Sandwiches

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen. Step right up to the counter, folks, because today I'm making sandwiches

But before we get started, we're going to need to make a quick run by B. Matthews Bakery and pick up some loaves of the freshest bread around town

And when we get back, I'm going to be making a decadent grouper sub that's going to knock your socks off

And then for the lighter side, it's a yummy asparagus sandwich with my homemade Thousand Island dressing

After that, it's going to be a bean cake sandwich. And finally, a scrumptious shrimp salad sandwich

So y'all take a number and get in line, because this deli is going to get crowded today

Such a beautiful, warm day today

It's a perfect day for a picnic. And when I think of picnic, I think of sandwiches

But I'm not talking about a bologna sandwich here. I'm talking about some very special sandwiches

In fact, to kick it up, I think Gertie and I are going to run into town to B. Matthews

a local bakery here in Savannah, and pick up some of their delicious bread

So I hope you all stick around because it's going to be a yummy picnic. Ready to go to the store

Come on, let's go. Let's go. Hey, Charles. Hello, Miss Paula. How are you

I do well. How are you doing today? I'm fine. What you got baking today fresh

I got some rye bread with caraway seeds. I've got a light wheat. I've got a French white, and those are the sourdough

Now, when was this baked? This morning. I think I'm just going to take one of everything

All right. That we can do. Now, how long will these last, like, on the counter

I'm wrapped, but on the counter. Just on your counter. You can get a couple of days out of it. Good

Good. There you are, Ms. Paula. Thank you so much, but aren't you forgetting something

Our cinnamon rolls. I am not leaving without that cinnamon roll. I have you one

You do? They're ready. I do. How's this one? Oh, it's so tiny

I think it'll hold you for now. You think so? Well, I'm happy now

I'll see you later. All right. Thanks. Bye now. Well, I've got some wonderful bread in here

but I think I just beat it in. From the rain, it's getting bad out there

I can hear the thunder, and it's getting dark. Oh, gosh, this bread's so good

And they all look just perfectly yummy. And Rennie, while I was out, I picked y'all up a treat, too

Great time of day. I think I might like one of those

All right, now y'all stay in out of the weather. I think it's maybe time for me to do some cooking

The first sandwich I'm going to make, I think, is a grouper sub

Was that good or what? Those treats, a girl actually brought those in to me to the restaurant

She's starting a business, and it's called Time for Treats. She told me that they were really, really good, and I said

well, how do you know they're really, really good? Have you tasted them? She said, of course I did

All right, I'm going to put in our pan a little butter

And a little olive oil. If you try to cook with plain butter, it really has a tendency to burn on you

So I love both flavors. Just going to put those in there and let those saute around

All right, I'm going to sprinkle this with a little paprika just to help it color

I don't think this is going to take long at all. Let's see

That looks pretty good. Oh, that fish is already almost done. You can see it just flaking

That's going to be ready in just no time. So I'm going to slice my bread

and I think I'm going to go ahead and set it on the fire and just let it warm up

I'm going to cut that really, really low and just let it warm that outside

And I want to show y'all something. This is what we're gonna load our sandwiches up in

an old cigar box. And I've got it lined with a little dish rag

so everybody can just pick up their cigar box, go get them a chair, and sit down and have their lunch

It's a great idea, isn't it? All right, they're ready. Mmm That looks so good

And now I'm going to put our first sandwich together and load it up in the cigar box

Just a little mayonnaise. Just a little. Michael loves it. Heavy mayonnaise

He said he couldn't believe he had found me, found him a woman that knew how to put mayonnaise on the bread the right way

Look at those tomatoes. Let's see, I think I'm going to put on there

I do love avocado, and you know, for years I didn't like them

And then somebody told me that they were fattening. And I said, well, I've got to revisit it, because I know damn good well if it's fattening, I'll like it

Went back, tried it, fell in love with them. All right, now here comes the best part

And let's see. Whoever gets this basket is going to be a happy camper

I'm actually not going to let Michael eat this whole sandwich. He'll be sick

So I'm going to cut it in two and he's going to have to share it

Listen to the crunch of that bread. And that was just on the outside and the inside's still going to be like sticking to the roof of your mouth and to your teeth

