365 Days of Slow Cooking and Pressure Cooking

Easy slow cooker and Instant Pot recipes for each day of the year

Jailhouse Casserole

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Jailhouse Casserole—seasoned rice with sausage, celery and onions. Make it fast in your Instant Pot and serve it as the main dish or a side dish.

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Jailhouse Casserole

Mix and match ingredients to make your own customized Jailhouse Casserole recipe. This is a recipe that allows you to have control of the flavors and combination of ingredients. And hopefully you won’t have to go to the store and can make it tonight with the ingredients you have on hand!

In case you’re wondering where the name for jailhouse rice came from there’s a funny story behind it. I adapted my own version of this recipe from South your Mouth’s recipe. Visit South your Mouth to read the story. Lucky for me I don’t typically have many mean or rude comments on 365 Days! You guys are all so nice!!!

Ingredients you’ll need to make Jailhouse Rice Casserole:

This is one of those recipes that you can get creative with! Here are some ideas on how to mix and match this recipe.

  • Sausage or ground meat: Try using Italian, hot or breakfast sausage. Don’t have sausage? Try using ground beef or turkey with extra seasonings stirred into it.
  • Broth: Chicken, beef or vegetable broth all work well. I like to use water and Better than Bouillon Chicken Base instead of broth. Better than Bouillon comes in all sorts of flavors.
  • Rice: For this recipe I love using parboiled/converted rice. Don’t confuse parboiled rice with pre-cooked or minute rice. Parboiled rice has been processed in its husk by soaking, steaming, and drying. As a result, all the nutrients from the husk are absorbed into the grain before it’s removed. The starch content alters in the process, making cooked parboiled rice less sticky than regular white rice. The rice kernels aren’t clumpy and glued together instead they are more separated. I bought the orange box of Uncle Ben’s converted rice. If you’d like to use another type of rice you totally can! Scroll below the recipe card below to see the green chart. It contains different types of rice and how long to cook them and how much liquid you’ll need.
  • Seasoning mix: To give your rice lots of flavor you can add your favorite seasoning mix. Some ideas are garlic salt, cajun seasoning or old bay seasoning. For homemade seasoning blend ideas visit 15 Best Seasoning Blends.
  • Creamy ingredient: The creamy ingredient is totally optional. You can leave it out if you prefer. I chose to add in 4 ounces of cream cheese. You can add in sour cream or a can of cream of mushroom, chicken or celery soup.

How to make Instant Pot Jailhouse Casserole:

  1. You’ll start this recipe by browning the meat and softening the veggies on the sauté setting. Turn your pot to sauté and when the display says HOT add in the sausage and break it up. I like to use the hamburger chopper tool* for this step. This tool also works well at mashing potatoes. Add in the onions and celery. I like to finely chop the celery and onions but if you like bigger chunks then you can do that instead. If there is excess grease drain it off. Sometimes I use a paper towel to sop up some of the grease by moving the meat to one side of the pan and placing a paper towel on the other side of the pan and moving it around with a spoon.
  2. Pour in your broth (or water and Better than Bouillon) and scrape bottom of pot so that nothing is sticking. This will help to prevent the burn error message. Use the proper amount of broth to rice ratio as noted in the green rice chart as listed below.
  3. Sprinkle in the rice and press with spoon to gently submerge. Don’t stir the rice. This will help to prevent the burn error message.
  4. Pressure cook the rice for 5 minutes (again use the right amount of time as listed in the green chart). Use a 10 minute natural pressure release.
  5. At this point you’ll want to taste test the rice and then add in your picked seasoning mix as needed. Some seasoning blends are stronger than others so use your judgment on how much to add in. Always start small and add more as needed. You can always add more but you can’t take it back after it has been added in!
  6. If you’re wanting a creamy rice then you can add in the cream cheese, sour cream or cream of soup at this time and let it heat through and melt. Remember this will affect the flavor of the rice as well so keep that in mind when you add in the seasoning mix.
  7. Serve the rice and enjoy! You can use this recipe as a side dish casserole type of food or you can serve it as the main dish.

What should I serve with Jailhouse Casserole?

Try serving the rice with steamed veggies. I like to buy the frozen veggies for sake of convenience and pop them into the microwave for 5 minutes. Another idea is to serve this rice with a green tossed salad and corn on the cob.

More Instant Pot Rice Recipes…

Instant Pot Blend of the Bayou

Instant Pot Chicken Bog

Instant Pot Fried Chicken Rice

Instant Pot Sausage Rice

Instant Pot Chili Cheese Rice

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Instant Pot Jailhouse Casserole

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

4.9 from 7 reviews

  • Author: 365 Days of Slow and Pressure Cooking
  • Prep Time: 15 minutes
  • Cook Time: 5 minutes (plus 10 minute NPR)
  • Total Time: 20 minutes
  • Yield: 6 servings 1x
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Description

A seasoned rice with sausage, celery and onions. Make it fast in your Instant Pot and serve it as the main dish or a side dish. 

