Casserole Luncheon

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen. You know down here in the South, we just love us a casserole

They're simple and they taste great. So today, I want to start my menu off by making a hot and

steamy chicken salad casserole. And then I'm going to be going on to one of my favorites

a cheesy broccoli casserole that I think you're going to just love. And to go for these dishes

I'm making a crispy herb garlic bread that's just perfect for any casserole. And you don't

You don't think I'd forget about dessert, do you? No, cause I'm gonna be making

a sweet and fruity cranberry pineapple salad. So get in the kitchen y'all

cause we're going casserole crazy today. Oh, no, there's just, to me, nothing like make-ahead casseroles

They save so much time, so much energy, and you can put so many different things in your casseroles

that you can have like a one-pot meal, which is just great

So I'm going to show you all one of my favorite recipes. It's called a hot chicken salad

All we're going to do is get some white meat that's been poached

You can bake it in the oven as long as you have skinless breast meat

And these have been poached. And I'm just going to cube these up into bite-sized pieces

just like this. And this is great to make ahead, put in the refrigerator

and then when you come home, throw it in the oven, and you've got dinner ready

All right, now we've got our chicken diced up. I'm just going to throw it in the bowl

We're going to start with some mayonnaise because this is chicken salad

and you can't make chicken salad without mayonnaise. If you're not a real big mayonnaise fan, you could use a yogurt

All right, I'm going to add two tablespoons of fresh squeezed lemon juice, a half a cup of slivered almonds

and these are going to make this casserole have a crunch. And we've got a cup of diced celery

So you can see I'm putting this together very, very much like a cold chicken salad that you would eat

but since this is going in the oven and going to come out hot

I don't think we can have a hot chicken salad without maybe a cup of cheese

And I'm using a white sharp cheddar. And that's all we do to put this casserole together

All right. I'm going to spray our pan or our bowl. We're just gonna toss it in there

Isn't that pretty? Alright, now for America's favorite snack food, maybe besides ice cream

We're gonna top our casserole with potato chips. And I'm just gonna put these into

a resealable plastic bag. and give them a crunch and finish it off with a rolling pin

So now you know this casserole's gonna be good. Mmm. So we're gonna have the crunch from the chip

We're gonna have the crunch from the almonds. All right, so see how pretty this casserole is

So it's going into a preheated 350-degree oven. We're going to bake it for about 20 minutes or until it's hot and bubbly

And because my family is such big eaters and the magic of TV

I've got another one ready in this other oven that we're going to be able to pull out right now and taste

Ooh, that oven's hot. Mmm, that looks so good. Can you see it bubbling, y'all

I can't wait for y'all to try this recipe. Like I said this casserole doesn need a whole bunch But I think I just going to put a few tomatoes This will make just a nice light dish

It smells out of this world. And this is one of those dishes even the children will like

But you just can't get any better than that. Mmm! you're not going to believe what those potato chips do to that casserole, y'all

And when we come back, we're going to keep rolling on with more casseroles

I've got my broccoli casserole recipe I want to share with y'all and a wonderful sourdough garlic herb bread

It's going to go perfect with your casseroles. So I'll see y'all back in a minute

You know, I don't know of anybody that doesn't just love a good bread

And this bread is good on its own, but we're fixing to make it even better

And I'm just going to put it on our baking sheet. And when you bring this to the table, you're going to find that people just snatch and grab

and it's going to be gone because it's good bread made even better

All right, so on this bacon dish, we have very good bread

Now we're fixing to make it better. I'm going to start by brushing it with an extra virgin olive oil

and this is going to make it nice and crisp, and it's going to also cause our herbs to stick to it

Now you can use any kind of bread. This is sourdough bread

All right, we've got those brushed. And now I'm going to sprinkle them with just a little garlic salt

Going to give it a nice, nice little kick. All right. Next up, we're going to put some herbs on it

And I'm going to use equal parts of each. And I'm going to start with a chive, a dried chive, and dried parsley, an equal part of dried cherubil, and then an equal part of dried tarragon

And I'm just going to mix those together. The smell is very, very strong

Okay. So we're just going to sprinkle our bread with our herbs

So, we've taken what a few minutes ago was just an ordinary bread, and we've turned it

into an extraordinary bread. So I've got our oven preheated to 350 degrees

All right, so we're putting this in the oven for 10 minutes, and that's about how long it's

going to take for me to put our broccoli casserole together. I'm starting with two 10-ounce boxes of frozen chopped broccoli

I've thrown it into the microwave. I've heated it up, thawed it out, and drained it

And like a lot of casseroles down south, this one starts out with mayonnaise

So we're going to add a cup of mayonnaise. Oh, and Garty loves mayonnaise too, don't you

All right, and then we're going to add some cream of mushroom soup. And then I'm going to add some cheese

The beauty of this is you can make it ahead of time. And then it's ready for us to just bowl up and stick in the oven and bake

But before we do that, I'm gonna beat up a couple of eggs and throw it over into our casserole dish

This is gonna make the casserole kind of puff up and kind of set up when it bakes

And that's it. If you would like, you could add some salt and pepper

or our house seasoning, all those good flavors. All right. What we're going to do is just start

by crushing up our crackers. You know, sometimes I doubt the recipes

that I select to do on my show, because I think, well, maybe they're too simple, too honest

So I'm always thrilled to know that y'all, too, I love the basic honest food

and I'm not embarrassed by this dish, and it's delicious, and I think you're gonna love it too

