Firehouse Potluck Dinner

Hi y'all, I'm Paula Deen and the heat is on today because I've been invited for a potluck supper down at the firehouse, but I can't turn up empty-handed

So first I'm going to have to crack open the Cronk Pot and get a good old-fashioned pot of roast going

And while that's ticking, I hope your tongue knows how to dial 911 because my famous three-alarm hot and spicy buffalo wings are going to knock your socks off

And finally, I'm going to show you how to make the creamiest, cheesiest macaroni and cheese in the world

Talking about comfort food with a capital C. So here we come, boys, ready or not

Some like it hot. Hey, everybody

I'm so glad that y'all have joined me for today's show. It is in honor of the firemen, the brave, courageous men that protect us during the day and night

So today, I'm going to be cooking up these guys a potluck dinner

But before I can get started, I'm going to visit a man that grows his own hot peppers

and makes his own wonderful hot sauce. I found out about Hoboken Eddie when I heard a friend rave about a bottle of his homemade hot sauce

I tried it, loved it, and wanted to know how he did it so well

Well, his secret is simple. He starts his kick-butt bottles of sauce by growing his own varieties of chili in his backyard

Then, using his own recipes, he concentrates the flavors the old-fashioned way

All my stuff is all made by hand. So there's no meats, fats, oils, or cornstarch in any of my sauces

They're all thickened naturally by cooking them down. Each bottle is filled by hand, capped by hand, washed, and labeled by hand

But I wanted tips on how I could identify the right peppers for my own cooking

I knew a mistake could really bite me back. These right here are the hottest peppers right here

Those are habaneros. And these? These are jalapenos. Those have a nice heat, too, and I like them

A lot of people are comfortable with jalapeno. They like hot, and they don't have to be too obnoxious

Now, what about these? These are very familiar to me because my grandmother used to grow them in pots

Yeah, those are long red cayennes right there. Okay, she used to grow them and make pepper sauce

These are my hot cherry peppers. And then these over here, these are cubanellas

These have a nice heat to them, and they also make a nice salad. And what's nice about them, too, is they're big enough where you could either cut them in half or put a slit in them

and either saute them down or poach them down, and those are nice for stuffing as well

And how about these? These? I call them large pepperoncinis. Pepperoncinis? Yeah, like the little Italian hot peppers

but these are hot, but they're not obnoxiously hot. Is there anything that I can do to take away a little bit of the heat

but still have the flavor? Well, the seeds hold the most heat

Actually, this end right here will be a lot more milder than up here

So if you were to cut them in half and take the seeds out, that'll take some of the heat out

So the higher you go up the pepper, the hotter it gets

Well, I have to tell you, when I make my hot wings, I always use a good Louisiana hot sauce

But I was so interested in your hot pepper sauce. I really do want to try it

That's what we're here for. Show me how you make it, or will you show me? I can't show you all the secrets, but we can touch some of it

I take a combination of these peppers, and then what I'll do is I'll put it in a big pot

and then I'll put my extra ingredients in there. I usually like to combine it with some vinegar

and some type of tomato product. and then, you know, whatever seasonings you like

If you like garlic or if you like a little Cajun spice or something, you know, it's your baby

Whatever you want it to, you know, to be your end flavor. Well, I can't wait to try it

Well, here, go ahead and take that one. That's the first bottle. That's good luck for you. That's wonderful. All right

So I'm going to take this and this, and I'll try both of them. I appreciate it so much

I can't hardly wait to get back to the house and cook my hot wings. That's my pleasure

And this one's still hot. Do you have a sack? A sack? I have a whole gift basket for you

You just give out. This is mine. I'm here to spoil you

I take the whole thing? That's for you, kid. And you come back when you empty those, all right

Bring back empty bottles for me. All right? Thank you, dear. All right

All the best. I appreciate it. We'll see you later. All right, Paula. All the best to you

Thanks. I like to take sauces like Eddie's and play with them

I like mine a little sweeter than most so I find a sauce I like and then I make it my own And one of the things that we want to remember is that we want to balance our hot sauce with

flavor as well as heat. Otherwise, you could possibly ruin your dish. And before I get

started on these hot wings, I'm going to move over here and I'm going to start on our crock

pot roast. So let's come on over here and start untying our chuck roast. This one's

just been tied up to keep it from falling apart. And you can see from all the marbling

in our roast that it's going to give it great flavor and moisture. And this is so simple

I've been making this recipe for years for my family. I used to put this roast on before I would leave for work

and it was so nice to come in and have this aromatic meat

just hitting me in the face as I came in the door. So now that's all we're going to do to that

And this is our house seasoning. Makes it so simple because it's just one movement

