Country Cooking - Southern Side Dishes

Hey, y'all. I'm Paula Deen

You know, you can't have a true meal without a good side dish. And here in the South, we serve up the best sides in the country

So today, I'm cooking a few of the lady and son's favorites

First, though, my friend Bob Garner is going to show us the secret

to making the perfect hush puppy. And then it's back to the kitchen where we'll start with my grandma's turnip mashed potatoes

followed by my Indian succotash. They'd liven up just about any dinner plate

And then next up are my Hoppin' Johns, a dish that's sure to bring you good luck in the kitchen

And then we'll finish off the day with a corn casserole. It's so simple, you won't believe it

So grab a plate, y'all, and join me for a Southern Side Dish Buffet

I hope that y'all caught my barbecue special

I went around. I drove through a lot of the southern states in search of the perfect barbecue

But guess what else I found? I found fabulous southern sides. And I made a stop in North Carolina at Bob Garner's

And he's got some great tips for you. Because sauces and sides are a staple in our cooking

and every southern state has its own traditions for serving them up

After making me the perfect pork shoulder, Bob gave me a southern side dish lesson

He even gave this old gal a tip for making the perfect hush puppy every time

Now for some of the side dishes that you have to have in order to have real North Carolina barbecue

That sounds great. Now you know in a lot of places hush puppies or deep fried corn bread is just something that you eat with seafood

seafood, but in North Carolina, hush puppies are traditional with barbecue. You know, when I first walked up to your table, Bob, I saw that pastry bag, and I thought

this is a brilliant idea. Now, I know how I make a traditional southern hush puppy

but what do you have in your mix? I use cornmeal, a little bit of flour, and then salt

onion powder, buttermilk, and then a little bit of bacon drippings in there just for extra flavor

Well, they look just delicious. Well, they will sure add the finishing touch to a plate of real North Carolina barbecue

And you have to have a little bit of coleslaw. All right, now, do you put your coleslaw on your sandwiches

If I'm making a sandwich, I put it right on top. But if I'm making a plate like today, I just put it to the side

Good serving of that succulent barbecue. Oh, it looks. And, of course, you must have sweet tea in the south

Sweet iced tea and barbecue. It don't get no better. It really doesn't

Well, happy barbecue eating. Well, thank you. Cheers to you. Cheers. Thanks, Bob

I'll never forget your barbecue or your hush puppies. Wasn't that a great piece with Bob Garner

Anyway, today is all about southern sides. So I want to share with y'all one of my favorite dishes

that my grandmother made that I remember from my childhood, turnip mashed potatoes. So we're gonna start by using red potatoes and I'm gonna

leave the skin on. Alright, so we're just gonna put these in our pot just like

this and you want to make sure when you're cutting your potatoes that you cut them into some cold water because these will darken on you and you don't

want them to turn dark. And grandmama would only add like one or two roots to

potatoes because turnips have a very powerful flavor. So you don't want to taste like you're

eating just mashed turnips. So I'm going to salt this water and we're going to let it come to a

boil. In the meantime, while I'm waiting for that to come to a boil, I'm going to come back over here

and visit this turnip. When you're selecting your turnips, I kind of choose medium-sized ones

and you want to make sure they're good and hard. So we're going to cut these just like our potatoes

so that they can all cook in about the same time. And I want to dunk those in water too

because they can turn brown on you. All right, so let's bring this on over here

I put my turnip roots in like the last 15 minutes of cooking

And before you know it, we're gonna have a delicious, scrumptious bowl of turnip mashed potatoes

I want to move on over to this pot now. and show y'all a recipe for succotash

and I call this Indian succotash because I put a lot, a lot of corn in it

Now at the restaurant we cook all of our vegetables in ham hock Now I like to cook mine until they pulling apart and sometimes I cook it an hour and a half It just depends But I check my pot and when I can do this to it and pull my ham hock apart that just perfect

So I'm going to add some house seasoning and some seasoning salt

All right, now for just a little bite, I'm going to do a couple of squirts of Texas peat

And y'all know how hard it is for me to not cook with butter. So I'm going to put just maybe two

tablespoons of butter. Now for the butter beans, frozen butter beans are a wonderful product and

they're just as good as fresh to me. I'm using one bag of frozen baby lima beans or butter beans

but I would not use a dried bean. And we're just gonna let those cook in that seasoning

along with that ham hock for 20 or 25 minutes and they're gonna taste delicious

All right, let's come back over here now and check on our potatoes and our turnips

