Up next in 10
In this full episode Paula makes comfort food that is good for your heart and good for your soul. Cozy up by the fireplace and enjoy some Chicken Noodle Soup, Savory Herb Cornbread, and Oxtails.
All Recipes Below:
The Lady’s Chicken Noodle Soup
https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/the-ladys-chicken-noodle-soup/
Herb Cornbread
https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/herb-cornbread/
Country Oxtails
https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/country-oxtails/
All recipes courtesy of www.PaulaDeen.com
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0:00
Hey y'all, I'm Paula Dean and you know
0:02
when there's a nip in the air, there's
0:04
just nothing better than curling up with
0:06
some good old comfort food. And today is
0:09
just one of those days. So I'm going to
0:12
be cooking up some of my favorites that
0:14
are not only good for your heart, but
0:17
good for your soul, too.
0:20
I'm going to be starting with a ladies
0:22
chicken noodle soup. And I'm going to be
0:25
making my savory herbed cornbread to go
0:27
on the side of it. And then I'm going to
0:30
be fixing up oxtails. If y'all have
0:32
never tried them, now's the time. So,
0:35
y'all set a cozy place by the fire
0:38
because it's a perfect night to stay
1:12
Such a feel-good day. You wouldn't
1:15
believe, but in here in the pantry, I've
1:17
got two dogs sleeping so hard that
1:20
they're snoring. There's a nip in the
1:23
air. And today is all about cozy
1:26
cooking. And I'm wearing one of my
1:28
favorite aprons. Uh, it always makes me
1:32
feel good just putting this one on.
1:34
Country cooking makes you good-looking.
1:37
I should be um Miss Universe
1:40
if that were the case.
1:43
The very first food is chicken soup. It
1:46
was the first soup that I ever made for
1:49
the bag lady customers. But we're going
1:51
to start with a pot of water. Now, I
1:53
have a whole chicken here. And this
1:55
chicken probably weighs 3 lbs. To me,
1:58
the chicken is easier to pick if if he's
2:00
left whole.
2:02
And I'm going to add bay leaves.
2:07
and some lemon pepper
2:10
and Italian seasoning. That Italian
2:13
seasoning is going to be so good. And
2:15
I'm adding a few chicken bullion cubes.
2:18
In fact, three, just to make sure it's
2:20
rich enough. And fresh garlic
2:26
and some salt.
2:30
And I want to make sure that that's
2:32
nice and salty.
2:35
All right. Now, we're going to add some
2:37
pepper to this pot.
2:44
Oh, I just love onion in here. I love
2:46
that onion. For y'all that don't know my
2:49
story, I started 16 years ago with a
2:52
business called The Bag Lady. And I just
2:55
desperately wanted to be able to take
2:57
care of my myself and my two sons. And
3:00
you know, I had no talent, no no
3:03
education, no nothing. So I was a pretty
3:06
good cook. So that made me turn to my
3:08
stove
3:10
and I began a business in my kitchen at
3:13
the house and it was called the bag
3:16
lady. And I would make bag lunches and
3:18
send my children out to sell them.
3:23
That was just 16 short years ago. In a
3:26
way it seems like a lifetime but
3:29
in reality 16 years is not long.
3:33
Yeah. You know that they say that
3:36
chicken soup really has medicinal
3:38
purposes and I would say um this soup
3:43
really
3:44
kind of saved the life of me and the
3:46
boys. So I think it does have medicinal
3:48
values and I know it's going to be
3:50
wonderful when it's ready. All right, so
3:53
let's move on. You know, you can't have
3:54
soup without something to soop it with.
3:58
Uh biscuits are good with it. Cornbread
4:01
is good, and that's what I've chosen to
4:03
serve with this today. It's just
4:05
self-rising uh meal,
4:07
self-rising flour,
4:12
dried thyme,
4:16
celery seed, and margarm.
4:20
And I'm just going to give these a quick
4:21
stir.
4:26
And I've got two eggs.
4:31
This is a real simple cornbread recipe.
