Cooking with the Kids

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen. Now you girls and boys gather around because I'm cooking with the kids today. The dishes on this menu are for all ages. So to get the kids excited, I'm going to let them help me from start to finish by bringing them to the supermarket with me to help get some ingredients

And then back in the kitchen, I'm gonna start with a wedge salad, which looks as terrific as it tastes

And it'll just get everybody at home eating their veggies. And for the main course, I'm gonna bake a simple but tasty chicken and rice casserole

It's gonna have those kids just begging for seconds. And for a fun side dish, I'm gonna teach the kids how to make a pineapple upside-down biscuit

that they're gonna just love taking credit for. And last but not least, I'm going to let the kids help me roll out one of my childhood favorites, peanut butter balls

They're so easy, even the tiniest hands can help prepare them. So whether y'all are young or whether you're just young at heart, y'all grab your apron and you're chilling, because y'all don't want to miss this one

The very earliest memory I remember, I was probably three years old, and it was in my

grandmother's kitchen at her restaurant. And that's where it all begins. That's where everything begins in the home is in the kitchen

And the immediate gratification of eating good food and sharing it with people that you love

Well, today, I wanted to bring back some little boys into my kitchen

because it's been a long, long time since my boys were little

So I'm grabbing up some of the neighbor's children, two precious little boys

Their name is Angus and Duncan. And I'm going to take them to the store with me

and we're going to shop for some very simple foods, and I'm going to bring them back to the kitchen

and we're going to cook together. So y'all please stick around with me

because they're adorable, and the food is delicious. Y'all ready

Yep. What does that say? Fresh yuck. These are the roots

This is a turnip root. Feels like a baseball kind of, doesn't it

What's this? That's a baseball bat. All right, come on, let's keep moving

Chips, snacks, soda, water, juice. Snowda? Oh, soda? Why don't we go on to checkout

because we got peanut butter balls to make. Our order comes to $37.05

So can you give me the money, please, Angus? I don't have any money

You don't? I thought you were buying. I had fun at the grocery store with those two boys

I found out a lot about them. I found out that a lot of kids don't like their vegetables

but I'm gonna hide them in a casserole. All right, now I'm gonna start quickly

by putting a little oil in here and heating it up. And I don't know if y'all have ever used

these little choppers. This is a great way to chop onions and not get that smell all over you

See how great that did? All right, so we're gonna throw our onions

over into our skillet, and we're gonna saute these until they're opaque

I'm gonna come over here while those are sauteing, and I have used just a box of wild and white rice

And we're just gonna mix this all together. It's real, real easy to do

Mayonnaise supplies the oil that you need and the flavor in the casserole

Now, this is just diced up water chestnuts. They give it a nice crunch

so we're gonna throw that in. And just jarred pimenta. and cheddar cheese, and just canned green beans

All right, now I'm gonna use a can of cream of celery soup

It just gives it a totally different flavor. But if you like cream of mushroom or anything like that

you could use that too. You know what? I bet this would even be good served cold as a salad

All right, now I'm gonna come over here. I got my roasted chicken from the grocery store And I like to leave that in pretty nice chunks so that you can see it I don like that to be so minced up that you wonder what the meat is in there

All right, let's give these onions another quick stir them. But I do want to wilt these real good

That's about got it. While rice takes longer to cook than long grain rice, I think it takes maybe 25 minutes

but just follow the instructions on the box of rice and you won't have any problems

How quick was that? And how good does it look? And it'd make, if you've got any leftovers, it'd make a nice little lunch to send to school with the kids

All right, now we're going to throw this in to a preheated oven, 350 degrees, and we're just going to cook it until it's bubbly

But I think this is so pretty with all the colors coming through

All right, I'm going to make us a delicious wedge salad. and we serve these at the restaurant, and people love them

Now, all we're going to do is we're going to take a clean head of lettuce

This has been washed and put in the refrigerator for it to crisp up

and I'm just going to cut this lettuce into wedges. All right, and you can make your wedges as big or as little as you like

but I do like a hearty wedge, and I think I'm going to slice a little green onion to put on top for color

