Cajun ninja red beans and rice12/6/2023 Where is the roux, Tiana? As far as scandals went in 2016, it ranked pretty low overall, but for locals, it was a real tempest in a cast-iron pot. In it, Louisiana’s own Disney princess - a New Orleans chef at that! - prepares a gumbo … with whole wheat flour? Kale? Quinoa? Well, it was an abomination. Meanwhile, Disney was getting grief from Louisiana natives for posting a video recipe called “Tiana’s Healthy Gumbo” on the official Princess and the Frog page on Facebook. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something, and maybe one of those strangers from around the world might enjoy it. So instead, he uploaded the video to his Cajun Ninja page. It just wasn’t worth it, the ribbing he would receive. Most of his friends already knew how to cook gumbo. When he was finished, he was about to upload it to his personal profile when he got cold feet. When his sister introduced him to Snapchat, on a lark, he filmed himself cooking gumbo in six-second clips. He created a Facebook page.Īt first, he posted videos of whatever he found funny. He had money saved, and now that he no longer had to worry about offending corporate types, it was as good a time to get started as any. They took it as goofing off on company time.ĭerouen had always wanted to start a website. It was still new at the time, social media, and management hadn’t yet come to grips with the idea that people could have an online presence after hours and during the day on breaks. He had spent the previous seven years working for starched-shirt companies that frowned upon social media use by employees and associates. Three years ago, he was laid off from his job in the oil business. (The Outback job only lasted six months, though he met his future wife there, so it was time well spent.) The jobs taught him a new appreciation of food and forced him to learn how to really put himself out there, to go up to strangers of every walk of life, again and again, every single day, and introduce himself. The extent of his formal training includes having a mother who is a great cook working as a busboy - and later, a server - at Copeland’s in high school and even later working at Outback Steakhouse. “Like a good recipe, it happened by accident,” he says. Jason Derouen, Cajun Ninja, and family ORIGIN STORYĭerouen had no intention of being a cook on social media. Taken together, it’s who he is by birth and by training. The “Cajun” part is more obvious, from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns hat he wears, to the zydeco intro music before each show. That love of martial arts and teaching is where the “ninja” half of his cooking show gets its name. He learned that it feels good to teach, to explain, to demystify, to “pour knowledge into someone,” as he describes it. It was his job to help newer students learn techniques and forms. A lifelong student of taekwondo, he was made an assistant instructor at his dojang at the tender age of 11. So it’s been really cool to help people who were just like me.” “It’s because they didn’t know where to start. “I’m touching a lot of people who have struggled in the kitchen,” says Derouen, a Baton Rouge native, “and I know that feeling.” When he started Cajun Ninja, he was surprised by how many people in Louisiana didn’t know how to make a roux, or weren’t familiar with how to cook jambalaya - staple state recipes. And he’s serving up Southern fare, so you just know it’s good. He cooks and, look! It’s all coming together - just look at that! You can almost smell the kitchen through the screen. He knows what he is doing, and yet seems as happy as the viewer that the recipes are turning out as intended. Derouen cooks with a sort of placid exuberance. Each week he evokes the very earliest cooking shows of Emeril Lagasse, before he “kicked it up a notch” - before “Bam!” and adulatory studio audiences and superstardom. There’s a charming simplicity to Derouen’s show. You watch him cook and you say, “Wait - I could make that, too!” And then you do. They are filmed in his home kitchen and involve the sort of everyday hardware and ingredients that remove the intimidation factor from the recipes. The videos run the gamut from traditional New Orleans cuisine (red beans and rice) to first-order comfort food (baked macaroni and cheese). It’s become his trademark phrase, heard by hundreds of thousands around the globe on his Cajun Ninja cooking shows. “Piyahhh!” shouts YouTube sensation Jason Derouen, and recipe ingredients are suddenly chopped through the magic of video editing.
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