Cooking for the Troops

Hey, y'all. I'm Paula Deen, and today we're gonna pay tribute to the people that keep us safe

That's right. We're cooking for our troops. So we're gonna head over to Fort Stewart for a little taste of Army life today

After we work up a little appetite, I'm gonna head back to my kitchen where I'll be serving my country

by serving up a meal for these brave men and women. First up, it's some of the crispiest, juiciest fried pork chops you'll ever taste

And what could go better with fried pork chops than fried okra

It's a true southern favorite. And to finish it all off, I'm making Sonny's Sunshine Cake

a light, citrusy dessert that's the perfect closer for any meal. So come with me for a little PT

Today, I'm joining the Army. You know, I was just sitting here resting a minute and catching my breath

and I couldn't help but recall a conversation between Michael and me the other day

He said, Paula, let's try to never take our life or our love for each other for granted

And one of the reasons why we're able to enjoy the lifestyle that we do

is because of a group of brave men and women. And those are the people that I'm going to be going to see today

So y'all stay and make the trip with me. We're going to run right down here to Fort Stewart

and have fun in the kitchen. Hello, Paula. Today, we're our troops

We're going to take you out and do some physical training. You are? Yes, we are

Are you ready? Do I look ready? Are y'all ready? Oh, wow

All right. Uh-oh. I thought I was coming here to eat. Attention

I didn't realize I was going to have to work for my supper. Platoon attention

Hard as a rock. Hard as a rock. Circular formation. Follow me

Y'all are going too fast. When are we going to stop? Platoon attention

Incatate. Follow me. Two, three, one. Four, two, three. Come on, Paula

We can't see you jumping. One, two, three. All right. Shake it out

Shake it out. All right. I'm going to show you this. This is called the push-up

OK. OK, men and women, front, lean, and rest position. Move. Move

Wait, where are we going? Nowhere. I don't like this. All right, here we go

OK. Down. Up. Up. Down. Down. Up. Up

It's a position of attention. Move. Position of attention. Move! Addie! Hi! Hoo-wah! Hoo-wah

Well, Sergeant Haley, we did it, didn't we, girl? And that's a fact, Jack

That's a fact. Forward march! You know, all this training sure does work up an appetite

and it's just lucky for us that I happen to bring along some apple crisps

I'm just hoping it's going to feed everybody. Y'all start eating past

There's some Cool Whip down there, and there's some spoons. Before y'all leave, just gotta say something to y'all

something to y'all. Thank you for doing your job and allowing me to live in a free country

Thank you so, so much. So let's eat up! With all that working out this morning, that apple crisp didn't begin to fill us up. So

what do y'all say we head on back to the kitchen and whip up a real meal to bring back to our

back to our troops. You know one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Fort Stewart is they were some

of the first men that were shipped out for Iraq and the fact of the matter is I have a great deal

of respect for our servicemen whether they work in the kitchen or in the field. I would like to

cook them a special meal that will not only feed their belly but will also feed their soul I know I tell y this is my favorite food this is my favorite food Actually y I have a list about this wide and maybe I have 12 favorite things

But a pork chop is very close to my heart. And probably in the truest sense of the word

But I love a pork chop. And these are really, really thick

That's all right. I'm gonna beat them down a little bit. and I'm going to put me a towel up here so I won't splatter my shirt, but I'm going to take

this meat mallet and just break them down a little bit. You'll have to be easy on that tenderloin

side because it's naturally so, so tender and you don't want to beat it to death. Okay

I think this is enough. Now, I'm gonna season these up, not too much

because I don't want them too salty. I'm gonna just kind of rub that in on them

Just me and my pork chop. All right, now I'm gonna put these in my bowl

and pour a little buttermilk over them. and the buttermilk will help that flour stick to them

I'm not gonna drench them. I'm just, just enough to kind of wet them

I'll let them sit there a minute. If you want to produce a nice crust

you need something wet to make that flour stick to your meat

Now I'm gonna take some house seasoning, which is garlic powder, black pepper, and salt

And I'm gonna just season our flour. And then I'm gonna dip these pork chops into the flour

