Comfort Food

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen and I'm so glad you joined me today in our new kitchen

You know, Michael and I thought there's no better way of christening this new kitchen

than with some of our family's favorite comfort foods. And today I'm going to be starting off with a hearty old-timey beef stew

It's just a bowl full of delicious flavors. It's going to warm you inside and out

And then I'm going to be making a rich and creamy potato casserole

That's guaranteed to make you stop and smile and go back for seconds

And for all you chocolate lovers out there, wait till you see my chocolate bread pudding

I guarantee y'all it's going to become one of your favorites. So grab a blanket and get ready to eat

Because I'm about to show you the most comforting foods imaginable. Good morning, everybody

Today is a very, very special time for me. Today is the first Paula's Home Cooking to be shot in mine and Michael's new kitchen

And I can't wait to share it with y'all. In fact, I could do a 30-minute show just showing you around

Michael and I decided to put a lot of our space and a lot of our money into the kitchen

Naturally, this is the biggest room in the house because this room is the heart of the house

So I look forward to spending many years with y'all in this room

I hope that you're going to love it as much as I do. This room makes me feel so good and so at home

And that's what today's recipes are all about, comfort food. Things that make you feel good and safe and warm your belly

And the first dish that I'm going to start with today is an old-timey beef stew

I've got some beef stew meat here waiting on me. Now you can also use a chuck roast

A boneless chuck roast makes fabulous beef stew. But for convenience, we've already gotten the beef stew meat

Gonna break it apart. And I'm gonna pepper it. And give it a little salt

Just kinda toss that around. I'm gonna add like a couple of tablespoons of an oil

And we're just gonna kinda sear our meat off. Mmm, I can't hardly wait

Today is just a perfect day for this kinda dish. And I'm gonna add a sliced onion

I'm gonna add some paprika. That'll just make it richer and deeper in color

And I'm gonna add a teaspoon of sugar. Now, you'll wanna be careful

You don't wanna add too much of that. And I'm gonna add just a little pinch of allspice

And I'm gonna add one clove of garlic. And I'm just gonna bust it like that

And I'm gonna give that a quick stir. two cups of water, and then I'm going to put the lid on it

and I'm going to let this cook for probably about an hour and a half

until the meat is fork tender. But before I close the lid on it, I'm going to add like a tablespoon of Worcestershire

Throw in a couple of bay leaves, and that's all it is to it

It's ready to go. But for right now, we're just going to let it cook away

We're gonna move down here, and we're gonna make that potato casserole

It's so stinking good. Okay, so we're gonna start our potato casserole

by sautéing some wonderfully sweet, fresh red bell pepper and some onions in a stick of butter

Now, while that's sautéing, I'm gonna move down here, and I'm gonna spray our pan lightly so it won't stick to the bottom

Now I'm going to take our mashed potatoes from yesterday and just put them in the bottom of our casserole dish

And I'm going to just kind of smush them down. And then I'm going to take about a cup of sour cream

And I'm going to layer on top of those mashed potatoes. And just like frost them

And I going to take a little of my house seasoning and just sprinkle on there because sour cream is so not salty So I want to just flavor up that sour cream And let come down

here and see how our onions and bell pepper are doing because I want to put some of this butter

throughout the casserole. I don't want it to go on just the layer of mashed potatoes

So we're going to turn that off and I'm going to come down here and just take those onions and bell pepper and place them on top of that sour cream

And some of the butter, like half the butter. Look at that

So this is what we look like so far. Now, you know those leftover potatoes

I've sliced those, and we're gonna just take those and lay those on top

I like using the sliced because it gives a different texture. All right

Now we're gonna come back and take the rest of our butter, and I'm gonna drizzle that

on top of those yummy sliced potatoes. Mmm. And I'm gonna come in with another little bit of house seasoning

Y'all are not gonna believe this, but I forgot to put the cheese in after the vegetables

But you know what? I'm just gonna go ahead and do it on top

And I'm gonna just have extra cheese on top. And it's gonna run down there and it'll be all right

All right, now we're gonna put this in our oven, a preheated oven at 350 degrees

and we're gonna let it bake until it's hot and bubbly. So we're gonna have to run for a minute

but when we come back, I'm gonna be finishing up the beef stew

We're gonna be tasting the potato casserole, and you're not gonna believe what I'm fixing next

A chocolate bread pudding. Makes me want to cry. You don't want to miss this one

So in case y'all have just tuned in, today's show is all about comfort food

I've got a pot of beef stew going here. I've got a potato casserole in the oven

And then I'm fixing to make the most knee-slapping, slapping wonderful chocolate bread pudding you've ever tasted

Right now, I want to just check on my beef stew. Oh, and it looks so good

Delicious. I'm going to add just a wee little bit more liquid to it

All right, so at this point, the meat is really getting nice and tender

and I'm just going to toss in the carrots and celery. And so this is really going to be a nice one-pot meal

So this looks yummy. Look at the meat. It's just like fork tender

And I leave the bay leaves. I leave the bay leaves in there

All right, let's see if our casserole is ready, which it is. Oh, it smells scrumptious

Oh, and look, oh, it's bubbly, bubbly hot. And you can see that this dish is really not all that buttery

So I'm going to top it with crisp fried bacon chunks. With that beef stew and that gravy all on these

they are going to be out of this world. All right, so let's move on to the bread pudding

I know a lot of you have probably had bread pudding, but a lot of you have probably not had chocolate bread pudding

And this was a recipe that was shared with me from a friend that lives in Philadelphia

Her name is Bobbi, and she's a caterer. And she gave me this recipe one day, and she said

