On the Road

Hi to y'all, I'm Paula Deen, and I want y'all to get ready to hit the road, because today's

show is all about food that I've tasted in my travels around the country

And first of all, from Florida, I'm going to be cooking up a rich and creamy, smoky

mushroom soup. Then from Texas, I'm going to be heating up the griddle, and I'm going to make some chicken

fried steak with the most divine gravy, and then I'm gonna ladle it all over my fresh out of the

oven mouthwatering biscuits that have been baked up Carolina style. So y'all take a seat, fasten

your belt, and enjoy the ride, because I got some delicious recipes coming up ahead

You know, for a girl that never traveled much

I've been on the road a whole bunch just lately. And that's what today's show is about

It's all about that road food. You know, being on the road or going on vacation, three-quarters of the fun is the food

And that's what we're going to be doing today. And I'm going to show y'all probably my all-time favorite smoky cream of mushroom soup

that I just fell in love with when I was down in Florida visiting this restaurant

You can smoke your portobello a couple of different ways. You can do it on a grill over an open fire with wood, using wood to give it that wonderful smoky flavor

or you can do the way that I opted to do mine, which is a real shortcut

And I have just taken my whole portabella and I coated it in a little olive oil, just rubbing like that

And to that, I'm going to add just a little liquid smoke

and I mean very small amount of liquid smoke, but that's gonna give it the flavor

that the wood would have given you had we done it outside. And I'm just gonna put these in a dish

sprinkle them with a little bit more olive oil, and then I'm gonna just roast them off in the oven

and I've got my smoked portabella. And this is what they'll look like

All right, so the recipe is four regular portabellas and four that's been smoked

And now I'm just gonna rough chop this portabella and add it to the others

So this will give me four natural portabellas. There we go. And I'm gonna do the same thing to these mushrooms, just gonna rough chop them

Look at the texture. Okay, so I've got a half a cup of onions that have been sautéed off in a little olive oil

And now I'm going to take our mushrooms and throw them in here with our onions

And I'm going to use one and a half teaspoons of fresh minced garlic

Okay, so we're just going to sauté that off just for a minute

All right. Now I have a fourth of a cup of wine that I'm going to pour over those mushrooms

And in goes our eight cups of chicken stock. I'm going to let it come to a bowl, put a lid on it, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes

Now, we don't have 20 minutes, so I have a pot that's already ready that's cooked

the 20 minutes, so I'm gonna just switch that out because I want y'all to see how

this looks. The mushrooms have shrunk. I'm gonna take my little whipper-dipper

machine and I'm gonna insert it into the soup and I'm gonna puree those

mushrooms, onions, and garlic. Sounds like I'm cutting the hedge, doesn't it

Well, I just pure like that, y'all. Now what I'm going to do next is make a white roux

for our cream of mushroom soup. I gonna use a stick of butter and a half a cup of flour And when I say a white roux that means I not gonna let that flour brown I just gonna incorporate the butter and the flour together

All right, now our butter's melted, and I'm gonna add our flour, and that's a half a cup

Okay, you'll wanna make sure that while you're preparing your roux that you mash out any lumps that might be in there

because we don't want our soup to be lumpy. We want it to be very smooth

All right. So I'm going to add our roux to our mushroom mixture

and that stick of butter is not going to do one thing to hurt the flavor of this soup

Now I'm going to add our one quart of heavy cream to this and I'm going to let it cook

for about 20 more minutes. Oh, that's looking mighty fine. All right

We're getting very, very close. And when we come back, this beautiful soup should be ready to sample

And then I'm going to be making the king of all road foods

Chicken fried steak, gravy, and biscuits. Money hush. Welcome back, y'all

This smoky prima mushroom soup is, I think, just perfect. This is only one food that you'll find when you're out there on those road trips

There's another one if you've ever visited a diner, and that's chicken fried steak and biscuits and gravy

And I'm going to start by taking one envelope, one small package of yeast and dissolving it in a half a cup of warm water

And I'm going to put that in there and let that bloom while I'm putting everything else together

Now I have five cups of all-purpose flour. And to that flour, I'm going to add one teaspoon of baking soda

I'm going to add one tablespoon of baking powder. Two tablespoons of sugar

because our flour is an all-purpose, I'm going to add a little bit more than just a pinch of salt

I'm going to add about a half a teaspoon. Now I'm just going to mix those dry ingredients together

just like that. And now I'm going to take 3-4ths a cup of a solid shortening

Now if you want to make a true old-timey southern biscuit, you can use lard

Lard makes the best biscuits and the best flaky pie crust

And I'm just going to cut this shortening into our flour until it resembles like a coarse

ground meal. Now that gets that. I've cut that in nice and evenly

All right. Now our yeast has bloomed and I'm going to dump this into our flour and then I'm

going to add two cups of buttermilk. And I'm not going to add it all at once. I'm

I'm gonna just start working that flour slowly in to that milk and that yeast

All right, now I'm gonna add some more of this milk. In fact, I'm gonna go ahead and add the rest of it

And this is a great recipe that can give you the flavor of yeast, but doesn't require all

the rising and all that stuff. You know, it's not going to be drug out over, you know, two or three hours of rising, punching

it down, letting it rise again. We're going to do this in one fell swoop

All right, now I'm going to put a generous amount of flour on my cutting board

I'm just going to roll this dough out onto that flour. I'm going to sprinkle a little bit more flour on top, and then I'm going to knead it

