Money Saving

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen

Now, y'all don't be fooled by this big kitchen. You know, I've always been a frugal girl

And nowadays, I make sure that I save enough to pay for my one big indulgence

So today, I'm pinching pennies again. Bet you thought you couldn't have fish on a budget, did you

Well, my thyme mustard catfish and black-eyed pea cakes taste great. And they have a price tag that's just as appetizing

I'm also going to fix up some extra special coleslaw with a twist

And for dessert, we're going to be having a creme caramel, which sounds and looks fancy

But just wait till y'all see how simple it is. So keep your money in the bank, because today's show is all about eating like a king for less

Music

Today's meals are about making economy-friendly food, and nothing does that like salmon

In fact, the dish that I'm going to start making today is such a good dish to make because not only is it cost-efficient

but it's the products that you have in your pantry. I'm going to make a cream caramel custard

and I've already gotten the cream caramel made, And I've started that by taking a half a cup of sugar and a few drops of water and just caramelizing that sugar

And over here, let's start making our custard. Now I'm going to start with five eggs, a half a cup of sugar, three cups of milk, a pinch of salt, and a teaspoon of vanilla

And I know that those ingredients are found in everybody's kitchen. So I'm going to start by cracking our eggs in a separate dish

because we'll want to check them all out, make sure they're all right

Okay, so there's five clean eggs, and I'm going to mix that with a half a cup of sugar

and I'm just going to beat this until it's a light, pretty lemony color and kind of fluffy. Okay

I'm gonna throw in a pinch of salt, one teaspoon of vanilla

and then I'm gonna slowly add three cups of milk. All right, let's take a look at this

And now I'm gonna just pour it right back into my measuring cup because it has a spout

on it and it'll allow me to fill the custard cups without making a tremendous mess

I'm gonna take a little bit of our caramelized sugar and put it in the bottom of each buttered

custard cup. All right, so in we go

And I'm going to fill them to the spot that the dish starts to flare out

right there on that rim. And this is really just a basic egg custard recipe

but by me taking just a couple of minutes to caramelize that sugar

it's going to take an ordinary dish and turn it into an extraordinary dessert

So I'm going to ease this over to our oven and I'm going to cook this in a water bath

And this is hot water, and I'm going to fill this pan up

until it comes about halfway up my custard cups. So these are ready to go in

I'm going to put them in a 350 preheated degree oven, and I'm going to let them bake for about an hour

Well I already made one batch Look at that how pretty is that Now remember

I poured our custard into buttered souffle cups. So all I want to do is take my knife

and run around the edges and make sure I give that a little head start on loosening it. And

And I'm going to take my container, flip it upside down, and peek in here and see if it needs any help

Look at that. I don't think cream caramel is quite the same without a little bit of fresh whipped cream

Just to make it look like I'm eating healthy, I'm going to put some green on it

Just a little fresh mint. And then the next thing I'm going to put on it is my spoon

So good. So, so good. And we have made this for pennies

When we come back, I'm going to share with y'all a wonderful catfish

that I marinate in thyme and mustard, and it's so good. Catfish is one of those wonderful fish

that doesn't throw you into a new tax bracket. And to serve along with that

I'm going to be cooking up some black-eyed pea cakes because, honey, black-eyed peas is just pennies

You're probably thinking, now who is she kidding? What is she doing making money-saving meals and her in that kitchen

Well, I have to tell y'all, I'm not an extravagant person. I'm just not

It's embedded in my mind that I'm the bag lady, and I'll die being the bag lady

So, you know, in order to pay for this kitchen, I have to think about money-saving meals

and this is going to be one of them. Now, these black-eyed pea fritter cakes, you can always go to the pantry and pull out a can of black-eyed peas

It's been seasoned with, like, ham hock. You can buy these at the grocery store, probably 79 cents a can

So they're very, very reasonable. Now, to these black-eyed peas, I'm going to add about a half a cup of bacon that's been cooked crisp

All right, next I'm going to add a third of a cup of roasted red peppers

This is coming straight out of a jar that I bought at the grocery store

To make sure this binds together, I'm going to come over here with a little flour that's

been seasoned with salt and pepper. And before we finish mixing, I'm going to come down here and I'm going to cut on our

frying pan. And I'm going to fry these in like a fourth of a cup of oil

And I'm going to put a couple of tablespoons or a heaping tablespoon of butter

and let those flavors mix together because the butter is going to give them just an added richness

So I'm just going to form these into patties. And now I'm just going to dust the outside with just a little bit of our seasoned flour

But I'm going to kind of do these oval-shaped, just like that

I don't want anybody confusing them with salmon croquette. Now, I'm just going to drop those right in our pan

Our oil and our butter has gotten hot. And I'm just going to slip those right in there

Okay, so while these are frying, I'm going to be frying up a catfish filet

And we're going to start by taking our catfish, and we're going to sprinkle it with a little dried thyme

If you have fresh, use fresh. All right, now I'm just going to coat this with a regular prepared mustard

You know, some fishes are very, very expensive. But like I said, the catfish over the years has maintained a reasonable price

And the price even gets better when you can find yourself a pond and go out and catch them

All right, now those are coated. Now I'm going to put that in the refrigerator and I'm going to let it sit overnight

And I have some in the refrigerator that's been marinating in that mustard and that thyme and soaking up those flavors

But before I go on about that, let's check our black eyed peas and see how they look