They're probably getting close to being ready. We're gonna take these over to our sink

and we're gonna pour this up into a colander and get all the water off of them

All right, I'm going to give that a couple of shakes to get the water out

Now I'm going to throw it into this bowl right here. Now you can mash these any way you like

I'm going to beat these up. Now I'm just going to turn on our mixer

All right, I've gotten them mashed up pretty good now. So I'm going to add about a half a cup of sour cream

that's the secret to the wonderful mashed potatoes that we make at the restaurant

and I do like some chunks left in my potatoes so I'm not going to over beat them

all right now depending on the thickness that you like determines how much cream you'd want to add

I'm not going to add much, just a little bit. All right, I'm going to taste them for seasoning

because sour cream always requires salt. All right, so I'm going to do our seasoning up real quick

like in here. Okay. These smell so out of this world

See how pretty the skin looks in there? Now, I saved the best for last, the butter

But I'm just gonna use stick butter and let that melt. This is gonna be a wonderful treat

and it's just a little different from your normal mashed potatoes. And this time doesn't have a thing to do with these potatoes

Then just make it look pretty. There ain't nothing like a southern side

When we come back, I'm gonna take those wonderful butter beans that are cooking in that ham hock

and I'm gonna turn them into an Indian succotash. And we're gonna be making some Hoppin' Johns, another southern favorite side dish

So y'all don't go anywhere. I just love all my southern sides that I'm making today

Can't hardly wait to get back into these two dishes. Right now, I'm just taking some bacon out of the refrigerator

because we're gonna jump back on our succotash. Now, I'm just gonna saute off some bacon

Succotash actually dates back to the Native Americans when corn was plentiful

And you can see I've got another pan right here waiting on us because when I put this together

we're gonna jump over here and we're gonna make poppin' johns. Now to our bacon, I'm gonna add our corn

I don't like canned corn for this recipe, but you can buy a wonderful niblet corn

You can find it in your frozen food section, or you can cut it fresh off the cob

So we're just gonna throw that in there, and I'm gonna throw some cut okra

and this too is from the frozen food section, and it's delicious okra

So I'm gonna just throw that in there and stir that into all of that bacon grease

Now I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna get our butter beans

that we cooked earlier just for our succotash. Look how good that does look

Now if you really like butter beans, then put more butter beans

All right, now I'm gonna take just a little bit of juice from our butter beans and put it over in here

Not much, but I just want that okra to have something to cook in because I don want this real juicy So I just going to cover that lid and let that cook And in the meantime we going to start on Hoppin Johns We wouldn think about having New Year Day

without our Hoppin' Johns because it's a great way to serve black-eyed peas, which are supposed to bring you luck

And you're supposed to eat all these foods on the first day of the year

because they're going to bring us good luck throughout the year. So I'm going to start

by melting a couple of tablespoons of butter. So this is gonna go very, very fast

All right, now I'm gonna throw our chopped onion and bell pepper into our butter

Now you can use a red bell pepper if you want some color to it

or you can use green bell pepper. And if you really wanna spice it up

you could throw in some fresh sliced jalapeno peppers for a little heat

We're just gonna let those saute just for a couple minutes. We want them to still have some crunch

Alright, so that's not gonna take long. While that's cooking, I'm gonna come over here

and just check out my succotash pot. Oh, and you can see that's cooking nicely

Now, I didn't saute my bacon until it was brown. I love medium brown bacon

Here we go, those are softening up on us. So all I'm gonna do is throw my rice into that

and then throw my black-eyed peas in there. And I cooked them just like I cooked the butter beans

And just mix that all together. And we've got Hoppin' Johns. I'm gonna steal from this pot over here

and just put a little fresh parsley in it because I just like that green in it

All right, so now I'm gonna taste it and see what seasonings it needs

which I think I know I'm gonna put some garlic in it. I'm going to put some salt and a little house seasoning, and I'm going to put some straight

garlic because I really like that garlic to jump out of there and get you

All right, and I think I'm going to add some black pepper. So, now to season it off just right, I'm going to just throw in another couple of tablespoons

of butter. You can omit that step if you feel like it's seasoned enough

But we've got a wonderful pot of Hoppin' Johns. All right, let's come back over here and look at our succotash

Our okra should be done. All right, now to finish off this dish

I'm just going to sprinkle a little fresh parsley to just kind of bump up that green color

I'm going to throw about a teaspoon of chicken base into it

to just add a little bit more flavor to it. I'm going to add a little black pepper to this