Oh, and that yeast smell. I just adore that smell. Now as I told you today is all about road trips and eating all that fabulous food that you might not necessarily eat at home

Now you can roll these biscuits out to the thickness that you like them

I'm going to use a medium-sized cutter. Now you know you can't have chicken fried steak without a biscuit, so that's why I'm

making these

How beautiful do those look? And of course, to make my biscuits look really homemade

I like to come through and press them down or take my knuckles and press those down

Now, before I put these in the oven, I'm going to brush them with a melted butter, and I'm going to bake them at 400 for about 12 minutes

So that's going in the oven next. So let's come on down here

and taste that cream of mushroom soup. I want to show you how this was served

All right, let's see. I think I can just pour that without making a mess

Now, you can serve this in one big serving bowl, or you can put it in individual serving bowls

The way this was presented to us was a little dollop of sour cream in the center, sprinkled

with onions, the green onion tops, a few croutons, and crumbled bacon

Look how good that looks. And of course, if you're not a big meat eater, you can certainly do away with the bacon

That's truly optional, but you know, in polo world, if it's an option and involves bacon

you know that I'm gonna use it. Mmm! Delicious, y'all

Hard to believe it. last weekend I was down in Florida eating this

Y'all stick around because when we come back, I'm going to make some chicken fried steak

to go along with those light and fluffy yeast biscuits that I just got through making

So I'll see y'all back in a minute. Y'all come on over here and stick your head in this oven

I want you to see the most beautiful biscuits that you have ever seen in your life

Look at this. I love the way a biscuit cooks in a cast iron pan

Oh, it's heavy though and it's hot. Look at that, y'all. Look at those biscuits

Look at that. Oh, I can't hardly wait to butter them and eat them along with this gravy

Well, let's move on because the next thing I'm fixing to make is a chicken fried steak

This is one of these dishes, whether you're in Millbrook, New York

or you're in Albany, Georgia, or Savannah, Georgia, you're going to find a chicken fried steak on the menu

Now, I've got two different bowls up here. I've got one full of flour, and I'm going to fill one with buttermilk

And I'm going to take our steak, and your steak is nothing but a round steak

that you have had your butcher run it through a cuber, and it breaks the meat down

because round steak is not typically a tender cut of meat. So it has to have some help in breaking down that meat

so that it will get tender. Now, I'm going to take our steak, and I'm just going to sprinkle it with house seasoning

and then I'm going to run it through the buttermilk and then into the flour

And that buttermilk is going to help it have a nice, heavy crust on it

I probably got about a half an inch of grease, and it's not going to take long for this steak

to cook at all. So let's start by sampling a piece, and yeah, that's good

In fact, that might just be perfect. All right, let's look at our steak now because it's probably ready to flip

Yes it is And you want to do this gently so that your crust doesn fall off because you want every bit of that crust

All right, while that steak is finishing up and it's about ready, I'm going to move the

biscuits down here, and I'm going to take the steak up, and I'm going to let it drain

for a second on a paper towel. And now I'm going to make that delicious white milk gravy

that we love down here. I'm going to ever so gently walk this down to the deep fryer

and I'm just going to pour this into my fryer and hold me back just enough grease to make my gravy

And that's going to be a couple of tablespoons. Okay. So there we go

Our pan's nice and hot. And I'm probably adding a couple of tablespoons of flour

Now, to our flour and leftover drippings, I'm going to add a little salt

And this is the ingredient that I do love in white milk gravy, and that's coarse ground black pepper

All right, now I'm going to add some sweet milk. Sweet milk is southern talk, but just plain old whole milk

And I don't know how much of this milk it's going to take, but I had out a quart, and I'm down to about a cup and a half left

That looks just perfect. Look at that piece of chicken fried steak

Isn't that yummy looking? Mmm. And now I'm going to drizzle that gravy on top of those biscuits

And then I'm going to come over here and get me just a little bit of gravy for that chicken fried steak

And just because I need something green on that plate, I'm going to stick a couple of

green onions on it. How yummy does that look? Mmm

This is so good. It just screams America. No matter where you go, you can find this comforting dish

Mmm. So coming up next, I'm going to be shooting oysters. Not like in the water, but this way

You know, my family and I love to go on road trips along the coast

so that we can sample all the oysters, and there's many, many ways to eat an oyster

Well, I want to share with y'all a few ways to enjoy a raw oyster

not necessarily on the half shell. I love to do oyster shooters

The first way I'm going to show you, that's dropping an oyster in a shot glass

topping it with a little cocktail sauce and a squirt of lemon

and you just kick it back. The next way you could do it is by pouring a little vodka on it

And you do the same thing, a little cocktail sauce and a little squirt of lemon

Now the last way you can enjoy an oyster shooter is cover it with a little tomato juice

a little hot sauce, and a squirt of lime

And that gives you three more ways to enjoy this fabulous fruit from our seed

You know, the most fun about road trips, or vacations as far as that goes, is the food

And these are some wonderful foods that you're going to run up on out there on your road trip

You know, hit that diner and taste that chicken fried steak and biscuits and gravy

or that wonderful creamy mushroom soup, and don't miss enjoying some fresh oysters

Whether you like them fried or to shoot them, they are delicious. So the moral of this show is, if you just can't squeeze in a road trip, at least you can fix these dishes at home

You can go jump in the car, sit in the yard, and just pretend like you're on a road trip

So, as always, I'm going to send you my love and best dishes from my kitchen to yours

So long