I'm just gonna kinda press that down in them. Just kinda dredge them good

Now that's a pork chop, isn't it? Now we're gonna drop them in 350 degree peanut oil

and you'll notice that I'm deep frying my pork chops. I think our grease was just about perfect

And naturally, you wanna wash your hands real good. and clean any of your surfaces that had raw meat on it

All right, I'm smelling those good. These pork chops got a couple more minutes, though

and I want you all to come back because next we're going to be tasting these fabulous pork chops

We're also going to be frying some okra, and we're going to make a sunny sunshine cake

Nice to meet you. All right, we're back

and these pork chops are looking good. They might still need another minute or so

I'm cooking these for the army, and I think they're gonna just love them

All right, look at that pork chop. If there's a prettier pork chop around

I'd sure like to see it. And you see I'm putting these in a colander

so they can drain. And we can check one of these and see if they're done

This one looks so good right here. But I'm gonna cut this one so you can see into it

and we'll check it together to see if it's done. Is that a perfect chop or what? Oh

Look at that. Oh

I'm so happy. It's just out of this world. The next thing I'm fixing to make is another one of my favorite foods

and that's fried okra. We sometimes refer to this as southern popcorn

Now, all I'm doing right now is I'm finishing up cutting up some fresh okra

Now, I'm going to transfer it into a larger bowl, and I'm going to toss it with a little buttermilk, just a little

and I'm not going to make it sop and wet. In fact, I cook my okra very, very much like I cook my pork chops

So I just want to dampen this okra to make that flour stick

All right. Now I've got that pretty well tossed. Now I'm going to season it

and I'm going to just sprinkle it with our house seasoning. I'm going to let that sit for a second

and I'm going to come over here and check our grease. And you'll notice that I'm going to fry this okra

in the very same grease that I fried the pork chops in

Now I'm going to just take our flour and toss that okra in that flour

All right. Now, something very, very important. You want to kind of shake off your okra

because you don't want all that loose flour going to the bottom of your pot and just burning

There very few things that I disagreed with with my grandmother cooking but okra is one of them Now grandma always dusted hers in cornmeal

My mother used flour, and so I have followed in my mother's footsteps there

And I'm kind of just going to leave it alone for a minute, because you don't want to risk knocking that batter off the okra

If you feel like you've got to move your pan a little bit

then just give it a little shake like that. but don't stir it

All right, I think our okra is just perfect. Spiders work wonderful, y'all, for fried okra

Look how much I can get out of there at one time. And I wanna kinda give it a little shake

to get that grease outta there. Perfect southern fried okra. Does look like popcorn, doesn't it

All right, now I'm gonna slip this paper out from underneath the okra

There we go. Golden, perfectly fried okra with pork chops. It's unbelievable

Mmm, so good. And if it's not salty enough for you, you'll want to salt it like immediately

It's out of this world, y'all. I really hope that you'll try it

This next recipe I'm fixing to make is not one of my recipes. I have so many friends

Some I've met and some I haven't. Well, I've met this woman. Her name is Sunny

And she was in the restaurant one day, and she said, I've got a great recipe I'd love to give to you

So I think it's perfect to end this with Sonny's Sunshine Cake

And I've got six yolks already busted in here, so we're going to turn this on

And I'm going to add a half a cup of water. About a teaspoon of vanilla

Ooh, and that's pure vanilla. Smells so good. You could probably add a lemon extract or an orange

It would make it real good, too. All right, now I'm going to add two cups of sugar

and we're going to let this beat now for seven minutes. In the meantime, I'm going to come over here

and I'm going to sift our flour and bacon powder and a half a teaspoon of salt

Since this is going to take a while, I think I'll take a quick break now, and while I'm off working on this, I want to show you some home movies from Fort Stewart

And we'll wrap all this up in just a couple of minutes. Come on, Paula

We can't see you jumping. But both hands high. All right

Now, I'm really making two cakes today, and I just got that one placed in the window

but I want to finish showing y'all how I got from here to here

So while we won't break, I got the yolks beat, and now I'm fixing to take those egg whites

and we're going to beat those until they're very firm like a meringue

and I'm going to add a little crematata. And we're gonna beat this on real high speed