Paula, you just have to try this. You're not going to believe how good it is

So sure enough, I made it, and it was to die for

Now, what I've done is I've just taken a loaf of French bread

and we're going to cube it up and put it in a buttered bowl. And you don't have to be real precise with this

And this is one of those great dishes that will give you the opportunity to use up bread that's getting old on you

Bread really doesn't have a long life to it. Okay, so we've got all our bread cut up

Now we're going to mix up our dry ingredients together. I have a cup of granulated sugar, one cup of light brown sugar, and a fourth of a cup

of cocoa powder You want to mix your dry ingredients together so that they won lump on you Okay So over here I have three cups of milk and to our milk I going to add a fourth

of a cup of heavy cream. I'm going to add a half a cup of a coffee liqueur, which is

gonna give this a fabulous bite with that chocolate. And then I'm gonna add

about two tablespoons of almond flavoring. I'm gonna add two tablespoons of

vanilla flavoring. And then I'm gonna add about a teaspoon and a half of

cinnamon. And that's gonna give it just a little, a little spicy taste. All right

and we're gonna add six eggs to our milk. We're just going to lightly beat our eggs, and then we're going to add it to our milk

and our cocoa. And then we're going to pour it over our sugar mixture

So this is gonna be sweet and like a flavor of coffee

And the cinnamon, it's gonna have several different wonderful flavors. I think you're gonna just find this recipe is just absolutely perfect

especially for you chocolate lovers. All right. All right, now I'm gonna just move my bread up here

and over my bread, I'm gonna add a cup or a cup and a half of chocolate chips

Maybe the only thing that I can think of that you could add to this dish

that would be really, really delicious would be some toasted nuts or a couple of cups of pecans would really be yummy in it

All right, now, so I'm just gonna pour our mixture, our egg and milk mixture, over our bread

And then I'm gonna let this sit for about 20 minutes so that that bread can absorb that milk

and that sugar and that chocolate liqueur. Mm. Have y'all got the idea

You know this is gonna be delicious. So I'm gonna let this sit for about 20 minutes

and then I'm gonna put it in a 350 preheated oven, and we're gonna let it bake for about an hour

And when we come back, y'all, I'm gonna be tasting our fabulous beef stew

and that yummy potato casserole. So y'all not gonna want to miss this one

Okay, so this meal is really coming together. Welcome back, y'all. Can't hardly wait for you to see this chocolate bread pudding

So, in with that. And I'm going to bring my potato casserole over here

My mama used to dust her beef stew in flour, and that would make the beef stew thick

Well, I seared mine plain. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna take a little cornstarch and water

and mix those together. And when you're making this kind of thickener

you wanna make sure you use cold water to mix with your cornstarch

And we're just gonna mix that up real good so that everything's dissolved

And the most important part to this is when you're fixing to add your cornstarch mixture

you'll want to make sure that your pot is balling really, really good

So here we go. You can see that the juices are really bubbling

And I'm just going to pour that in. And this is going to become thick very, very quick

Oh, look. Look how good that looks. A little bit more pepper

Michael likes things really kind of spicy. A little bit more salt

because I want this to have a lot, a lot of flavor. And the vegetables I added for about the last 30 minutes of cooking because you don want your vegetables to just dissipate You want them to still have nice texture to them be done but still kind of firm

So it's my favorite time of the show. It's time to taste

And I'm going to start by dipping into these hot, cheesy, creamy potatoes

Look at that, y'all. Look at that sour cream in there. That butter

And that bacon on top. And then I'm gonna just take my beef stew

Look. And I'm just gonna put that right there. And oops, I let some of the gravy fall onto the potato

This is also wonderful over just a bowl of hot buttered rice

But as I said, I really wanted to use up my leftover mashed potatoes

And this is so hot. And remember, I told y'all I wasn't adding potatoes to this beef stew

because I already had my leftover mashed potato casserole. Look at that

Mmm. There's just nothing, nothing that does it

Like a wonderful beef stew. You're gonna love this recipe. So if y'all think this is comfort food, stick around, because coming up next, I'm gonna

to pull that bread pudding out, and today's tip is going to be this fabulous sauce that's

going to make your mama scream. Mmm. Now, just when you thought that you couldn't get this any, any better, I'm going to show

you a trick. And we're very quickly just gonna make a sauce for it

I'm gonna start with two cups of heavy cream, 1 1⁄4 of a cup of an Irish cream liqueur

1⁄4 of a cup of sugar, and I'm gonna let that heat up

I'm gonna take a little cornstarch, mix it with a little water

And we're gonna tighten that up, and it's gonna be a wonderfully rich, warm custard

Now, you can actually make this three days in advance, put it in the refrigerator, and

then pull it out when your bread pudding's ready. All right, it's ballin', and we're just gonna pour in our cornstarch

I'm just gonna add about a teaspoon of vanilla. I really, really, really like to serve this over my bread pudding warm

Oh, see that hot cream going over those chocolate chips? How could this not be comfort

Oh, hear it gooshin'? If you wanted to, you could pour the sauce

on each individual serving, but look in here. I just love, oh, it's hot

I just love the way that cream looks running all down in there

Well, I might have a little extra cream. There we go. Just in case

Mmm. This is so good

You know, with or without the topping, you're going to love this chocolate bread pudding

But make the sauce. Mmm. I'm so glad that y'all tuned in today

I hope especially those of you that maybe live far away from home have found comfort in some of these dishes that I prepared today

You know, nothing says home like an old-timey beef stew or that potato casserole

My goodness, that chocolate bread pudding. All of this food is like getting a hug from home

So until next time, America, as always, I send you love and best dishes from my kitchen to yours

Thank you