Grillades

If y'all are ready to turn the heat on, I am too

We're going to start with a hot, spicy pot of griots. So I'm going to start with this beautiful meat

I'm going to salt him. And garlic powder him. And for a little extra heat, peppering

And I'm just going to toss that around in there. and then I'm gonna dust them with just a little bit of flour

Not a whole lot, but just a little. Now I've got a good heavy cast iron pot here on the stove

Now to this hot pot, I'm gonna add some bacon grease. Oh, really adds nice, nice flavor to this dish

And a little vegetable oil. Okay. The meat's ready to go into our pot

and we want our pot hot enough so that it's going to sear and really brown our meat for us

I've told y'all before that Michael's brother, Hank, is a priest in New Orleans

so I just talk food with Hank all the time. And Hank was actually here in Savannah, Viston

I had been out of town working for four or five days, and I was so starved for home cooking

I called the house to let Michael know what time to pick me up at the airport and he said Hank sitting here with me and I said put him on the phone please I said Hank would you please have me something good cooked And he said yeah honey I do that

I'll have you something. Well, I got home about 10.30 or 11 that night

And Hank had a big old pot of buttery, creamy grits. And a big old pot of steaming grillades

And I had never had this dish before. So you can see that meat is sizzling and searing in that bacon grease and that vegetable oil

All right, we've got our meat brown, and now I'm going to take it out and put it in our bowl

because we've got some vegetables to cook now. And we actually want about three tablespoons of grease left in here

So now to the pot, I'm adding fresh garlic, celery, onions, and bell pepper, and cook those

a few minutes until they're just coated with the bacon grease and tender

Okay, those look done enough, so I'm just going to scoop these out

All right, we're going to need about three tablespoons of oil in here to make our roux

Now, to make my roux, I'm gonna switch spoons, because I love making my roux with a wooden spoon

And we've got it hot, and we're gonna add some flour. And we just gonna stir that up until it gets a nice brown color All right now I have got some beef stock that I heated back here on the back stove

and I'm just gonna add that into our flour. All right, just a minute to get hot

Now I'm gonna put everything back in our pot. We'll get all those little crumbies off of there

I definitely want those in the pot. We're on our way. All right, to our pot now, I'm gonna add a little salt

And if it needs more, I can always add it. And then I'll throw in about three bay leaves

and about a teaspoon of basil and about a teaspoon of thyme

All right, the ingredient that's gonna make this really hot and spicy is a can of Rotel tomatoes

and I always use extra hot. And I'm gonna put in about a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce

and just in case the Rotel tomatoes didn't do the trick, a couple of tablespoons of hot sauce

Our pot is just looking fabulous already To this I like the chunkiness of a fresh tomato in it and I just kind of crunch them in my hand and tear them up

I don't chop them or dice them, because I actually want to be able to see those tomatoes

That looks delicious. Now, I'm going to cover this and let it simmer for about an hour and a half

or as long as it takes for our meat to really be fork tender. Now, I've already got a pot back here that's ready

because I knew we wouldn't have that long to wait on that pot to cook

So let's see what we've got. Look how good that looks. You just don't eat griots without grits

Now I've got a pot of hot, steamy grits. Now I've actually cooked these grits

with a little cream and a little butter. But I have to have just a little bit of butter

when I bowl up my grits. I just can't seem to eat them without it

So here goes the griots. And this is just how Hank taught me to eat them

With lots of butter. Looks just yummy. Mmm, they're so out of this world

Thank you