And I've got my cast iron skillet nice and hot, and I'm going to add just a couple of tablespoons of oil

and we're just gonna brown him and sear him off good. We're not by any means gonna try to get him cooked

because you can see he's a big, thick boy. I wanna spend a few minutes with you

just talking about different cuts of meat. A chuck roast is a relatively inexpensive cut

and I just love cooking with it. Now, you can certainly pick out a prettier piece of meat

but I've just found that the more expensive the meat, the less flavor it has

So a cheaper cut of meat, you're going to find more fat in it. And if you find more fat, you're going to find more flavor

We're sealing this because it's going to trap that flavor and that moisture inside of your roast

And when we put it in our crock pot, when we put our liquids in and it starts cooking

then all those flavors are going to come out into the pot. And he's smelling good already

We've got our roast ready. And the new crock pots today are just wonderful because the liners lift out, which makes it

so much easier than the old-timey crock pots that was stationary in their cooking element

Now, all we're going to do to this pot roast now is cover it with onions

just a regular sweet onion. We're going to stick in a few bay leaves

We're going to add a couple of beef bouillon cubes. Now, these are a little larger than what I normally use

so I'm just going to drop in two of these today rather than three

And we're going to top it with cream of mushroom soup. And the cream of mushroom soup is going to supply us with our gravy

It's going to mix with the stock that comes out of the roast, and it's going to be totally and perfectly yummy

And now I'm going to top it off with just a couple of cloves of garlic

In fact, you don't even have to slice it, you can just bust it up

We're going to put a little splash of wine. We're going to pour a little water over it

You'll want to just kind of cover your roast. So we're ready to go

And we're going to let this cook now for about eight hours, which is hopefully a typical

working day. You can leave it in the pot a little longer if you like your meat more tender

When we come back, hot and spicy buffalo wings, so y'all join me

All right, now that I've got the roast on, I'm going to tease the men's appetite with

some hot wings. These are so fun and easy to cook. It's actually easier than like frying chicken at home

We're just going to start with some disjointed wings. We've got the flapper part and we've got the drumstick part

And I'm going to dry these off because we don't want any water on them as we put them

into our pan. And all I'm going to do is just salt them

Do you know why these are called buffalo wings? They originated in the Anchor Restaurant in Buffalo, New York

And in no time they took off across the country. I don't know of anybody that doesn't like a good hot wing

So we've got these salted now, and we're going to drop these naked into our hot grease

and we're at 350 degrees. You don't want to toss these in flour, because when we go to dunk them and bathe them in

in our hot sauce, that flour would just turn to goop. Little

Now I don't know if y'all just caught that wing flopping around in there and popping me but if you frightened of that they make screens that fit over these pots It looks just like a screen door only it round And while we waiting on these to cook

I'm going to make the sauce that we're going to be bathing them in. And we're going to take our butter

For this amount, I'm going to use about a half a stick. And I'm going to turn that fire off now

because there's enough heat in it to melt our butter. And now for our heat, I've got a couple of different hot sauces here

You can see that this one has seeds in it, and it's a hotter sauce

But I think I'm going to opt to use the milder sauce

And I'm just going to stir that into our butter. Now you can use any heat that you want on your wings

because I know men can be kind of macho about their heat

It's like the hotter they can eat it, the more macho and manly they are

But since I'm going to be joining the guys and eating these hot wings, I'm making it just a little bit milder for my palate

And it's still plenty hot enough. It's amazing what the butter does to that hot sauce

You could reduce the heat on your sauce by starting with a milder hot sauce

or you could just cut it by adding more butter. All right, our wings are just the way I like them now

nice and crispy. And all we do now is just take our chicken wings

and drop them over into our sauce. You can see these are floating around in there

so we know that they're nice and done. And all we do now is just toss them around in that sauce

making sure they're all coated just like that. So you can see how easy it is to have buffalo wings at home

You don't have to save this dish for a restaurant by any means. It's very, very simple

So we're going to wheel this pot around here, and we're going to plate them up just like this

Next, we're going to be preparing the ladies' cheesy mac. So y'all hang around

I guess I probably really don't have to tell y'all, but today's recipes that I'm using are

all those rib-stickin' comfort foods. And the dish that I'm fixing to prepare now is probably the number one most loved comfort

food that we serve at the restaurant, and that's the ladies' cheesy mac

So we've got our elbow macaronis in salted water, and we're going to cook those until

they're tender. I've used a small elbow macaroni today. Now you can use any kind of pasta that you like, but to me, this is typical of the macaroni

and cheese that I've known since I was a child. Okay, our noodles are ready

They're nice and tender. Now your important step on this part is draining your noodles

If you don't, it's going to make a watery base for your macaroni and cheese, and we

