Comfort Food

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen

Y'all grab a blanket and get cozy because today is all about comfort food

And I'm gonna start with a creamy cheddar soup and then a hot gumbo

and then last but not least, a shrimp and wild rice casserole

I think these dishes are sure to make you smile, but make sure you save room

because it's a caramel apple cheesecake for dessert. Today's show is all about comfort food

Let me tell you what my definition of comfort food is. It has to taste good, has to be rich in flavor

but you know I think more than anything, it's all about who prepared this food for you

or who you ate it with or what was going on in your life

But I'm going to start today with a nice hearty cheese soup

And you know this soup does bring back all those memories of my mother trying to comfort me and make me feel better

So I've started with three tablespoons of butter. The dogs are snoring

I'm going to add a small diced onion and diced pimentas. So this is going to have a real pretty color

Now I'm going to add some flour to our onions and our pimentas

and this is gonna make our tightening, kinda like a roux. All right, now I'm gonna add some chicken stock

and this can be canned or homemade. All right, and then I'm gonna add some cream

All right, I'm gonna put that on low and cover it and let it thicken up

And while that's getting tight, I'm gonna move over here and make a casserole

with a couple of tablespoons of butter. Before it's over, I'm gonna have that whole stick gone

I promise y'all. Two tablespoons of butter. And over here, we're gonna saute our onions

and our bell peppers. All right, and in goes our onions. And I've got some shrimp that's been peeled and deveined

and I'm going to drop these in our boiling water. And we're going to cook these just for a couple of minutes

Rini's just snoring up a storm. All right, I'm going to let those cook for a few minutes

And I'm just going to bake mine in a glass dish because we're eating this here at the house today

The shrimp are ready. So I'm just going to move them over here to this bowl

Oh, and those smell so good. All right. Now we're going to take our shrimp

and we're going to add our bell pepper and onions to it. And then we're going to take our long grain

and wild rice that we've cooked. and just toss this all together

Gonna give it a mix. Now I'm gonna add a can of cream of mushroom soup

That's gonna be our binder. And then I'm gonna add a sharp grated cheddar

And then all we have to do is pour this into our bowl, and we're gonna bake this in a preheated 325 degree oven

for 20 to 30 minutes or until it's hot and bubbly. So you'll wanna just keep an eye on it

I love that rice and cream of mushroom soup makes any rice so good

So that's ready to go in the oven. All right, this is ready now

I'm gonna put it in a preheated 325 degree oven. Gonna bake it for 20 to 30 minutes

until it's hot and bubbly. In it goes, and we'll add this cheese

at the last minute of cooking. Okay, so let's move back to that wonderful soup

Oh, and look at the pretty color. All right, now I'm going to add some cheese

because after all, it is cheese soup, and I using a nice sharp cheddar Now I going to put just a little bit of cayenne in it not too much

And it's going to give it a little bite. All right, now I'm going to add some green onions

And I'm going to save some of those to garnish my soup with. There's several soups that I make that you can do in almost five to ten minutes

And then I've got soups that I love, like my vegetable beef soup

It probably takes me three hours to make. But this is one of those wonderful, hearty, comforting soups

that is one of those five-minute deals. Look how pretty. Mmm. How pretty is that

And you saw how quickly I got that made. That and a piece of bread, a spoon and a set of lips

That's about all you need. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm

I love the bread dunked in it. I think this is one of those dishes that your children are just gonna love

I gotta run, but when we come back, I'm gonna be making the king of comfort food for Louisiana. Gumbo

All right, as promised, y'all, I've got the shrimp and wild rice casserole ready

and I'm just gonna get me a little taste. Look at the steam coming off of it

Oh, my gracious. There's just something about rice in Savannah. We are tremendous rice eaters

I don't know if it's because they actually grew rice down there in Savannah

Mmm, it's really hot. And so good

This is one of those perfect dishes. If you go into a covered dish supper

I promise that everybody will want the recipe for that one. But right now, let's move on to a food that I could probably talk about all day long, and that's gumbo

Now, I'm going to start off with boneless, skinless chicken breast, and I'm just going to season them up

And I've added a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to my skillet

Now, we're just going to brown off these breasts. Y'all, excuse me, I've got to wash my hands

You want to be very, very careful when you're cooking poultry and chicken

You want to make sure you wash your hands real well, or if you've had them on a surface, that you clean that surface well

And you can do that by adding a tablespoon of bleach to about a gallon of water

and that'll clean up your surfaces and kill all the germs. But like I said, chicken is one of those things that you really want to be careful with

that you don't cross-contaminate. Okay, now I've just turned our chicken, and you don't have to cook this completely done

In fact, while this side's browning, I'm going to go back to my shrimp and rice. So good

Because we're going to be cutting this up, and we're going to be cooking it some more. So it doesn't have to be completely done

All right, and now I'm going to add a smoked sausage, and we're just going to saute and cook that off just for a minute

You can make gumbo any way you please as far as the ingredients you put in it

And I think this is plenty good enough. Just going to pile this over here on our chicken so we can get started on our roux

If you don't have time to make roux, you can buy it in the jar

but I sure do like making my own. But it can take a few minutes

All right, I'm going to put a couple of tablespoons of margarine and a little flour

I think I'm going to change to a wooden spoon. That metal spoon's making a lot of racket

Roo is one of those things that you don't want to walk off from while you're cooking it

because if you burn it or scorch it, it's just no good

So you want to give it your complete and undivided attention. All right but we got our roux the right color All right now I going to add some onions In fact that about one nice size onion And I going to add some fresh chopped garlic

