors and is an excellent value for the price.
Thanks for another great recipe! Your instructions are so clear and the step by step pictures are very helpful. A terrific and motivating site. You can really tell you are enjoying yourself and want others to experience the pleasure, too. Time for me to start cooking through your recipes, even if it means me moving outside of my comfort zone (chicken gizzards and anchovy paste). Keep up the good work!
Thanks for your comments! You don’t have to love – or even like – anchovies to incorporate them into recipes. A little goes a long way, and anchovies really add a tremendous amount of flavor without being up front in the mix.