But I do wanna show you a quick trick about buttering your crackers What I gonna do is I gonna take some melted butter and I just gonna pour it in the bag

and I'm gonna do it like this. So everybody in there gets some butter

And that's much, much easier than standing up there trying to drizzle it evenly

The thing I love about this casserole is I can make it ahead of time

And, of course, you put it in the refrigerator and the flavors have a chance to marry and

they just make some taste better. But we're not going to do that today

We're not going to let them marry and have fun. We're just going to put them straight in the oven

I'm going to put this in a preheated 350-degree oven. I'm going to let it bake for about 30 minutes

And then let's come over here and check on our herb bread

It's been about 10 minutes. I'm just going to come over here with it

Doesn't this bread look good? It's going to go great with everything that I'm serving today

Mmm. I love a good bread. There's nothing better. Will y'all come over to the refrigerator with me

Because I want to show you something. It's a dish that I get teased about all the time by Jamie and Bobby and my niece, Kari

This is a cranberry pineapple jiggly salad. You're going to love this salad

So y'all don't go anywhere. Because I'm going to show you how to do this in just a couple of minutes

All right, we're back and our casserole's ready. Ooh, and the smell of broccoli is just really, really strong

Oh, and it's hot and just bubbling. You know, it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without this casserole on the table

And it's so easy to make. Mmm. It's so good

All right. Next up, I think you're going to love this one. This one's a great holiday salad

I'm going to start with two small three-ounce packages of a raspberry gelatin

And then I'm going to add, to make sure this holds together real good

I'm going to add about a half an envelope of plain gelatin

All right, now I'm going to take a cup of boiling water. and pour that over in our gelatin

And I'm just going to stir this up until it dissolves, which only takes a minute

Now to this, I'm going to add a half a cup of cold water. I'm going to add one 8-ounce package of crushed pineapple along with its juice

It's going to give it a nice pineapple-y flavor. All right, and to this, I'm going to add one can of whole berry cranberry sauce

Now, this is not the jelly type that you slice. You can see it's whole berries

So we're just going to dump that in there, and then we're going to add some chopped walnuts

and this is about a fourth of a cup. Alright, so that's all we have to do to that

Alright, I don't have a pretty mold, but that's not a problem

I'm just going to take a brown bowl, and I'm just going to pour it into our grease bowl

and put this in the refrigerator until it's nice and set. So in it goes

And out comes another one. All right. There's so many different angles that you can go with your gelatin salad

And I'm going to show you my surprise center. All right, now I'm going to start with an eight-ounce package of cream cheese

And I going to sweeten it up a little bit by adding a little powdered sugar to it

All right, now I'm going to add a couple of dollops of sweetened whipped cream

just enough to kind of smooth out that cream cheese. Next, I'm just going to fold in some nuts. There, and we've got our little surprise center

ready. All right, I'm going to take our jiggly salad over here. I'm just going to run the

and then I'm gonna just dunk it into a bowl of warm water

And I'm gonna take my bowl, center it up, flip it over

Now I'm gonna take a juice can that I've cut both ends out of

side of. And I'm going to come in here. So if you don't want to have to worry about struggling

with that, you can bring your salad out a little earlier than I did. All right, now

I'm just going to slip that out. All right, and you can see how pretty that is. I've made

center. It's almost like I've molded this in a bundt pan. So now I'm just going to

take my cream cheese and I'm going to fill up that hole with the cream cheese

And I have to tell you there's just nothing better than cream cheese and

cranberries. So this is a couple of different ways that you can serve your salad and I'm

sure you probably have some wonderful ideas of your own but I have to say this is one

of my favorites because like I said when I slice it I'm going to get me some wonderful

wonderful cream cheese with it. Mmm. See, this is what it'll look like when we slice it

Mmm. One of my favorite flavor combinations. When we come back, I've got some tips for you

for putting together casseroles with leftover ingredients. So you're gonna love these tips so y'all don't go anywhere

And I'll see you back in a minute. Let's talk about leftovers for a minute

You know, you can use as little as five ingredients to put together a fresh new casserole

Any vegetable leftover from the night before, and say you've got some plushin' meat from the deli

If you've got mayonnaise in your pantry and you've got soup, you can whip together a quick and easy casserole with most all leftovers

And the toppings, you can go anywhere from a bread crumb to onion rings to potato chips to Parmesan cheese to crushed croutons to cracker crumbs

As long as you've got just a couple of main ingredients in your pantry, like we all do

you can put together, redress, and have a fabulous meal in minutes

And the hubby's going to love it when you walk out the door and say, Oh, honey, I'm going to a movie with the girls

Dinner's in the fridge. He's going to love it. You know, casseroles are kind of like mother-in-laws

They kind of get a bad rap sometimes. But casseroles, just like mother-in-laws, when you got a good one, they're worth their weight in gold

They're like jewels. And I think that's the way you're going to feel about these casseroles that I have for you today

The broccoli casserole is rich in flavor. And the hot chicken salad is yummy

And the raspberry pineapple jiggly salad is so good. And the garlic herb bread is delicious with anything that you want to serve

Make sure you try them because if you're anything like me, I think that you're going to like the flavors and the ease

that these dishes are going to bring to your house. So until next time, America, I send y'all love and best dishes

casserole dishes, from my kitchen to yours. Thank you