4:36
And what's a cornbread without a half a
4:40
stick of butter? Got to have a little
4:42
butter.
4:46
All right. And then we've got 1 and 1/2
4:50
cups of milk. And I'm cooking mine in a
4:53
8 by8 square dish.
4:57
We're going to preheat our oven to 450
4:59
and we're going to bake it for about 25
5:02
minutes. And there's nothing like good
5:04
cornbread. Just nothing nothing.
5:08
All right. So, we're just going to spray
5:09
our pan
5:18
and into the dish it goes.
5:25
And in 25 minutes, we're going to have
5:27
herb cornbread.
5:31
Well, I've got a surprise for y'all.
5:33
We're not going to have to wait 25
5:35
minutes for our cornbread. I've got one
5:37
over here that's been cooking and I'll
5:40
bet it's ready.
5:46
Hey, Renie. And you smell the cornbread,
5:49
didn't you?
5:51
And the chicken. Oh my goodness. You
5:53
want some chicken?
5:57
All right.
5:59
I'll give you a bite. Okay.
6:03
It's kind of warm.
6:05
Kind of hot, actually. Reie,
6:10
it just looks yummy.
6:14
Are you ready? I'm not going to let you
6:16
have any butter.
6:20
I don't think it's good for you. Maybe.
6:23
Maybe it's not good for dogs. But it
6:26
makes my complexion pretty. Reie. All
6:28
right. Here we go. Renie, you're getting
6:31
old.
6:34
I swear Renie's old. She's losing it.
6:41
When we come back, we're going to
6:42
continue to work on our pot of chicken
6:44
soup, which I need to cover up. And
6:47
possibly my favorite one to eat, oxtails
6:50
and buttered rice. So y'all don't go
6:52
anywhere.
6:54
Those oxtails are over the top. We going
6:56
to have swinging sirloin, y'all.
7:01
Ain't that good, honey?
7:03
[Music]
7:09
[Music]
7:17
All right, let's take a look at our
7:19
chicken.
7:21
Take him out.
7:23
All right, we're going to move him right
7:24
over here. In the meantime, while I'm
7:28
taking the meat off him, I'm going to
7:30
put in our celery.
7:33
And you know, I put the onion in uh when
7:36
I first put the chicken in. So, we've
7:37
got that in there. And our carrots.
7:42
All right. So, we're going to let our
7:43
vegetables cook for a few minutes, and
7:46
we're going to start picking our
7:47
chicken.
7:51
I got so good at this, y'all. It was
7:53
scary.
7:54
When I was doing the bag lady out of my
7:57
house, I picked a minimum of eight
8:00
chickens a day just for my chicken
8:02
salad. That didn't count the other
8:04
chicken dishes like chicken noodle soup,
8:11
chicken pot pies. Oh, and this is hot.
8:14
But you see how easy it is when you
8:16
start whole, not having all those little
8:18
bitty pieces.
8:22
Yeah, this chicken soup just the
8:25
memories just come rushing back in. It
8:28
kept food in our bellies and house
8:30
payments going.
8:33
You know, I just I love my boys so much.
8:36
These big old football playing, baseball
8:38
playing guys out walking the streets
8:41
with their baskets.
8:43
And Jamie said, we were talking the
8:46
other day and Jamie said, "Mama, you
8:48
know, probably the lowest point
8:52
was the last year that the bag lady was
8:54
running and it was Halloween
8:57
and he dressed up like a bag lady and he
9:00
had the boobs. He boobs and and mascara
9:05
and his hair was curled and he looked
9:08
just like a bag lady." He said, "Mama,
9:10
you should have known then that there
9:12
was nothing in the world that I wouldn't
9:13
do for you." He said, "Cuz that was so
9:16
humiliating."
9:18
This big old 6'4 guy
9:21
out pedalling sandwiches in a dress,
9:27
you know, you just girls got to do what
9:29
a girl's got to do though to make a
9:31
living.
9:33
And it turned out the right thing to do.