Look at that sandwich. I don't think these are going to fit in the box

I'm going to try to make it fit

It fit. Well, maybe not all the way. Doesn't that look yummy

When we come back, I'm going to show y'all the number two most requested sandwich ordered up in the Lady and Sons

and you're not going to believe what it is. All right, I promised y'all that I was going to show you the number two most ordered sandwich

in the Lady and Sons restaurant. Would you believe it's an asparagus sandwich

Now the first thing I'm going to do is make a thousand island dressing

So I'm going to start by crumbling my egg. Now I'm going to add some mayonnaise and I'm going to add some ketchup

And I don't like my thousand island dressing real red, so I'm going to add that slowly

I like like a pinky, almost like a shrimp color. All right, and I think I like that color. I think that's just perfect

Now I'm gonna add some diced dill pickle and a little salt

and I'm gonna put a little lemon pepper in there. All right, and let's taste this and see what we've got

This is one of those things where you just have to mix and taste, mix and taste until you get it the way you want it

All right, now, so I'm gonna sit this to the side so those flavors can marry

and we're gonna get started on our sandwich. Got some beautiful fresh asparagus

and as you know, asparagus has a woody end to it. And some folks will just cut it off

but I don't like to do that. I like to snap it where it is naturally tender

And without any guessing, it lets you know where to break it

So you know that your whole stalk is gonna be very, very tender

I'm gonna take our asparagus and drop it in boiling water, and I'm not gonna leave it but just a couple of minutes

I want it still nice and crispy for our salads. While that is blanching, I'm gonna come on over here

and I'm gonna get our bread. And we do serve this on pump-a-nickel at the restaurant

This is just one of my favorite breads. I just love pump

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna actually toast it in my cast iron skillet

And you could actually do this in the toaster, but it's so much more flavorful if you'll brush it with butter

and then just kind of crisp it up in the pan. All right, our asparagus is ready

Now I'm gonna immediately drop it in a water bath. All right, that won't take but a second for that to chill

And that's gonna stop the cooking process on it, and it's also gonna help it retain its bright green color

And I got our pump toasting over here. The only drawback to pumpernickel bread is I can ever tell when it toasted so I have to almost feel of it but if I burn it nobody gonna know All right those are already chilled so I gonna take those out

and drain those on a couple of paper towels. All right, our bread's ready

and I'm gonna just sit it over here because now we're gonna just quickly

heat our asparagus back up, and I'm gonna put a little butter in the pan

and we're just going to roll our asparagus around in there, just quickly heating it back up

and I'm going to sprinkle it with a little lemon pepper and just a little salt

Well, now that I've told y'all the number two most ordered sandwich in the restaurant

would you like to know what number one is? It's our crab burger

And I don't know if y'all remember, but I've actually cooked our crab cakes on another show

And we use that same recipe for our crab cakes as an entree as we do for our burgers

All right, now I've smeared each side with Thousand Island dressing. And I'm going to put a piece of jack cheese on each side

I'm going to put a little purple onion. And then I'm going to come in here and I'm going to take our asparagus

And sometimes these want to roll off your sandwiches. All right, and to make my sandwiches really pretty, I like to turn them

So when I cut it, I have some of the pretty flowery tips sticking out of both ends

It's a little hard sometimes to control that asparagus, but once you get it under control, it's so good

And since this one is my sandwich, I think it's all right for me to go ahead and taste it

Mmm. It's out of this world. And the homemade Thousand Island dressing

just makes all the difference in the world in your sandwich. And look what Fatty Arbuckle gets in her box

I just love French fries. Well, I've still got some boxes left

so that must mean more sandwiches. How about a bean cake sandwich

from a little Yankee friend of mine and my favorite shrimp salad sandwich

That's what's coming up next. My next sandwich that I'm going to be making is so good

and I just kind of have to tell y'all a little bit of how and where I learned to make this

Well, in the last of the 70s, this cutest couple moved down to Albany

from Muncie, Indiana, and their name was Joe and Jody Moyer, and we spent almost every Friday and Saturday night

with Joe and Jody, and we'd play cards and eat bean cake sandwiches

Now, these are leftover white beans that I had cooked for dinner last night

with some ham hock, so I pulled out some of that flavorful, tender

ham, and I've minced it up. So when we bite into our sandwich

we're also gonna have a little meat in there as well as the beans. We're gonna need a paste

because I'm actually gonna fry these, and we wanna put a little flour in them

just like we were making a potato cake, kinda. Now, I've got our skillet going

and then I'm gonna add a little olive oil. And this is also really, really good

I'm gonna put that little butter in there to give it the flavor that I want it to have