And we're going to give this a stir in our roux. All right, now I'm going to add the bell pepper

And the one thing that gumbo has in common is the trinity

You cannot make a gumbo without the onions, the bell pepper, and the celery, which is called trinity

All right, so we're just going to saute those off and just pull out the juices and the flavors

from those vegetables. These are starting to soften up a little bit, so I'm going to

add a little Worcestershire sauce, and a little salt, and a little pepper. All right, now

Now last, I'm gonna add some parsley. I'm gonna add stems and all, and throw it over in there

so we'll have nice big pieces of greenery in there. I've got to leave for a minute

and when we come back and finish up the gumbo, we're gonna be making a caramel apple cheesecake

So y'all don't go anywhere. It's just getting to feeling better and better

All right, hey, welcome back, y'all

All right, our roux looks beautiful. And now I'm going to add our liquid to our gumbo

and I'm going to use four cups of water and kind of blend it all together

All right, now I'm going to add to this five beef bouillon cubes

and that's going to give it a nice, salty, beefy, rich flavor

All right, you know, I told you earlier it wasn't necessary to cook the chicken all the way through

You just wanted to kind of sear it off and brown the outside. And you can see it's still raw, but I'm going to put this in

and we're going to cook this for almost another hour and let the flavor of that sausage and chicken

marry into that real flavorful roux we've got going. All right, so we're just going to let that cook away

While our gumbo is cooking, I'm going to show you how to put together this caramel apple cheesecake

Now we're going to start with just an ordinary can of apple pie filling

And I'm going to put about three quarters of that can into the bottom of a ready-made graham cracker crust

All right, now the rest of that pie filling I'm going to throw over here into a saucepan

And I'm using just a store-bought caramel sauce that you would put on like top of ice cream

I'm going to just add that to the pie filling. And while that's melting and doing its magic

I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna take two softened eight-ounce packages of cream cheese

And I'm just gonna whip it until it's light, and then I'm gonna be adding a half a cup of sugar

a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring, and two eggs. What? hot. The dogs are back here just talking to me. They're hungry. And we're just going to

keep beating this until it's nice and smooth. Okay. You can see that didn't take but a second

Now we're going to pour our filling on top of our pie filling

Okay, we're going to put this in a preheated 325 degree oven

and we're going to bake this off for about 30 minutes or until it's set

And listen to our gumbo. It's just going to town over there

All right, so it's ready to go in the oven, and then we're going to cook it for about 30 minutes or until it's set

And then we're going to finish it by topping it off with those wonderful caramel and apple mixture I've got over here

Okay, so in we go. All right, let's move on over here now

and start on finishing our gumbo up. Now to our pot, we're gonna add a can of peeled and diced tomatoes

All right, and we're gonna add some cut okra. Now if you got fresh certainly use it But the frozen just works nicely And then I got a few green onions I gonna save some for the top

All right, our gumbo's ready. It's looking so good. Just all cooked together

Now I'm gonna add the shrimp. Let them cook for just a minute

because these are tiny and they won't take but just a minute

While those shrimp are cooking, I want to show you how to finish off this delicious pie

Isn't that beautiful? Now I'm going to take our apple pie filling that I mixed with the caramel sauce

and we're just going to top it on our pie. We're just going to kind of push it around

All right. And then I'm just going to come around here with some pecan halves

and just kind of line our pie with those. And then I'm going to take some crushed pecans

and just kind of put them in the center just like that

The way that looks, you would almost think it was one of those difficult pies to make

and it's not. Oh, and the shrimp are done. Doesn't that look comfortable

Oh, it looks so comfortable, doesn't it? And let's cut us a piece of pie

Then we're just gonna fold back that tinfoil. How does it look

Look, any of these dishes will offer so much taste and so much comfort

Mmm. So delicious. I love the sausage and the shrimp flavor together

And, oh, the cheesecake. You can see the apples underneath the cheesecake

Mm-hmm. I feel so bad I need comforting

I'll see y'all in a few minutes, because I got some tips for you

that's gonna make this even more comfortable. Mm. Do y'all hear Gertie talking to me

What, Gertie? What? She wants me to hurry up and show y'all how to make French bread croutons

Now, I've got some peanut oil here. You'll want the temperature of your oil about 350 degrees

Are you getting all this Gertie? And the secret to making your croutons is you kind of constantly want to keep them moving about

in that grease. And this will take just a couple of minutes from turning a nice golden

brown. This is pitiful. Gertie needs comforting, don't ya? And I'm going to turn that off and

I'm going to use my spider to pull them out with. And you don't want to overfill your

pan while you're cooking these. You want to have plenty of room for them to move around

in. All right, and I'm going to put these on a paper towel and let them drain just for a minute

And then I'm going to transfer them over to here. And we're going to put our seasonings on them

Now, I personally love mine with just dried parsley for a little color and Parmesan cheese

And you want to do this while they're warm because it'll stick to them. And this is my

house seasoning. This contains salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. All right, Gertie, tell me what you think. So good. It'll be the perfect topper for any of your

soups. You know, at one time or another, we all need comforting, don't we? There's nothing like

good old comfort food to help fill some of those holes. And I think these dishes that I've done up

today will be perfect to fill the need for a good old comforting dish. Whether it's a

shrimp and the wild rice casserole or the caramel apple cheesecake, the gumbo or that

smooth delicious cheese soup, it's going to make anybody feel better no matter what the

situation is. And don't forget those delicious homemade croutons, because they're just going

kick up an already fabulous dish. So until next time, America, I hope the dishes bring you comfort

when you need it, and I send you love and best dishes from my kitchen to yours