If I had to choose only one food to eat every day for the rest of my life, my choice would be simple: rice and beans. The easy meal is filling, comforting and so versatile.
Of course, as a food writer, I have a much more varied diet, but I still find myself falling back to the basics all the time. And whether it’s Mardi Gras season or I just want a little taste of the Cajun Bayou Food Trail, the boxed mixes from Zatarain’s are a great place to start.
While many families have their go-to recipes for jambalaya or gumbo, passed down from generation to generation, we do love a shortcut in this busy day and age. With that in mind, we wanted to see how the Big Easy’s own Zatarain’s rice mixes stacked up against each other.
For this test, we tasted:
- Black Beans and Rice
- Creamy Blackened Chicken
- Dirty Rice
- Gumbo
- Jambalaya
- Red Beans and Rice
To most fairly assess the mixes for themselves, we prepared the mixes following the package instructions and skipped any additions aside from the required water and a tablespoon of either olive oil or butter. Each dish had a cook time of about half an hour. Prenons du bons temps!
EMIKO FRANZEN for Taste of Home
6. Black Beans and Rice
Unfortunately, Zatarain’s Black Beans and Rice mix was our least favorite of the bunch. While the rice had an excellent flavor, we found the texture and flavor of the black beans to be so off-putting that it overpowered the rice and left behind an unpleasant aftertaste.
It’s difficult to cook black beans and rice in the same dish at the same time, which can leave the beans undercooked and the rice overcooked. That said, the package suggested adding a chopped tomato and a protein like smoked sausage or ham. That would go a long way in making this dish more palatable.
EMIKO FRANZEN for Taste of Home
5. Gumbo
The Zatarain’s Gumbo mix definitely needs the addition of a protein or two—the package suggests smoked sausage, seafood or chicken, as well as some okra—to balance out the extreme saltiness of this rice-and-roux mix.
Just out of the box, it’s difficult to get past the sodium content here and taste much of anything else. One box contains 6,000 milligrams of sodium, which is nearly three times the daily intake of sodium recommended by the FDA and the most sodium-packed of the six Zatarain’s rice mixes we tested.
EMIKO FRANZEN for Taste of Home
4. Red Beans and Rice
Zatarain’s Red Beans and Rice mix suffered from many of the same problems as its Black Beans counterpart. The rice turned out a bit gummy, while the red beans remained somewhat on the chewy side after cooking. The beans themselves had a more pleasant flavor that we found to be less overpowering.