Boat Day

Ahoy there, landlubbers! I'm Paula Deen, and today we're going boating on the beautiful South Georgia Intercoastal Waterway

I'm so thrilled because where there's boating, there's a picnicking. So first I'll show you how to make salty boiled peanuts. You can eat them hot or eat them cold

And next in my basket, pineapple and cheese bread that your skipper will want to nibble on all day

Then the perfect southern fried chicken you'll ever want to eat. And finally, this quick and easy Asian-style salad with just the right crunch

So batten the hatches and join me and my captain for a day on the water

Hey, y'all

Today's show is going to be action-packed, and we're running here and running there

and I've got a great surprise for you. Probably the best thing about living in Savannah

is we're located on the Atlantic Ocean, and that allows us to do one of the neatest things

in the whole world, and that's deep sea fishing. And I only go out with one captain

and that's Captain Judy. She can put me on the fish every time

I tell you, if you don't catch a fish, you know they're dead, because she's gonna find them

But Captain Judy won't let me on that boat if I don't have two things

and that's the Lady and Son's fried chicken and Becky Polk's peanuts. So we're going to get them

Becky and I have been big buddies for years, and I always go to her when I buy my fresh produce

And the best part is that she always has a batch of boiled peanuts ready for me to snack on while I'm shopping

Becky! Hey, Paula. Hey, girl. What are you doing? How are you doing, sweetie

I'm doing good. I am fixing to go out on the boat with Captain Judy

there's two things that I have to have before she lets me on the boat

You know what the first one is. I know what it is. It's fried chicken. But the second one is your boiled peanuts

I've got those. This is this year's green peanut crop. What kind are they

They're valentias, the little red skins. That's the most popular. Most people like that. That's your favorite

That's my favorite. Paula, how many of these did you want to take? What do you think about five pounds, Becky

Probably five pounds. That'll last a day on the boat, won't it? Yeah. Yeah. Because hopefully we're going to be so busy fishing

Think that's enough? I don't know. How about another scoop right now in there

One more scoop. Yeah, because I've got a pretty big pot. Now, we've got some already cooked

You want to take some of those? Oh, my gracious. You can eat those while these are cooking. You know I can't resist that often

Okay. Here, Paula. This is the peanuts right out of the pot

I mean, they're still steaming, aren't they? How are they? Tell me how we did

Nobody cooks a peanut like Becky Polk. Have fun. Thank you so much, darling

I wish you could go with me. I wish I could, too. I got to stay here and sell peanuts

There you go. Hey

We're getting those boiled peanuts ready for our boat trip. And boiled peanuts are so simple

You start with a green peanut, which we have, and we're gonna really, really salt our water

When you think you've got it too salty, it's probably just perfect. So we're gonna just dump these peanuts in there

and let them cook away while we're getting the rest of our things ready

And you want your peanuts covered in water. And put the lid on and let them cook for

gosh, you can start testing them at the end of an hour. But I usually will cook mine for two to three hours

because we like ours nice and soft. Now I'm going to show you something that's simple as pie

We're going to make a pineapple bread that is so good with the fried chicken

that we're going to be doing in a little while. And this is just self-rising flour

We're going to sift. We're going to stir our sugar in. All right, we're going to break two eggs

and beat them up. We're going to add our pineapple, along with its syrup, two tablespoons of oil

Just mix that up together. We're going to do about a half a teaspoon of pineapple extract

And we're going to take a half a cup of just a regular grated cheddar cheese

And we going to toss that into the flour and sugar mixture along with about a half a cup of walnuts So we got all of our dry ingredients now and we just gonna stir our wet into our dry

Now, if it feels a little dry to you, you can just add a little bit more pineapple juice

And you see we've got a fairly thick batter here, and we're gonna put this into a prepared pan

And we're just going to dump that batter into our loaf pan

and we're going to bake this in a 350-degree preheated oven. And we're going to be eating like crazy when we finally get on that boat

I told Captain Judy, when I'm out there with her 40 miles out in that Atlantic Ocean

you can't see land and that boat's rocking and Captain Alley is baiting your hook

and Motown is just blaring through the speakers. and I'm pulling up fish just as quick as I can drop my hook

I'm in heaven. I'm in heaven. So I can't hardly wait. I just can't hardly sleep the night before I know I'm going out with the captain

And while that's cooking, I'm going to give my peanuts a quick stir

Now this morning, I whipped up another loaf of pineapple bread, and it's cooling right over here

