Cooking a Cajun dish for in-;aws. What is a good side dish?

So, I’m making the Cajun dish of Red Beans & Rice (also consists of andouille sausage, ground beef, stewed tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, & mushrooms etc).

I’m nervous because what if someone doesn’t like mushrooms or something. So, I want to have good side dishes. I’ve thought about a salad, bread, ribs, or something with shrimp.

Help..

ps I want to impress my ever so lovely mother-in-law

OK… let me clear something up… Red beans and rice is NOT a side dish in southern Cajun Louisiana. It is traditionally known as the Monday meal. This stems way back, before electricity, when washing was done on Mondays and took an entire day to do, and a meal had to be cook that didn’t require a lot of tending to… thus Red Beans were made.

Now to your dish. I have had beans with Sasuage, and with ground beef (make sure you drain the ground beef really well, or use ground chuck), and I have had the beans with both combined. I like it either way, but the majority of the people like it with sasuage only. Don’t over do it with the tomatoes, be very light with them, and I would leave out the mushrooms completely. But I guess that is preference. The secret to good beans is to cook them slow, and as taught by my grandmother, take out about 2 cups when they are done, and blend that to a puree and put it back into the pot.. it will make your beans creamier. Also, I never, ever cook my beans with out a little parsley. You can use fresh or dried. Oh and … if you are using fresh beans, not canned, make sure you pre-soak them for about 4 hours, drain the water, put new water, and boil them for about 20 minutes, rinse and put fresh water, one cooking spoon of vegetable oil, all your other ingredients and cook away! (If you decide to use ground beef, pre-cook it to get rid of some of the fat, just browning it a little will do the trick). And of course, rice on the side.

Toss up a good salad… we do have regular salad in cajun country, don’t do the shrimp, that is a totally different meal in itself! And bake up a good corn bread.

Since you have sasuage and/or ground beef in your beans, don’t feel like you need a meat dish to go along with it. But my grandmother always had a pork roast on Sunday with her beans, just because she served the entire family, and of course, it was always a wonderful hit!

My mouth is watering!

Your dinner will be a hit!

Good Luck