We want it totally and completely creamy. That water will slowly drip out of there for a while, and the water will get caught in

the little elbows. So you really have to give it a few shakes

And I think we've gotten that pretty well drained. We're going to put them into our bowl

And this is a good point at which you can just set them to the side and let them cool

while you're doing something else. I'm going to cool these noodles off by adding the milk to them

This is just regular whole milk. Another milk product that I really love using is evaporated milk

but your canned milk is so rich it pours like a cream

And now I'm going to add a little bit of sour cream, and this is our secret ingredient to our macaroni and cheese

People are always surprised when I tell them that it has sour cream in it

So this has chilled our noodles down nicely. We're going to add a little salt and naturally a little butter

Can't have a southern dish without butter, can we? Or at least I can't

My Aunt Glynnis had us every Thanksgiving, the whole entire family. And she had macaroni and cheese every meal for us

She makes the absolute best. And I make mine just like she does, except I add the sour cream

because I like the creaminess that it gives us. So now we're going to add our cheddar cheese

and I love the hoop cheese. Hoop cheese is your big, round wheels of cheese

and they're covered in wax. They have a red wax or might even have a black wax

And now our last ingredient is going to be our eggs. And our eggs are going to almost give it a souffle-like texture

You can see how the cheese and the sour cream and the eggs

are already starting to give you a very creamy thick rich texture All we going to do now is take our macaroni and cheese and pour it into a spray dish pop it into the oven and when we get ready to go take it out we

going to top it with a little bit more cheese. Look how yummy and creamy that looks. Now

I've had some people call me and say, Paula, my macaroni and cheese curdled up on me. And

And I can't imagine why it would do that. The only thing that I can think of is that maybe they put their eggs in with the noodles

before they cooled properly. But in the oven we go

And in about 30 minutes, we're going to have the most terrific creamy macaroni and cheese

you ever put in your mouth. While that's cooking, let's plate up our roast

And it's just as tender and juicy as I knew it would be

It's just wanting to fall apart on us. Now, at this point, I would throw this into a sauce pot and mix a little cornstarch and

cold water up, and I would thicken this up. But again, that's strictly a personal preference

Some people might like their gravy's thin. I can really kind of go either way, but if I had to choose, I'd probably lean towards

the thicker gravy. Looks yummy, doesn't it? Our macaroni and cheese should be ready now

so let's go see what it looks like. As I told you, I held out some cheese when I was

mixing it for the top. And see how pretty the cheese looks when it covers those noodles

You know, some things you just take for granted. And maybe I'm guilty of taking this for granted

You know there's a couple of things that you can't have too much of in a southern dish

One of them's butter and the other one's cheese. I just can't wait to taste this

It's so incredibly good. Y'all stick around because I'm fixing to pull this whole meal together for those great guys

So you come back and see what we're doing next. I don't know if y'all were paying attention today while I was doing my cooking

but I cooked most of our food today in a cast iron skillet

These skillets have been around since the beginning of time, and they're wonderful. They distribute your heat so evenly, and I just love cooking in them

If you don't have one, you can go to a hardware store, or the way that I like to get mine is to go to junk stores

because the ones you're going to find there, they're old and they're already seasoned

It's not that it's that hard, but it just takes time. This is how you season them

You coat them with a solid shortening, throw them in the oven before you go to bed

and let them continue to heat all during the night. Another way to season these little beauties

if you're not in a big rush for them, is to grease them up with your solid shortening

throw them over into a paper bag, roll your top up, seal them, and just throw them into a cabinet

And they should be ready for you in a few days. I had a lunch date at the LaGrange Firehouse

They have four full-time and 30 volunteer firemen and women. and when they get together, they love to eat

Well, I sure hope they enjoy my contribution to their lunch. Well, you can see what I brought for y'all today

the hot wings, the pot roast, the macaroni and cheese, and the stuffed peppers

Now I want you to try some of my pot roast. Very good

Good. Excellent. Good. Ed certainly seemed to enjoy my chicken wings. I think I died and went to heaven

You think so? Hot enough for you, baby. Okay. Just nice. Just nice

Just how important is the food? Food is very important. When you have firemen that come from work all day, volunteers

and they have to come to the firehouse at night and do things, a lot of times a lot of them don't get a chance to eat their dinner

so we have to supply something for them. We can come back to the firehouse after we've been out four or five hours on a run

and even if it's midnight at night, we're hungry. Michael whips something up

He'll have something there. It could be his balsamic chicken or whatever he needs

The potatoes go over pretty good, too. So, John, like everything, guys

Oh, yes. Beat up to your expectations. You did a great job

All right, good. All right, good. Well, I was really a little nervous about coming today because I know that firemen are very, very good cooks

Remember, America, to love your firemen. And until next time, best dishes from my kitchen to yours