Our bread is totally cooled. I had the nicest breeze this morning in my kitchen door

and it's totally chilled, and we're ready to taste it. So come on over

Look. What a nice bread. Oh, I can't hardly wait to sample this

It's so, so good. And next, I'm going to show you my passport to getting on Captain Judy's boat, the world

famous Lady and Sons Fried Chicken. So y'all stick around. Hi, I'm adding just a little bit more water to our peanuts

These don't need much attention, but you do want to turn around and just check your pot

because your water will evaporate. And you want to stir them so that every one of those peanuts

are going to have their turn down there in that pot of salty water

But they're just doing great. So we're just going to let them continue to cook

And now for the Lady and Son's famous fried chicken recipe. Naturally, you always want to start with a nice, clean chicken

My grandmother Paul always taught me to season my chicken earlier in the day

and put it in the refrigerator. So I've already started on this, and I'm going to take this chicken right here, and this is just the salt, the pepper, and the garlic, and this is a good seasoning salt right here

And don't be shy. So I'm going to take our chicken and put it in a wet bath, which is eggs, a little water

This is one of the ways that my grandmother fried chicken. She actually had a couple of ways

But when we started frying, we just found that it needed a little kick, a little something extra

And it didn't take us long to find that extra. And that's hot sauce

This is Texas Pete hot sauce. You can use any good hot sauce, any kind of Lusian hot sauce

And don't be shy with it either. We're going to probably wind up with about a half a cup

It's going to be nice and orange. Look at that bottle and you'll see how much hot sauce I've used

So don't be afraid that you're going to burn your family up

because you're really not. That hot sauce will give it a nice flavor

but the heat will actually cook out. There's a story that I've heard since I was a very little girl

that my grandmother was in the restaurant business. She made my grandfather his first dollar with her good cooking

And it was located on U.S. 19, and, of course, back in the 50s

to get anywhere, you had to get on U.S. 19. So we got a lot of visitors there at the

restaurant, and one day this man came in to eat, and he had a goatee

a white goatee, had a little cane, and his name, as we found out later

was Colonel Sanders. Now, I don't know if he was out there scouting my grandma's chicken

or not, but his This chicken reminded me very, very much of my grandmother's because another way that

she cooked it, and she cooked it that way very often, she would put the pot on the stove

get the grease hot, fry it, then pour some of the grease off and cover it with a lid

so that she had this wonderful steamed soft chicken, which we all know is the way Colonel

Sanders chicken started out And when you frying your chicken remember to start with your dark meat because those are the pieces that contain all the blood from the chicken So they take longer to cook

And let's go over here and check our temperature. And we're at about 375 now, and I like to fry it on 350, but by the time we add our chicken

the coldness from the chicken is gonna drop our temperature, so I think we're totally safe

And as I've told you before, I only use peanut oil, which has a high resistance to burning

So we're gonna be fine. So we're gonna start now with our dark pieces of chicken, which are your legs and your thighs

We're on our way, kiddos. One of my favorite jobs at the restaurant is frying chicken

Somebody came in the other day and I ran out to speak to them and I had my apron on

and I had flour on my face and they said, Paula, do you actually still work in the kitchen

And I said, well, you know, I just can't stay away from that chicken pot

I love frying chicken. So see, we're already down to about 340 degrees now

So we're right on target with our temperature. So we're going to cook our dark meat for about 14 to 15 minutes

and our white meat will probably cook 9 to 10 minutes. It really depends on the size of your chicken though

Oh, look how beautiful, guys. You'll know when your chicken is done when it begins to float

And you can see ours is all still at the bottom right now. So we know that the time hadn't passed and our chicken is not done

But it's starting to get that beautiful brown color that comes from all of our seasonings

and that great hot sauce. We've got perfect fried chicken. You can see how the wetness of the eggs and the hot sauce and the water

made that flour stick to our chicken so nice. Nice and crispy

I think this fried chicken's gonna get me on that boat today. There's only one thing missing now from this meal

and that's my Chinese salad. And that's what we're gonna be doing next

So you stick around. Our boiled peanuts are rocking right along nicely

And in a few minutes, I'm going to start sampling them to see if they're soft enough

But in the meantime, I'm going to make our Chinese salad. And, you know, even for boat day, I like to have a balanced meal

Now we're going to have a nice green vegetable, because I like to have something on the boat for everybody

We're starting with just a ramen noodle, and we're going to crush them up

and we're going to use two packs. And inside you will find a little oriental seasoning pack

that we're going to put over here to the side, and we're going to use that in a few minutes in the dressing

