Country Comfort

Y'all, welcome to the show. I've got some wonderful things planned because it's all about country comfort foods

Y'all, I've got a bacon cheeseburger meatloaf. It's just over-the-top delicious. And then I want to share with y'all a chicken poblano chowder

It's just perfect to satisfy the soul. And I'd like to thank my friend, Ms. Sybil Barnett, for sharing her chocolate cake recipe with me

It is to die for. So let's get to cooking. Hey, y'all, come on in

I've just taken the bacon out of the skillet because the first dish that I'm going to be making

is a bacon cheeseburger meatloaf. There's nothing that says loving like meatloaf

Now, I'm going to start by layering my casserole dish with three pieces of bread

The bread will soak up the fat from the hamburger so it'll give me a leaner, less greasy product

All right, now the first thing I'm gonna do, we've got to have some cheese for a cheeseburger meatloaf

Now I'm gonna grate eight ounces of cheddar cheese to go into our meatloaf

We do a cheeseburger meatloaf at the Lady and Sons. It's really, really good

It's real popular. But we're taking it one step further today by adding the bacon to it

because everybody loves a bacon cheeseburger. You can use any kind of cheese you want to

but I personally think the sharp cheddar, you know, adds just a lot of kick to this meatloaf

All right, now I've got two eggs. Just gonna beat those a little bit

and pour that over the cheese. And now I'm gonna add a fourth of a cup of mayonnaise

Every cheeseburger needs some mayonnaise on it. And I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of toasted plain breadcrumbs

And then one tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce. All right, so here we go

I'm just going to mix those up. That egg is going to help bind our meatloaf so it'll hold together well

So now I'm going to move over here and I'm going to make a topping. Just a ketchup and mustard topping

I think the recipe calls for like a third of a cup of ketchup

and a couple of tablespoons of mustard. But I like a lot of topping on

so I'm just gonna mix it, you know, the way I think I would like it

All right, I'm gonna put some of it over in here and then save the rest for the top

And now I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna take my bacon

and I'm just gonna tear it in pieces. And I'm using about 10 slices of bacon

All right. So now I'm gonna throw in one pound of ground beef

And we're just gonna mix this all together. You know. This is the way you do it

You got to get in there and get your hands in it

Oh, gosh. Smells good, y'all. Okay. That gets our meatloaf just that easily

Now I'm just going to form my meatloaf a little bit in my bowl

And then I'm going to roll it out. and I'm gonna finish it up on top of my bread. Doesn't that look delicious? Now I've just got

to wash my hands because I got stuff all over them. So come on down here with me and we'll just

keep on chatting while I'm washing my hands. You know I always encourage everybody the first time

they make a recipe to go right by the recipe, but on the second time in making a recipe

you know, I encourage you to put things that you like in it and have fun with it. All right, I

got my hands clean, y'all, so let's finish this meatloaf up and get it in the oven. All right

now I have some leftover ketchup and mustard that I've mixed up, but I think for my topping

I gonna add about two tablespoons of brown sugar and make that kind of barbecue saucy sweet you know what I saying Okay

So here we go. On top of our meatloaf. Now we're gonna put this in the oven, y'all

A 350 degree oven, and we're gonna let it bake for about 40 minutes

Looks perfect. Just enough sauce. So, in the oven this goes. We've got one more thing that we want to do to our meatloaf

So I've got one in the oven that's been cooking approximately 40 minutes

Oh, and it looks good. Looks very good. Now, what I'm going to do to this meatloaf is I'm going to take just canned onion rings

It's just in a little can in the grocery store section. Well, I'm just going to pour these onion rings over that meatloaf

and now it goes back into the oven for another 15 minutes

So when we come back, that'll be ready. And we're going to taste some of that wonderful lovin

that's going to be coming out of that oven. Coming up next, a chicken poblano chowder

It's going to be fabulous. See you back. Oh, y'all, look at that

It looks great. That cheeseburger meatloaf. I'm just gonna crack the oven

and I'm gonna let it sit right there for a few minutes because I'm really, really wanting to move on to our next dish

which is chicken poblano chowder. I'm gonna pour in, gosh, about a fourth to a third of a cup of olive oil

And to our olive oil, I'm gonna add some cumin, about a half a teaspoon

I've got one tablespoon of chicken bouillon to enhance the flavor and tenderness

I've got about a half a teaspoon of thyme. A little salt

a little white pepper, and then a half a bunch of chopped cilantro

which is really going to give it a fabulous flavor. I really do appreciate the flavor of cilantro now

once I've given it some good tries. All right, now I'm going to come in here with some fresh garlic

And then I've got like five diced carrot sticks. And I've got two onions diced

So this is going to be full of vegetable flavor. All right

So I've got all our vegetables in the pot. But now I want to get our poblanos in there

Now, I'm using a mild poblano, but I'm going to cut them apart

and just seed them and take out that vein because supposedly if a pepper is hot

it's going to be in the vein of that pepper and in the seeds

So I'm going to... Mmm. This sucker is really kind of warm

I want to make sure I wash my hands real good because heaven forbid should I accidentally pick my nose

The front of my face will catch on fire. They say the darker the pepper, the hotter it is

That finishes off our pepper. Our vegetables are coming together real good down there in that pot

Now I'm going to add three quarts of chicken stock to this

Okay. All right, now we're going to let this cook for about 15 minutes

But while that's cooking, I want to come over here and I want to make a roux that's going to tighten our chowder for us