9:36
There's lots of things that you could
9:39
use this chicken for if you didn't make
9:41
a want to make a great big pot. Uh you
9:44
could make chicken salad out of it. You
9:46
could make a a chicken casserole.
9:51
You could make a chicken omelette,
9:54
chicken cookies.
9:56
I just wanted to see if y'all were
9:57
awake. I've never made chicken cookies.
10:01
I used to didn't think I was ever going
10:03
to get through picking chickens.
10:06
Let me give my hands a wash.
10:10
Chicken fat is a wonderful hand lotion.
10:13
All right, let's come over here and
10:15
look.
10:19
Oh, that's looking good. All right, now
10:21
I'm going to go ahead and add the
10:23
noodles now.
10:31
Just add a little fresh parsley.
10:38
Yeah, I like a lot of those herbs
10:39
floating around. And to finish our soup
10:42
off, I'm going to add some cherry.
10:46
Now, this is optional. You may not like
10:47
that flavor in your soup, so don't feel
10:50
like you have to add it. And I'm going
10:53
to add a little bit of seasoning salt.
10:57
And I'm going to add some heavy cream.
11:00
Now, this is optional, too, but I like
11:03
to bring it to almost a cream state
11:06
rather than a brothy state.
11:10
So, see what that pot's doing?
11:14
It's just turning almost magic on us
11:17
with that cream.
11:20
And I'm going to add a little handful of
11:24
Parmesan cheese.
11:27
Well, maybe two handfuls. That was
11:33
yum. And now I'm going to toss our
11:36
chicken
11:37
into our pot.
11:43
I like to really be able to see the
11:45
meat.
11:47
Um,
11:48
and you know, in your storebought soups,
11:53
the chicken is like in little teeny
11:55
teeny tiny bite-sized cubes. But I like
11:58
it where when you dip your soup up, you
12:01
really almost need to use a knife on
12:05
some of those pieces of meat.
12:11
Oh, it looks delicious.
12:13
All right, and one last ingredient for
12:15
this, just a few mushrooms on top.
12:20
And that kind of reminds me of the
12:22
mushroom soup that you get in your Asian
12:25
restaurants.
12:28
Wow.
12:30
This will cure what ails you.
12:34
I know it did me if it hadn't been for
12:36
the chicken.
12:39
I don't know what I'd done. Chicken made
12:42
me the woman I am today, y'all.
12:47
Thank goodness for chicken. That is so
12:48
delicious. Now, I've just got one last
12:51
thing to do. I've got some rosemary and
12:54
some beautiful flat Italian parsley. And
12:58
I'm just going to drop those in there.
13:07
Look at that beautiful pot of soup. Look
13:10
at that bay leaf. And
13:49
[Music]
13:51
Oh, y'all going to just love it. I'll
13:55
see y'all in a little while.
13:57
I'm just going to spend a couple of
13:58
minutes here with my soup and then I'm
14:01
pulling out those oxtails. So, y'all
14:03
don't go anywhere.
14:07
[Music]
14:13
[Music]
14:22
All right, are y'all ready to cook
14:23
oxtails?
14:25
You know, people ask me all the time,
14:26
Paula, what is your favorite food? And I
14:28
have to say the oxtails is right up
14:30
there at the top. This is swing sirloin.
14:34
This is the part down here that swats
14:36
the fl
14:39
and
14:40
and this is the end that's closest to
14:43
the rump.
14:44
Now, we've tried cutting these at the
14:46
restaurant by using a hatchet, and it's
14:50
really, really hard to cut through that
14:53
bone. So, this is something that you'll
14:56
definitely want the butcher to do. Now,
14:58
I have had this one cut into pieces that
15:01
are about 2 in thick. This is a real,
15:04
real meat because of all the mara.
15:07
There's going to be a fabulous mara that
15:10
comes out of this bone.
15:12
People down south just love oxtails and
15:15
they would love for me to run them on
15:16
the buffet at the lady and sons, but
15:19
it's not always feasible because of the
15:21
price of them. But once in a while I do
15:24
like to run them. So we're going to take
15:25
these now and we're going to season them
15:27
up.