I just love the combination of olive oil and butter. All right, so we're gonna take our beans

and we're just gonna form them into a patty. And I'm gonna make these the size of a piece of white bread

because I want it to fit that piece of bread that I'm gonna put it on

And hopefully this is gonna get good and crisp. And everything's done in these so it doesn't take long

You just wanna just brown them. These bean cakes remind me of the Saturday nights that we would all spend together

We'd play poker, and we'd play nickel-dime quarter. Well, I'll never forget the night

Somehow, that nickel-dime and quarter turned into a $200 loss, and I was sweating like a bullet

I didn't know how I was ever going to make up that $200 that we had lost

playing nickel-dime and quarter poker. All right, I think these are ready to flip

Look how pretty that looks. And by the way, I never won that $200 back

I think our bean cakes are ready. Now, this is how Jody taught me to eat them

and I think she was right on the money with it. I'm gonna take plain old white bread and mayonnaise it

and a little Vidalia onion. You know, this is an economical meal

I put this together for just pennies And you want to make sure that that white bread that you put it in is so fresh it gums up on your teeth I want to be able to show y what this delectable

sandwich looks like. See you've got the white onions, the white beans, and the pretty pinkness

of the ham. This brings back so many memories of my precious little Yankee friend, and they've since

moved back to Indiana, and I talked to her once in a while. I'd love to see her

Out of this world, y'all set your clocks now, because I'm fixing to make a shrimp salad sandwich

for you in about three minutes. So I'm taking peeled and deveined frozen shrimp that I bought

from the supermarket, and I boiled them off just for a few minutes, and I'm gonna put these

in a food processor. When I'm having a sandwich, I like to mince them up

so that it'll stay on my bread, so we're gonna mince these up

Gonna put them in our bowl, and you wanna make sure that you don't mince them too, too fine

All right, I'm gonna take a little celery. I want this sandwich to be full of flavor

but I really don't want you to be able to see a lot of stuff in it

All right, so I'm gonna add a few boiled eggs. And the eggs really makes this shrimp salad so good

All right, and the ingredients are very, very simple because I don't want to play around too much

with that wonderful shrimp flavor. All right, I'm going to add just a little salt

and then I'm going to add some crazy salt, and then I'm going to add some onion powder

just to give it that flavor without seeing them and then cracked pepper

and then some mayonnaise I'm just going to moisten that up

now this is the best shrimp salad that you'll ever eat on white toast

and I always serve this at home to my family on white toast

Very, very seldom do I vary from that. I'm just going to pile that up nice and high

because I like a lot of shrimp on my sandwich. How yummy does that look

And you can even buy the pre-cooked shrimp if that's what you prefer to use

I can't tell y'all how many of these sandwiches that we eat in Savannah

I'm going to put this in my little cigar box, and we're ready to eat

Doesn't that look yummy? When we come back, I'm going to share some tips with you on how to take leftover bread and make it brand new again

Let's talk about what we're going to do with all the leftover bread

I want to share with you how we make croutons at the restaurant. We actually cut up the bread, the stale bread, and we deep fry it

But you can do the same thing at home, only you can toss it in a little butter, put it on a baking sheet, sprinkle it with garlic powder and parmesan cheese when you take it out, and a little dried parsley

And they're delicious. And your stale bread makes wonderful breadcrumbs. You can use either your croutons or stale sliced bread

Either one works great. Just run your bread through the processor until it's the consistency that you like it

And this leftover bread makes wonderful casseroles. Whether you want a sweet casserole or a savory casserole, you just can't go wrong

And you'll never know when you serve it that you started with stale bread

I'm so glad it cleared up. Just a little while ago, it looked like rain and thunder

But it cleared up for mine and Gertie's picnic, and it all looks delicious

You know, I think you'll agree with me that America has become a sandwich country

And any of these sandwiches, you can make in the time it takes you to go through a drive-in window of a fast food restaurant

and have a wonderful, fresh, nutritious meal. So I hope that when y'all try some of these sandwiches, that you'll love them as much as Gertie and I do

And Gertie and I want to send love and best dishes to all of y'all out there from our kitchen to yours