And I want to apologize to y'all about something. I don't have time to show you how to make my homemade blue cheese dressing

but I promise I'll do it in another show. All right, now I'm going to just top this with blue cheese dressing

Don't be stingy. That's the first rule. All right, now I'm just gonna put some diced tomatoes on it

and I'm gonna top it with my spring onions. And now I'm gonna add some more blue cheese

I'm just gonna put a few crumbles on it like that. Now the last ingredient that I'm gonna top our salad with

to me is the best, and naturally you might figure it's a little pig

because I'm gonna top this with crisp bacon. Now there's a couple of ways that you can do your bacon

You can do it with a knife, or you can just crumble it with your hands, or you can use kitchen scissors

All right, but I'm going to top that with that bacon. Now, that salad took about two to three minutes, and I promise you, you just will not find anything that tastes any better

Coming up next, I want y'all to stick around because I've got some heavenly biscuits

They are going to be pineapple upside-down biscuits. So y'all want to stay tuned because the kids are going to love them

So I want us to move along to our next dish because you're going to love this one

But before we get started, it's time to take that chicken and rice casserole out

And we're going to need to turn up our oven to about 400

Oh, look at that good old comfort food dish. All right, I'm going to show y'all how to make some of the neatest biscuits

It's you again. You knew I just took that out of the oven

Now, this is not going to make but 10 biscuits. And you can see that my container will hold 12

So in the other two, I'm gonna pour a little water in

because I don't want my muffin tin to burn. All right, now we're gonna start with some crushed pineapple

I think I discovered this when I was wanting some different breads

I was wanting some easy breads. And I really don't need but like a 10-ounce can

All right, so we've got our pineapple drained over here, and we've got our pineapple juice that we're going to come back to

Now, let's see. I'm going to need a half a cup of brown sugar

and I keep my brown sugar in this canister along with a little piece of bread

because that keeps your brown sugar from getting so hard on you

So, you see how easy it was for me to dip in there

and get that brown sugar. All right so we got our brown sugar and we gonna add our drained crushed pineapple along with about a half a stick of softened butter

It looks so good, doesn't it? When I was formulating this, I kinda wanted a quick and easy

like pineapple upside down cake. And I said, well, how come I can't do it with a canned biscuit

All right. So now we're going to take a spoonful of this

and we're going to put it into the bottom of each of our muffin cups

Mm. Looks just yummy already, doesn't it? All right. So the only thing we need now to make it a pineapple upside down cake is a cherry

So I'm going to come in here and I'm going to stick a cherry into each one

and I'm going to stick it all the way down in there and make sure it's hitting the bottom

Because when we take our biscuits out, we're going to invert them and we want that cherry to be seen

Now we're just going to take our biscuits. It scares me every time

They always do that. And you can use any brand of biscuit that you like

I love the buttermilk biscuits. All right, so remember a few minutes ago

I told you when these biscuits are ready, we're gonna invert them. So our pineapple and our cherry is gonna be on the top

and you know how children love cherries. So all I'm gonna do now

is just take a little of our pineapple juice and just pour right on top of each biscuit

just like that. So good. In 12 minutes, we're gonna have a biscuit

that tastes so much like pineapple upside-down cake. All right. Oh, I got two of them back here now

All right. I think it's time to taste the chicken and rice casserole

Oh, gosh. Look how pretty that is on that green plate. Love chicken and rice

Mmm. Mmm, mmm. It's so good. Y'all stick around, because next I'm going to be sharing a recipe with you

that's one of my childhood favorite things, peanut butter balls. And those adorable boys are going to be back here in the kitchen with me

so y'all don't go too far. I want to share something with y'all

When I was probably eight or nine years old, every Friday they served us homemade vegetable soup, buttered toast, and peanut butter balls

And I want to teach y'all how to make them. All right, let's get to cooking because I'm starving

How about y'all? Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's start adding our peanut butter

Here, let me move this bowl down there for you. And I'll help you now if you need it