15:31
And this is just house seasoning I'm
15:33
putting on them.
15:37
All right. And I'm going to put just a
15:40
little bit of soy sauce. I found that
15:41
this gives them a lot of flavor that you
15:45
wouldn't have without it.
15:48
You could you could use a worooster, but
15:51
I'm not a big fan
15:54
of worooster shower. All right. Now, I'm
15:56
going to just lay a few bay leaves in
15:58
there.
16:00
And I'm going to
16:06
put an onion in here. I love that onion.
16:09
But our house seasoning has salt,
16:11
pepper, and garlic already in it. But
16:13
some extra garlic certainly wouldn't
16:15
hurt it.
16:18
And I'm just going to kind of pedal this
16:20
onion.
16:28
I kind of came up with this way of
16:30
cooking them on my own. You know, it
16:33
really just depends on whether you like
16:35
a lot of gravy or you like just a little
16:38
bit of the rich stock. So, the last
16:40
thing I'm going to do to these is put
16:42
just a little bit of water in the bottom
16:44
of the pan cuz I don't want them to
16:46
burn.
16:48
So, that's enough. Now, we're going to
16:50
cover them. And I'm going to let these
16:52
cook
16:54
until they're tender, which may take
16:57
four hours. It may take two hours just
17:00
depending on the quality of the meat. So
17:04
in 3 and 1/2 hours, 4 hours, we're going
17:06
to have oxtails.
17:08
I'm going to throw these into the 350
17:10
preheated oven.
17:16
Y'all know that I'm not going to make
17:17
you wait that long to see a dish.
17:22
And now I just want to wash my hands.
17:34
Look at that.
17:39
This is one of those dishes where you
17:41
can really make it your own.
17:44
I think I've just probably given you the
17:46
idea
17:48
of how it works for me. So, you can make
17:51
it taste any way you want to.
17:55
I took the tin foil off of this about 30
17:58
minutes ago and
18:03
let the oxtails kind of brown.
18:12
Gracious. Can't wait to taste it with
18:14
the rice.
18:25
[Music]
18:27
and then add my favorite little piece to
18:29
it.
18:36
Y'all stick around cuz coming up next is
18:40
some more chicken tips. So, I'll see
18:42
y'all back in a minute.
18:46
All
18:49
[Music]
18:57
right, let's talk about chicken stock
19:00
and making a quick pot of chicken soup
19:05
because we don't have all day here to
19:07
make this soup. So, y'all have heard me
19:10
say before how I love to take my stock
19:12
and just freeze it. Throw that in our
19:15
pot. And I'm going to cheat today by
19:19
using canned vegetables.
19:22
I'm using canned potatoes, canned
19:24
carrots, but I am using fresh celery
19:28
and fresh onions.
19:38
Got our carrots
19:42
and our potatoes. I'm going to throw in
19:44
my herbs.
19:49
Couple of bay leaves.
19:53
We're going to add our chicken.
19:57
And if you find yourself running short
19:59
on chicken stock, just marry the fresh
20:01
with some canned and you won't know the
20:03
difference. So, we've thrown everything
20:05
in here. Now, I'm going to dump the
20:07
pasta.
20:10
And in 10 minutes, we're going to have a
20:13
fresh pot of chicken soup. And don't
20:16
forget to stop by your grocery store and
20:18
take advantage of those whole chickens
20:21
that are precooked. You can bring it
20:23
home and have a pot of soup in just a
20:25
matter of a few minutes.
20:28
Oh, I had so much fun today cozying up
20:31
to my stove with all these dishes. The
20:34
chicken noodle soup. What? Gertie
20:36
brought me back to the bag lady days and
20:38
herb cornbread. It's all so so good.
20:43
Y'all just have to try the oxtails. Give
20:45
them one shot. You're going to love
20:47
them. So, until next time, y'all. Gertie
20:50
and I send y'all best dishes, hugs, and
20:53
kisses from our kitchen to yours.
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