Gonna put just a little house seasoning. And so now I'm gonna finish off my dish

with a couple of tablespoons of butter. And I'm gonna throw my tomatoes in there

And I don't wanna cook these tomatoes, I just wanna heat them all the way through

And that's all it is to succotash. I've gotta take a quick break, I'm gonna let these heat up

And when we come back, we're gonna taste that delicious pot of succotash

And I'm gonna show y'all the easiest corn casserole in the world

Your family's gonna love it. All right

We're back and we've got this succotash ready. and it looks and smells divine

Look at all those yummy vegetables. And don't they look pretty in that green bowl

And if you have any succotash left over, you know, it wouldn't take you but about five minutes

to turn this into a pot of vegetable beef soup. So don't worry if you've overmade

Sometimes I wonder how I still have a lining in my mouth

I eat so much hot food. There's so much corn in it

It almost tastes like the flavor of cornbread. It's so good. Now, speaking of corn, I want to share with y'all

the quickest, easiest little recipe for corn casserole. And the beauty about this dish is there's a very good chance

that you can walk to your pantry and find every one of these ingredients

right now without making a trip to the store. And it's so, so good

All we're gonna use is canned corn, and then we're gonna use a can of cream corn

And right here, I have a small box of cornbread mix. Now, this particular mix is one

of the sweeter cornbread mixes. In a casserole like this, it works perfectly

And we're just gonna mix all these ingredients together. I promise you, this casserole is delicious

using these two canned ingredients from your pantry And our liquid for our cornbread is from the creamed corn and the sour cream Of course a little melted butter

We've got a cup of sour cream. And we've got a half a stick of melted butter

You just can't get any easier than this dish. And we're going to put this in a preheated 350 degree oven

And we're going to bake it for about 40 to 45 minutes

Okay, all we need to do is spray our pan. And just pour this into our casserole dish

And at the last five minutes of our baking time, I'm going to add some cheese to it

All right, so we're going to put this in the oven, and we're going to let it bake for about 40 minutes

All right, I've got that casserole in the oven, but I've got another one in this one, and it's ready to be cheesed

So I want to take it out, and you can see what it should look like after it's done

Doesn't that look delicious? Now I'm gonna cheese this and I'm gonna run it back in the oven for about five minutes

Just enough to melt all that yummy stringy cheese over it. I'm using a medium cheddar cheese on this

Alright, I'm just gonna have a corn buffet. Alright, let's check our casserole

I've got everything ready for us to taste this casserole, and you can see just how easy that was and simple

That's all there is to it. Look at that. Oh, cheese is stringing everywhere

Oh, and our succotash is still kind of steamy. I can see it steaming

I just love corn. Everybody loves corn, and your children are going to love this

I'm just gonna dip into it. Looks pure edible. You could cut this in squares almost if you wanted to

It's one of my favorites. It's so delicious. I'm fixing to pop out of here for a second

but when we come back, I'm going to have some tea tips for you

because we've got to have something good to wash down all these southern sides with

So I'll see y'all back here in a couple of minutes. Sweet iced tea

There's just no other beverage like it as far as I'm concerned

And us Southerners think we really know our tea. In fact, we're almost downright cocky about it

Well, today I'm going to shake my tea up and do it just a little bit different

I'm going to sweeten this by using a simple syrup. Now, to make your simple syrup, all you do is add equal amount sugar and water

Cook it until it coats your spoon, and you've got simple syrup

Now, to make a flavored simple syrup, all we would do is cook peaches in with this

or raspberries, or strawberries, and we would strain it into a pitcher

and to keep the flavor of our tea up real strong, I've frozen some peach simple syrup

and we'll drop that in our glass, and our tea won't become watered down

like it would with a regular ice cube. That looks delicious. I'm gonna serve it with a wedge of fresh peach

and a sprig of nice, fresh mint. I hope that y'all will take time out of a busy day

especially on a hot summer day, to sit back with a nice, tall, cold glass of tea

Cheers! I had such a good time cooking up all this food for today's show

It kind of brings together two loves in my life, the Lady and Sons restaurant and my Grandma Paul

Her turnip mashed potatoes brought me back to when she was here with me

They're so good. And the Lady and Sons Hopping Johns and Succotash and Corn Casserole

And don't forget that big old pitcher of sweetened iced tea. Whether it's fruity or not, it's the perfect beverage for all these delicious side dishes

And until next time, I'd like to send love and best side dishes from my kitchen to yours