And my grandma hires always said, waste not, won't not. Do you know what that means

Mm-mm. That means if you don't waste things and you take good care of them

that you'll never have to worry about being without. All right, how are you coming, pal

Great. All right, let's get this out. All right, we got it all out

All right, the next thing we're going to do is add our honey. You like honey

Yeah. Oh, I do, too. Oh, yeah. All right. Do you know what it is, Angus

You want to taste it? Um, cake mix? It's powdered milk. We're going to mix it up in that peanut butter and that honey

and it's just going to make us the most wonderful dessert. Yay! Yay

How many are we going to make? Oh, probably about 20. Is that enough for you

Yeah. Yeah, will that fill you up? All right. I want to show you how I like to do these, okay

Okay. So get up here and get ready, okay? Okay. Isn't that better than Old Spoon

Now see how much easier that is? All right, let's let Dunkey do it just a second

All right, here we go, Duncan. All right you guys ready to roll them up into balls Yep All right now how big do you want to be You going to have to ooh This big Oh that a big one But why don we try like this big That how I was trying Yeah

You could just eat it. I know it and we're fixing to in just a few minutes. All right, Duncan

now y'all take these and roll them up. Those look perfect. You can see that you have gotten a

perfectly smooth ball, both of you guys. So now what do you think you would like in yours

Crushed sugar. Okay. You take yours and you roll it around in the powdered sugar

What do you want, Duncan? Corn flakes. Corn flakes. There you go, pal

It's like donuts. And I've got to have one. Now, y'all know how I love pecans

so I think I'm going to roll mine in pecans, and then you know what I'm going to do

What? I like sugar, too. All right, so I'm ready to toast, because I'm ready to eat

So, to y'all. Yum. Yum. Isn't that yummy

Mm-hmm. All right, I got one more extra treat for y'all today

I've got some pineapple upside-down biscuits. Do y'all like pineapple? Yeah. Yes, and butter and brown sugar

Well, I've had them cooling over here, so we're gonna have one more extra treat

Now, I've got to get rid of this water in the muffin tins

and we're gonna quickly give them a turn. Ah! How's that for magic

Yeah. Yeah. All right, there you go. Let's get you that pretty one

Mmm. Isn't it good? Uh-huh. Well, I want you guys to stick around with me

because I know there's probably a lot of boys and girls out there

that are kind of picky eaters, and I want to share with their moms and dads a few quick tricks

that might turn a finicky eaters into good eaters. You know, I think every family probably has one child that is a picky eater

They won't eat anything. Well, I want to share with y'all a few tips that might help you to get that picky little young'un to eat properly

And peanut butter and jelly sandwiches work real well to use a cookie cutter and cut them out

In fact, you want to let the children do this themselves because they almost feel like they made it

But look at that pretty little heart. And you can do the same thing with a tortilla bread

You can give them different cookie cutters. Look at this cute little duck

And you can put a little meat and cheese, lettuce and tomato and let them use a knife

and a fork to eat it. You can let them cut their pancakes out

Let's try a cat. Look at the cute little cat. And you can do the same thing with cookies, although we usually don't have to entice them to eat their cookies

If you are looking for a healthier meal for the children, you can use fresh fruit and let them cut out shapes of their fruit

And they're much more apt to eat a dinosaur than a dice of cantaloupe

And these containers work very, very well for their school lunches. It doesn't smush their food

And you can take these little different juices and you can freeze them, drop them in the sack along with their lunch, and it'll keep it chilled

So I hope that some of these tips and tricks will help you to get your finicky eater to eat

So y'all come on back. I want to show you everything that I've cooked. You know, there's just nothing more special than spending time with your children

And children are really no different from adults. They eat things with their eyes first, too

And the peanut butter balls are a healthy snack. And the wedge salad, believe it or not, I have found that children love it

And we've got all these vegetables hidden in our chicken casserole. You don't have to sell them on the pineapple upside-down biscuits

And who knows, you may get more out of it than just a good meal

So until next time, to all you children, big and small, I send y'all love and best dishes from my kitchen to yours