Mini Meals in Minutes

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen and the days of slavin' over a hot stove are over

Because today we're fixin' no fuss meals that won't take but just a few minutes

First up are my hot and bubbly mini Mexican pizzas that's just drippin' with a ooey gooey cheese

And then I've got hot and chunky chili served in the cutest little mini biscuit bowls that are just bursting with flavor

And finally, I want to show y'all Mama's banana dessert. It's so sweet and creamy, you won't believe how good it is

So get out your plates and napkins, because it's mini-meal time, y'all

Y'all know, I don't know how it happened, but somehow in my later life, I became one lucky chick

You can see I'm here in our backyard and I'm just enjoying this beautiful sunny day

And, you know, sometimes you don't want your meals to be this huge production

You want to just have real casual food. So today is all about quick mini meals

Now, I'm going to start by making some mini pizzas, and I've got my pot heating here

I'm going to put a little oil in there, and I'm going to saute quickly some bell peppers and some mushrooms

You can see I had my pot hot. And I think for this pizza, I want to make like a Mexican pizza

Instead of using a pizza sauce, I'm using a jarred salsa. And I'm going to be using one of the store-bought pizza crust

These are wonderful. Now, I'm going to take a large biscuit cutter

And you could put anything in here that you wanted to. You could use zucchini

You could use onions. What I've chosen today, though, is the mushrooms and the bell pepper

And do y'all know what I'm using as a table today? Michael has had this thing around the house or around in the yard for years

It's a trough that holds water for horses. Michael and his daughter Michelle and Anthony are just huge horse lovers

They love to ride horses. All right. Now I've got our pizza cut out for our crust

And now I'm going to take just a jarred salsa. And you can use any one that happens to be your favorite

And I'm just going to put a little bit of that on each one

Just like that. The children in my family love Mexican. Kari and Michelle could eat it four times a week easily

I think our vegetables are sautéed enough. I don't want to over-sauté them

I don't want them to be, like, mushy. Okay, now I'm going to put a little salt and pepper in the veggies

and toss those around. And then I'm going to put these on each of our pizzas

This is also fun to do after everybody gets to your house

Everybody can make their own pizza and put anything you want. You can have a variety of everything

Some people love black olives on their pizza. All right, now I'm going to put these in the oven, and I'm going to bake them for a few minutes

And then I'm going to come back, and I'm going to cheese them. But right now, look at the boat

Hey! Hey! I can't tell from this far who that is, but I know I know them

The next thing I want to show you today is chili in a mini biscuit bowl

Now we're going to start with two cups of biscuit mix and two-thirds cup of milk

And I'm going to put, because it's chili, I'm going to put just a little cayenne pepper in it just to give it a little kick

so you can see I got some mini muffin tins sitting here

We're just going to mix this up. And if you wanted to, you could even add cheese to this mix

All right, you can see how easy that came together. Now we're going to take our muffin tins

and instead of cooking them this way, we're going to cook on them this way

And I'm going to spray them with a little spray so that our biscuit mix won't stick

All right, and I'm just going to rub a little on my hands. And I'm going to come over here

and I going to pinch off a piece of biscuit mix about the size of a walnut And then I gonna flatten it and I gonna put it

y'all wanna move things around so y'all can see. Can you see

All right, now I'm just gonna form that little bowl around our muffin tins

Now I'm gonna use every other muffin muffin because if I tried to make them side by side on every one of them they

would stick together you know because they're gonna puff up some just flatten

it and then I'm gonna go to here and get our next bowl going you can see how easy

this is and you could season this up any way you wanted to now if you wanted to

to make your bowls a little bit bigger, you could use the medium-sized muffin tins. Or

if you wanted to make a big bowl for everybody, you know, they make those muffin tins that

are like jumbo size, that are like that big. And y'all can see probably how I'm dressed

today, that it's a little cool here in Savannah. And I've got some heaters going around me

and I can hear them crackling and popping. It sounds so good

All right, now let me show you all a little trick. I'm going to come behind each one

and flatten our biscuit bowls out so when they come out, they'll have a smooth bottom

and they won't sit cattywampus, you know, and roll out. So these are ready, and we're going to stick these in the oven

and when I come back, I'm gonna finish up those pizzas for ya

So y'all don't go anywhere, cause today we're noshing out with many meals in minutes

that are delicious. And look at these cute little biscuit bowls

Aren't those the cutest? Aren't those the cutest little bowls? All right, we're just going to sit those aside for a minute

and now I'm going to pull out our pizzas. Now you can do this any way you want to

Oops. But I think that I'm going to top these with cheese

Oh, and you can see they're steaming because it's a little nippy outside

All right, and I've got some hooked ham here. And you could use bacon or beef or chicken

anything you wanted to. and I'm going to run these back in the oven and just let that ham and cheese melt

All right, now while that's melting, I'm going to come over here and I'm going to make our chili

I'm going to start with a pound of ground chuck. So this is probably 90% lean and 10% fat

Personally, when I'm making chili for us to eat by the bowl, I use a link sausage

I use ground turkey and I use ground beef. I just love all those flavors mixed together

But for this, I'm just going to use the ground chuck, and I'm going to brown it off

and I don't even think I'm going to have to drain it since it's a chuck, so there shouldn't be much fat in it

And now I'm going to toss some onion and some diced bell pepper

and give that a toss. Alright, now I'm going to add a little salt

a little pepper, and two tablespoons of chili powder

Okay, this is really starting to smell good. And our cheese should be about melted on our pizzas

And I guess y'all have noticed that I'm not in my own kitchen today

I'm not in my regular kitchen. But, you know, Michael and I are building a house here in Savannah on the water