All right, we've about got these broken up. And we're going to add to them just sliced almonds

And one of my favorites, sesame seeds. And we're gonna just run this into the broiler

We're not gonna bake it, but we're gonna broil it. And you'll have to be very, very careful

because this requires attention from you because this can burn easily using the above heat element

of your stove. So we're just gonna pop that in the oven

And this will only take a couple of minutes. And while those are broiling, I'm going to come over here

Now, in the salad today, I'm using Napa cabbage, and you just want to gently tear it

Any of your cabbages or your lettuce, anything from those families, you never want to twist them and bruise them

You want to very gently tear them. Now, at this point, I would have my cabbage

and I'll have my ramen noodles along with the sesame seeds and the almonds

I would package it up for the boat separately. And when we get on the boat, right before we're ready to serve lunch

I would toss it all together. But today I want to show you all the finished product

so I'm going to do it all the way. Now, our dressing is very, very simple

It's just vegetable oil, white vinegar, about a half a teaspoon of salt, sugar, and you can see that these components are going

to make like a marinade. You see there's no mayonnaise in it. And those little oriental

seasoning packs that came in your ramen noodles we going to toss into our liquid We I just gonna seal our jar up and give it a shake And just to make sure that my seal is good I going to cover it with a rag

So if it's leaking, I won't get it all over me. But you can see what the seasoning pack, how it's changing the color

I have our noodles and almonds that I would pack separately. And to complete our salad, I'm going to just snip up some green onions or spring onions

or some people even call them scallions, I think. And kitchen scissors make a great way to cut up your onions

But I can tell y'all one thing. All is truly right with the world today

The sun's shining, the dogs are barking, I've got fried chicken, and I'm going fishing

And you can see that didn't take but about two minutes for our noodles

Now that they've crisp up in the oven, I'm going to just kind of break them up a little bit more

And we're almost there. This is going to be so nice

You're going to have the crispness from the nuts and the noodles

and it just makes a wonderful combination. Mmm. Smells delicious

Looks like a caramel sauce, doesn't it? All right, that takes care of a salad

and I'm going to step over here and taste one of these peanuts, and hopefully they're very, very close to being ready

They're taking on a different color. You can see that they're not the same color as when we started

Let's pop it open and see what we've got. Oh, if it's not right

ready yet, it's very, very close. They're not quite ready. They've still got a little crunch to them

and you want your boiled peanuts soft, but those are very, very close

By the time I get through pulling everything together and get ready to get on the boat, they'll be ready

So y'all stick around. Our peanuts are ready now, so I'm just going to drain these in a colander

And as I was telling you earlier, when I went to put the peanuts on

had I missed with the salt, I would just cut the stove off, add more salt

put the lid on, and let them soak until they had reached their peakness in saltiness

Now, if I had put too much, all I would do was drain that water off, cover them with fresh water, and let them sit

So it's very easy to correct if you miss when they're just piping hot

They're delicious. They're good and salty, just the way I like a boiled peanut

And as I was telling y'all earlier, I don't use anything but peanut oil for my chicken

But that doesn't mean that you have to do the same thing. And peanut oil is a little bit more pricier than a corn, a vegetable, or even a solid shortening

And you can use any of those. Some people are allergic to peanuts, so you'll want to shy away from the peanut oil for that reason

And in making our salad, you'll want to be very, very careful when you're browning your seeds

because if you get them too brown, it'll make them bitter and it will just ruin your salad

So be very, very careful when you're toasting them. And these are just right for our salad

Alright, at last I have everything ready for our fishing trip. I have our boiled peanuts, pineapple cheese bread, our Chinese salad, and the treasured

fried chicken. And we're ready to go! Fishing that is! I can't wait to share my chicken and peanuts with Captain Judy

I know we're going to have so much fun on our boat today. Hey, Captain

Hey, Paula! How are you doing? Fine, how are you doing? Before you get on board

I hope you've got your fried chicken. You know I got it, baby. Oh, man, I can't wait. I wouldn't even walk towards this boat without fried chicken

You know better, too, don't you? How are you? Fine, how are you

I'm so glad that you could come today. Oh, God, you know how I feel about getting on your boat

Oh, let me have that. You're the only captain I'd go with. Oh, and it smells good

Doesn't it smell yummy? Mmm, it's still warm. Captain Judy and I had such fun today laughing and eating and fishing

And if y'all are ever in Savannah, maybe you can give her a call and go too. So as always, America, best dishes from my picnic basket to yours