And I'm going to just make a basic roux using one stick of butter

To our butter, we're going to add one cup of flour. This roux acts as a thickening agent for our soup

and the butter gives it a nice, rich flavor. So come on down We going to finish up this chowder Now I got three chicken breasts that I grilled

Now I'm just gonna cut these up in pieces and throw it in that pot

And then I'm gonna bring it back to a ball and we're gonna drop in some of our roux

And it's gonna make it nice and tight. All right. So in goes our chicken

All right, now I'm going to take just a couple of ladles of our stock

and add to our roux, and that's just going to kind of smooth it out for us

because if we just dumped it in there, there's a good chance it could be lumpy

So we're going to do it just like this. and then we're going to add this back to our pot of vegetables

I'm going to incorporate that stock into our flour and butter. Okay, and that looks good

I'm going to turn that off. All right, now I'm going to start adding it to our vegetable pot

The important thing, though, is I keep stirring that because I don't want our flour and butter roux to clump up on us

So I want to pretty much keep that spoon in my pot

All right. I'm going to let this simmer because now I want to go to the oven and take out this meatloaf

I'm just dying to put my lips around it. I know it's going to be so good

All right, so look at this meatloaf, y'all. Looks so good. Mmm

Ooh. I see a piece of bacon trying to peek out. Mmm

But this little piggy's not getting away from Paula. Look at that

Mmm. Oh, my gracious. I think you're gonna like this one. When we come back, how about thick, rich, velvety chocolate simple cake

Hey, welcome back, y'all. I'm just down here getting me a bowl and some spoons

because I want to finish up this chowder. I'm about to have a fit to taste it

It smells so good. And, I mean, you know, it bit me earlier with those poblano peppers

so I'm ready to bite back on it. So I'm going to add, to finish our chowder

I'm going to add one cup of heavy cream. And that gives it a beautiful light color

And I'm going to add a little hot sauce. I'm kind of afraid to add too much

All right, and we can always add more hot sauce at the table

for those that like it hotter. And do you know what would be wonderful on this soup

I wish that I had thought earlier, because I would have certainly taken me some floured tortillas

and cut them in little strips and garnished the top with some fried tortilla chips

Oh, it would be perfect for this. All right, now a little parsley

And it's time to dig in. The cilantro flavor comes through there

Mmm, it's really good. I could prop here on the counter all afternoon and eat that chowder

but I promised y'all a chocolate cake, and I want to share that recipe with you now

And the name of this cake is Sybil's Chocolate Cake, and I'm going to start this by beating up

one stick of butter that's been held at room temperature and one cup of sugar

and I'm just going to beat that until it's light and kind of fluffy

and then I have four eggs here that I'm going to add to it one at the time

This recipe was shared with me by one of my greatest supporters here in Savannah

my landlady, Miss Sybil Barnett. All right, so I'm going to add that one egg at the time

Get out of there. All right, one more egg. I love making cakes that I can use my little hand mixer with They seem a lot less intimidating and a lot easier to throw them together

when I don't have to pull out that big mixer. All right

Now to this, I'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla. And then I'm going to come over here

I'm gonna take one cup of all-purpose flour. All right, and to that I'm gonna add

about an eighth of a teaspoon of salt. I'm gonna add one teaspoon of bacon powder

And I'm just gonna take this over here and I'm just gonna sift this over our bowl

Now I'm just gonna beat that in. I like this recipe because first off, it's good

It's really, really good. But it's really, really simple too. Okay. So in goes one 16-ounce can of chocolate syrup

There comes the chocolate. Okay, now I'm going to get my spatula

because I want to get every bit of that chocolate out of there

Mmm! So good. Okay. Now I have a 13 by 9 by 2 pan over here

that I've greased and floured. And I've got my oven preheated to 350

And I'm going to bake this for about 25 or 30 minutes

All right, now I'm going to, after I lick my finger, I'm going to bounce my pan on my counter

because I don't want any holes in my cake. Okay, so... In the oven, this goes 350, 25 to 30 minutes

And when we come back, y'all, I'm gonna show you the simplest chocolate frosting

In fact, it's really not like a frosting. It's almost like a ganache

Oh, my gosh, a ganache. Oh, my gosh. Okay, I'm so glad to see y'all back

I got the cake out of the oven. 25 minutes, it was done

And now I'm gonna show you how Miss Sibyl makes her chocolate frosting for it

I'm gonna start with a stick of butter. All right, now I'm gonna add a cup of sugar

And now I'm gonna add a third of a cup of evaporated milk

I'm using evaporated milk because it's not as thick as sweetened condensed milk

All right, so I'm going to let this cook for a couple of minutes

I'm going to stir in a half a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips

It's going to be delicious. Look at how smooth. How good does that look

Okay. So I'm going to turn off the heat, and you want to make sure that the vanilla is the last thing you put in

because you don't want that flavor to cook out. I'm adding a half a cup of chopped pecans

Y'all move in so you can see real good because watch this chocolate all over the top of that cake

how good and simple is that y'all i'm gonna let this cool for a second i'm gonna run to the

bedroom i'm gonna change my shirt and i'll meet y'all in the backyard in a minute i want to thank

y'all so much for coming in and spending time with me today while i've been making all these

country comfort foods, like the meatloaf with the bacon in it. A bacon cheeseburger meatloaf

just screams comfort. The chicken poblano chowder is so good. And of course, Miss Sibyl's chocolate

cake. I got me a piece right back here. I've just got to try it before we sign off. Mmm

This is a perfect ending for a country comfort show. I want to send all my love and best dishes out there to y'all

Until next time, happy cooking