Rouses_May-June-2018

the Eat Local issue

By day three of this, Derouen had had enough. He sat with his wife, Misty, and told her that he was done. It just wasn’t worth the sheer meanness of people. He was going to delete the whole page. He had tried. It wasn’t for him. He was out. And just when he was about to make Cajun Ninja vanish forever into the dark night, he got a positive comment. And another. And another. “Shares” on social media meander like the Mississippi River, branching off and coming back together. Sometimes those branches make rough, inhospitable waters, and sometimes they find spirited, friendly channels. The gumbo recipe was now in an amiable area of positive people on the Internet. “Wow,” said one, “this is awesome! I didn’t know how to make a roux!”Another: “I’m trying this tonight for dinner!” It gave Derouen perspective. “You know what?” he says. “I realized that anything you do, there’s gonna be someone who doesn’t like it.But if you don’t share your knowledge, the people who don’t like it will never know who you really are and what it’s about.” Today he embraces the ones who bring negativity to the discussion. They come at him and he responds professionally. When they really come at him (negative people are relentless), Derouen reminds them that he didn’t find their page. They found his .

ROLLING WITH IT Though his profile has grown, his process hasn’t changed much. On screen, the Cajun Ninja persona is the same as ever because it’s just who Derouen is. (“Most of what you see is the natural me in my natural state when I’m excited.”) Off screen, he still uses his iPhone camera to record his videos, though he no longer does it through Snapchat.Once he started making longer videos, he had to learn how to edit video on a laptop and piece clips together. He watched clips created by his friends and asked them to teach him how they did various tricks and techniques. He learned how to make transitions, how to add music and sound effects. Learning to make cooking videos is a lot like learning how to cook: “You just learn over time,” he says. “That’s the real beauty of doing all this, to me, is that I’ve gotten better in things that I never would have dabbled in had I not put myself out on a platform and run with it. It makes me wonder how many people out there could be great at something, but they’re afraid of messing up.” Derouen’s family is supportive of his newfound fame. “Misty understood that I’ve been holding back this feeling of entertainment for a long time. She knows it’s who I am. I love to make people smile, make people laugh, spreading positivity.” When the Cajun Ninja page took off, she was as surprised as he was, and has continued to help him reach his audience. The videos take all day to make. It requires quiet in the kitchen, so she keeps the kids entertained elsewhere. She helps with cleanup. (“She’s so OCD about cleaning — she’ll come back out and clean everything. I never expect that of her. She’s such great support.”) Today, Derouen runs Cajun Ninja Products LLC. He’s recognized in public. People ask to take selfies with him. “I’m so excited that they’re excited,” he says. “It seems like we’re sharing the same feeling.” People make his recipes and share pictures of the finished product. “It’s humbling, to be honest. Super humbling.” With the onset of crawfish season, shows centered around that ingredient are planned. His request list is long. More meet-and-greets are in the works. “It’s a life-changing thing for me. I don’t worry as much. I control my destiny at this point.”

As it turned out, maybe they did. The next morning, 11 people had shared the video. He was elated. Nobody shared his stuff. It was weird. It was wonderful. By lunch, 150 people had shared it. Was … was his clip going viral? It was certainly viral by his humble standards. That night it had been shared 600 times, and it was just a great day all around. Six hundred shares! The next morning over a million people had seen his video. His page follower count had skyrocketed. It was dizzying. It was great. It was terrifying. All at once, he had put himself out there for the public in a big way … and with it came negativity. People take gumbo personally. (Ask Tiana.) He had prepared a simple chicken and sausage gumbo. It used Rouses rotisserie chicken. It was delicious! Everyone who had ever eaten it or made it themselves loved it. But suddenly, people who had never made it — people who had their own way of doing things — trained their vainglorious ire on Derouen. “You don’t know what the heck you’re doing!” and “You’re bad at cooking!” and “ That’s not gumbo!” (Those were the polite versions.)

After that roller-coaster initial success, he decided to run with it. People wanted entertaining, step-by-step, first-person cooking, and he was going to serve it up. Egg rolls, jambalaya, pork chops, spaghetti. Soon, people weren’t waiting for him to cook something — they were making requests! “That was it from there,” he says. “Before that, I never really had any intention of doing this. It fell into my lap. But I enjoy cooking. I have a passion for it. I love how you can put something together through a process and then present it to someone, and they have it and say, ‘Man, this is so good.’ To cause that reaction — that warmth they felt when they took that first bite — makes it worth your labor. I love it,” he says.

Jason Derouen and family; Photo by Channing Candies

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY MAY | JUNE 2018