Mini Meals in Minutes

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

Because today, we're fixing no-fussed meals that won't take but just a few minutes

First up are my hot and bubbly mini Mexican pizzas that's just dripping 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 sauteed enough. I don't want to over saute 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 that look at

the boat. 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 gonna spray them with a little spray so that our biscuit mix won't stick

All right, and I'm just gonna rub a little on my hands, and I gonna come over here and I gonna pinch off a piece of biscuit mix about the size of a walnut And then I going to flatten it and I going to put it

I want to move things around so y'all can see. Can you see? All right, now I'm just going to form that little bowl around our muffin tins

Now, I'm going to use every other 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 going to puff up some

Just flatten it, and then I'm going to 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 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 y'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 going to finish up those pizzas for you

So y'all don't go anywhere, because 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

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 gonna run these back in the oven and just

let that ham and cheese melt. All right, now while that's melting, I'm gonna come

over here and I'm gonna make our chili. I'm gonna 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 gonna use the ground chuck, and I'm gonna brown it off. And

I don't even think I'm gonna 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. All right, 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 going to finish this off almost like a taco

since I've used the salsa as a base. And I'm going to 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 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 gonna just load this up, load the whipped cream up into our bag

Right, and I'm gonna nip the corner because I am using a small rimmed

container. 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. Then 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 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 of 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

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

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

All right so we got our bananas and the beauty of this dessert is there no 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? Mmm. So good. When we come back, I'm gonna 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 eatin'

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 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. 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 gonna 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 and 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

What 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