You wanna make sure when you go to beat your meringue that you've got clean, dry beaters with no type of oil

or anything on them because the yolks on the beaters would mess up our whites and they wouldn't do right

So you wanna make sure they're clean. I think those are good

those are good. So now we've sifted our flour one time, but we're gonna sift it

one more time. And while y'all were gone, that sifter was so slow on me. I went and

found a little better sifter, so hopefully we'll be able to go a little bit faster. We're just gonna keep doing that until we have all the flour folded

into our egg yolk mixture. You want to go down, up, and over, and you want to be

fairly gentle when you're folding in one ingredient to the other. All right, I've

got this all folded in. What we're gonna do now to finish up our cake is we're

gonna pour our egg yolk mixture into our egg whites and we're gonna fold them in

I'm trying to do this just like Sunny's recipe reads and I want to make sure that

we wind up with the same light wonderful cake that she does. This batter

smells real eggy. It almost smells like eggnog to me. Alright, so we're just going

to make sure that we fold that in real, real good. And now we're going to pour

this into a 10-inch ungreased bundt pan. Alright. And I'm using the kind that has

a lift-out bottom. All right, and then she tells me to run it through the batter

with a spatula to release any air bubbles Okay so this is ready to go into the oven We gonna bake it at like 325 degrees for about 60 minutes

And Sonny also said, bake this the second rack from the bottom

In one hour, we should have our second delicious cake ready to come out of the oven

But in the meantime, I've got this one cooled in the window now

so I'm going to make the icing to go on it. This icing that Sunny uses is very, very simple

All right, now I'm going to take just powdered sugar, and I think Sunny called this her orange buttercream icing

and you're fixing to know why she calls it buttercream. So we've got two sticks of butter

and two and a half cups of powdered sugar or confectionary sugar

and we're just going to beat this up. I believe Sonny might be a girl after my own heart

I like her recipe. All right, now a little orange juice. And you want to make sure to add just a little bit at a time

because you can always add two, but you can't take it out. Okay, let's see

Mmm. Sonny, that's good. So, let's get our cake. And one of the most important things about this cake

before we ice it, we want to make sure it's totally cool, because just the little bit of heat from it

would make it run everywhere. All right, so I'm just going to run this down the side

This is so light. Can't hardly wait to taste it. Looks yummy

But I think this definitely should go into the refrigerator, especially if you've made this during the summer and you got hot weather

Now, for garnish, I think I'm going to do the orange zest

If you don't have a microplane, make sure you get one. These are fabulous for zest

We're just going to sprinkle that on there. So I think I'm just going to put a little fresh mint

And I think I'll just put a little orange twist, kind of nestle that down in there

And I think that's all this cake needs. Well, maybe it needs my fork

Here we go, Sonny. Oh, gosh, it cuts just like a sponge cake

or an angel food cake. Wow, kabow! Is Michael gonna love this one

Or what? Look how light and fluffy he is. He's just kind of jiggling on that plate

Sonny is out of this world. When we come back, I want to share with y'all some tips

on transporting food wherever you need to take it and getting it there in one piece

So I'll see y'all in a minute. How come you're not chewing

I feel just so good. Transporting food can create a challenge

So I wanted to show y'all a couple of things that I found that worked for me

For my pork chops, I want them to stay nice and crispy

I take parchment paper and I cover them and I bring in a rubber band at each end

So this allows the steam to escape, but at the same time keeps it covered

And for that cake, I have my frosting and everything on the side

So when I get there, I'll just quickly frost the cake and it'll be perfect

And just in case you didn't know this or not, a cooler works two ways

It can work to keep food warm or it can work to keep food cold

So I hope some of these tips that I've shared with you today will help you the next time you're wanting to transport a picnic

Well, I've got my cooler and I've got my traveling cake pan

And I've got all their food ready. and I just want to give y'all a quick rundown of this wonderful meal for these hard-working men and women

I've got southern fried pork chops and a sunny sunshine cake, and I've got this wonderful southern fried okra

I can hardly wait to get this meal over to them, but before I do, I want to wish everybody

but especially the women and the men that serve in our military forces

best dishes and love from my kitchen to yours