And you can see where all the shrimp boats are kept right down the way

And there's just nothing more beautiful than seeing these old shrimp boats coming down this little bitty creek

Now our cheese is melted. Those are piping hot. Now I'm going to take one of these out for you and put right there

Now I think I'm gonna finish this off almost like a taco

since I've used the salsa as a base. And I'm gonna put some lettuce on it

And sour cream. And oh, I wish I had some green onions

some green onion tops But look how good that is And I think you can have too much cheese All right I can hardly wait to dig in but before I do that I got to

finish getting everything in our chili pot. Now I'm adding the red kidney beans

and I'm adding a can of Mexican-style tomatoes. So they've got some seasoning in them, too. So

So we're just going to put that in there and let this simmer

I'm going to give it a quick stir. Oh, doesn't that look good

Now I've got a full pot. Oh, great time of day. That looks so good

I think I'm going to sit that plate on top of it so it can get hot quick. Oh, and now I'm ready to taste

You know, I'm weird about something. I love ripe olives to just stand up here and eat

In fact, I've been munching on them while I was piddling around back here

but I don't like them on my pizza. So I'm going to forego that

But I do love sour cream. Look how delicious that looks. And the pizza crust is so crispy, it's going to be like eating a fat crouton

Mmm. This is perfectly yummy. When we come back, I'm going to show y'all different variations that you can do with this little pizza

We're going to finish up our chili, and I'm going to be making Mama's banana dessert

So you don't want to miss that one. It's just out of this world delicious

So I'll see y'all back in a minute. We're back and I'm ready to pull together the last thing that's just going to complete all of our little mini meals today

And that's dessert. Now I'm putting some nuts in. I've got some pecans

And I'm going to throw them in the oven and I'm going to toast those off. Because when you toast them, it just really pulls out the oils in them and the flavor

And while those are toasting, I've got two cups of heavy cream

And I'm going to whip this up along with some sugar. And I'm going to just load this up, load the whipped cream up into our bag

All right, and I'm going to nip the corner because I am using a small rimmed container

And I'm going to start with a banana. And I'm going to do these last so they won't turn brown on me

But if you're in a hurry and you want to do these ahead of time, just put a little lemon

juice on them and that'll keep them from turning dark. I love bananas and they're a wonderful

source of potassium which women really need. And I smell our nuts. Let me go ahead and

get these out. All right, so I'm going to drop about four bananas down in there and

And I'm going to come in here with our bag and put some whipping cream

Now I'm going to come in here with a little chocolate syrup and just drizzle over this

This is almost kind of like a mini banana split. All right, now I'm going to come back in here with a couple more bananas

All right, now I'm going to crush some cream filled chocolate cookies

It's going to be so good with those bananas and that chocolate syrup

It looks so good. All right, and then we're going to come back with some more whipping cream and some more

chocolate syrup, and then I'm going to top these with our toasted nuts, and I'm just

going to kind of crush the nuts in my hand. And look how delicious that looks

All right, so we've got our bananas. And the beauty of this dessert is there no cooking to it The hardest part is whipping the cream and of course there nothing to that And then last but not least the things that make desserts so stinking

good is pecans. How delicious do those look? All right, now I'm going to come in here

and just get our chili. Now, if you don't want to pre-make these

you can just have a basket filled with your little bowls and people can come by and fix their own

In fact, you could keep your chili in a crock pot so it stays nice and hot in case you don't have a stove

so when everybody has a little mini bowl of chili, the chili's going to be piping hot

Now, I kept around a couple of things that I used on our pizzas

that to me go really well with our chili bowls. You know I'm a condiment girl

I love my condiments. So I think I would like mine with a dollop of sour cream and maybe just a little cheese

And I've got some fresh chives here. You can use chives or you could just use a green onion

But just for color, I'm gonna use a little fresh chive on mine

Doesn't that look yummy? So good. When we come back, I'm going to show y'all some ways that you can mix up your pizzas and please everybody

So y'all don't go anywhere. Because we still eat. Okay

Today's tip about your mini meals. You saw that I made the Mexican pizza earlier

Well, now I'm going to make an Italian pizza and a Greek pizza

And I'm going to use an olive tapenade for the Greek, and I'm just going to spread that around

And that's going to serve as like our base, like the salsa did, and like the marinade for Italian

Just a little fresh spinach. Put on that. All right, and then I'm going to top it with feta cheese

And on to our tray, those go. Now for an Italian, I'm going to use a nice rich tomato sauce

Now you can buy this from the store or you can make your own

And I'm going to use provolone cheese. You can make any pizza you like

You could do salmon, you could do pineapple. Now I'm going to throw these in the oven

All right, now I've got some that's already ready in the oven

and I can hear those little things sizzling. And I'm going to put these in and let them get ready

All right, now, on our Italian pizza, I've got some prosciutto. And I'm just going to come in here and make us some slices

and put that on top of the provolone cheese. and just that easy we've transformed that regular little pizza into three different kinds

and I hope your family's going to love every one of them. You got something for every taste

Mmm, I love prosciutto. You know, my family and I are notoriously big eaters

We love a big hearty meal, but sometimes even us big eaters like to just spend the afternoon or the evening

just kind of grazing and making that meal last all night long

And this is just perfect for us. The Italian, the Mexican, and the Greek pizzas

I've got something for everybody's taste. And these adorable little chili cups in a biscuit bowl, everybody loves

And last but not least, Mama's banana dessert in the little bitty glasses

I think it might be all right if I have two of these. I hope that your family likes some of these recipes

and y'all will try them when you're in a mood to just graze all night

So until next time, America, I always send you love and best dishes

From my family's kitchen to yours