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

think I'd forget about dessert, do you? No, because I'm going to be making a sweet and fruity

cranberry pineapple salad. So get in the kitchen, y'all, because 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 gonna 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 gonna spray our pan or our bowl. We're just going to toss it in there

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

we're going to top our casserole with potato chips. And I'm just going to 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. Mm. 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 gonna 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 casserole's 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 gonna add some cream of mushroom soup

And then I'm gonna 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. 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 gonna 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 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 going to do is I going to take some melted butter and I just going to pour it in the bag

and I'm going to 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 gonna 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. Ooh, 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. 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. All right, so that's all we have to do to that

All right, 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 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 knife around it, and then I'm going to just dunk it into a

bowl of warm water. And I'm going to take my bowl, center it up, flip it over

Now I'm going to take a juice can that I've cut both ends out 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 a 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

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. See this is what it will look like when we slice it

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 going to 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 lunch and 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