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 pound ground sausage (hot, Italian, breakfast all work)
  • 1 1/2 cups finely diced onions
  • 2 large celery ribs, finely diced
  • 2 1/4 cups chicken broth (or vegetable or beef broth)
  • 1 1/2 cups parboiled/converted rice (or long grain white rice, brown rice, jasmine rice, basmati)
  • 1/2–1 tsp seasoning mix of your choice (cajun seasoning, garlic salt, old bay etc.)
  • Optional: 4 oz cream cheese (or 1 cup sour cream or 1 (10.75 oz) can cream of chicken soup)

Instructions

  1. Turn Instant Pot to the sauté setting. When the display says HOT add in the sausage and break it up*. Add in the onions and celery. Brown for about 5 minutes. Drain off any excess grease.
  2. Pour in the broth and scrape bottom of pot so that nothing is sticking. Turn off Instant Pot.
  3. Sprinkle in the rice and press with spoon to gently submerge. 
  4. Cover Instant Pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 5 minutes (if using parboiled, see note). When time is up let pot sit for 10 minutes and then move the valve to venting. Remove the lid and stir the rice well.
  5. Taste test and then if needed add your favorite seasoning mix to taste (about ½ to 1 teaspoon).
  6. To make the rice ultra creamy stir in the cream cheese until melted. 
  7. Serve and enjoy. 

Notes

Recipe adapted from South your Mouth

Serve as a side dish or the main dish. As a side this probably serves about 8 and as a main dish probably around 4 people. 

What is parboiled rice? Don’t confuse parboiled rice with pre-cooked or minute rice. Parboiled rice has been processed in its husk by soaking, steaming, and drying. As a result, all the nutrients from the husk are absorbed into the grain before it’s removed. The starch content alters in the process, making cooked parboiled rice less sticky than regular white rice. The rice kernels aren’t clumpy and glued together instead they are more separated. I usually buy Uncle Ben’s converted rice in the orange box*. 

If you want to use another type of rice, you can. Just scroll below to see the green rice chart to see liquid to rice ratios and cooking times. 

  • Category: Sausage
  • Method: Instant Pot

*Karen Petersen is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Comments

  1. Kim B. says

    This has been a regular at our house for several years now. Hubby loves it & the leftovers go up the road to his parents & they love it as well.
    If you haven’t tried this one, give it a try. It’s VERY versatile & you can change it up so many ways & it’s so EZ.
    Thanks again, Karen. You’ve made my live in the kitchen so much easier & our tastebuds love you!!

    Reply

  3. Sharon Schroeter says

    This is gr4eat! Unfortunately, I have trounle printing the recipe.–the ingredients & direct9ions print out fine, but the picture, pep time, cooktime, servings & calories don’t print out. I have to go back & put that info in manually.
    Thanks for your help.
    KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!
    Sharon

    Reply

  4. Christina says

    Wowza what a yummy, easily customizable meal. I subbed in ground beef so added some extra spices with that, also threw in diced green peppers with the onion and celery. Finished with Old Bay and cream of mushroom soup. I’ll double this next time because I just want more of it! Thanks for a great recipe.

    Reply

  5. Cheryl says

    If using brown rice measure 11/4 cups of the rice and increase the cook time to 22 minutes. Is that correct?

    Reply

  6. Ann Moore says

    I made this tonight. It was soooo good. I added green peppers with the onion and celery. Before I could add the cream of mushroom soup and spices, my son walked in and had to taste it. He loved it. After I added the soup and spices, he said it was better. I had to send him the recipe.

    This is so easy and quick, I can see me making this often.

    Thank you for this recipe!

    Reply

  8. Bek says

    I have everything I need to make this tonight…except for the celery, which is no great loss…I don’t care for celery. I’ll give it a bit of the flavor with some celery salt, though.

    Reply

  10. Kim B. says

    Hey, Karen! Can’t wait to try this one. Am going to do it just as you suggested because my hubby loves sausage. Then I’m gonna try it with some hamburger, beef broth & a can of cream of mushroom with garlic instead of the cream cheese, just to see what it’s like. Will come back with stars.
    Thanks SO much for ALL these EZ tried-and-true recipes.
    P.S. I don’t care WHAT you call them as long as you keep sharing. We love you!

    Reply

  13. Brenda says

    This recipe looks interesting. Why would you not add the seasonings to the IP before you pressure cook? Just curious.

    Reply

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