Ooh, and they look beautiful. They're looking just near about perfect. Now the reason I cut that all with some butter because butter burns rather quickly I wanted the flavor of that butter but I didn want to have to worry about our black pea fritters burning

So there we go. I've squished them down some, flattened them out. And let's go get our catfish out of the refrigerator that I've had marinating

Now this has been there overnight. I'm going to put this in to some seasoned flour that's got a little salt and black pepper

in it. The secret to good fried fish is making sure you've salted it

Alright, so I'm going to drop these into the grease that's been heated to 350 degrees

a good temperature to fry fish on. While those are frying, I'm going to check on my black-eyed pea fritters again

Okay. So I'm going to take our fritters up. So our catfish are ready

And they are a beautiful golden brown. But you can see just a little hint of yellow in them

And you know that little hint of yellow is coming from that mustard

Doesn't that look delicious? All right, so let's fix this a plate

the fish just turned out positively beautiful looking. And of course the black eyed pea fritters

don't look half bad themselves. You can see the pieces of thyme

dancing around on the top of that fish. And I can see that bacon and those black-eyed peas

Mmm. I wish y'all were here. It's so good. And the fish

Oh, wow. Look at that hot fish. Mmm

Mmm. All I can say is, Lord, please always keep my feet on the ground

Don't ever let me leave my food that I was raised up on

Because even if it does cost pennies, it's still the best in the whole world

When we come back, y'all, I'm going to be making a wonderful coleslaw to go with these black-eyed pea cakes and that wonderful mustard thyme catfish

A catfish meal just isn't a meal until it has coleslaw

And that's what I'm fixing to make next for y'all. This is a wonderful coleslaw recipe

Now the cabbage that I'm going to use today is already shredded cabbage

This is still a very inexpensive way to make coleslaw, but if you want to really get down and save

then you can get a whole head of cabbage and shred it, but I'm using the already shredded cabbage for today

Now, to this cabbage, I'm going to add a half a cup of toasted sliced almonds

a fourth of a cup of diced spring onions or green onions

a half a cup of diced green peppers, a half a cup of diced celery

and one cup of dried cranberries. And this dried fruit is so good

when you mix it with the dressing and the cabbage. You got a lot of flavors working, and it's really, really good

And then I'm going to come over here, and I'm going to make the dressing that we're going to use to moisten this cabbage up

and really take it to the next level. And I'm going to start with a half a cup of mayonnaise

And y'all will want to remember that when you're dealing with cabbage, cabbage contains a lot of water

so you won't want to drench it or drown it in dressing

It takes very, very little to moisten your cabbage. All right, I've got a half a cup of mayonnaise

I've got one tablespoon of honey, and I got one tablespoon of diced sweet relish And I just going to mix those together

and I'm going to add a little fresh ground pepper, and I'm going to add a little salt

but I have to tell you, that salt is going to act as a drawing agent on that cabbage

and it's going to pull every bit of the water out of that cabbage

and it's going to make it soupy. So you can see that I have very, very little dressing

for this big old bowl of cabbage. You can see all the pretty colors

Now I'm just going to kind of toss that, and if you think, well, my goodness, that's not enough dressing

that's all right. Go ahead and put it in the refrigerator because it's going to get more moist and more moist as it sits

Down south, we can't have a fish dinner without this and grits or black-eyed pea fritters

or fried sweet potatoes or french fries. we gotta, we gotta have some good starches along with these cool, wonderful vegetables

that we serve with it. So just that easily I've got that mixed up. And you can see how

quickly using the store-bought cabbage brought this dish together for me. So I'm just gonna

to pour this into the serving bowl that I'm going to be using later. I'm going to cover

it and put it in the refrigerator. And it's going to be ready to go with that yummy catfish

black-eyed pea fritters. And that's all it is to making a good coleslaw. And I'll think that you'll

find that this recipe is really has a different little twist and is going to be such a nice change

from that humdrum coleslaw. Hope you like it. I'm going to stick this in the refrigerator

And when we come back, I'm going to share a time-saving, money-saving dish for you

that your family's going to be thanking you for. So I'll see y'all back here in a minute

If I told y'all in my lifetime how many salmon croquettes I had made for my family

you'd probably call me a liar. But y'all, this is one meal that I could put together

for four people, four adults, for under $2. That would, what is that, 50 cents a person

You start with just a canned salmon from the grocery store. Put it into a bowl, flake it up

Stir in a beaten egg. Some green onions. I'm going to just mix that all together

Add some breadcrumbs to bind them. This and a pot of cheese grits

You've got a wonderful meal. Oops! And look at our oil over here just getting all brown on us

I'm going to dump that into a little larger bowl. I'm going to dust those with some more breadcrumbs

Drop them into the pan. And I'm going to fry those for a couple of minutes on each side

And let me tell you how my boys love to eat their salmon croquettes

I always had to put a bottle of cane syrup on the table

because they wanted to pour syrup over their salmon croquettes. Go figure

Ooh. And you only have to fry these just for a couple of minutes

A nickel's worth of grits. And you're in business, baby. I never want to get so uppity that I forget who I am and where I came from

So I was really, really touched to be able to share these recipes with y'all today

because they do represent who I am and where I came from

And I never want to outgrow these kind of recipes. The mustard fried catfish, the black eyed pea fritters, the cream caramel, the coleslaw, and my goodness, salmon croquettes

You just can't find any better food or more honest food or more economical food

Until next time, y'all, I send you love and best dishes from my kitchen to yours