Slow Cookin'

Hey, y'all. Come on into the pantry with me

I'm coming in to get a great piece of equipment, a crock pot

And today I'm gonna share a slow cooking recipe for my mama's Swiss steak, which is so good

And believe it or not, a creamy macaroni and cheese in the crock pot

And how about a Dutch oven peach cobbler? And I'm gonna show you a neat little trick

with my Aunt Peggy's potpourri. So come on in and let's get to slow cooking

You know, there is nothing like a crock pot. But there are dishes that we can slow cook in a Dutch oven on top of our stove

And I want to share with y'all one of my mama's recipes

that she just cooked perfectly every time, and that's a Swiss steak

I'm going to start with about a pound and a half of cubed round steak

So I'm going to cut this into serving-sized pieces. You don't have to be particular about cutting it with the grain

or against the grain. You know, you just, like I said, want to cut it

into serving-sized pieces. Now I'm just gonna season this with a little pepper and a little salt. You want

to make sure you season it up good. All right, now I'm just gonna toss this into

my flour, give it a little crust you know, and plus the excess flour from a

steak is gonna kind of thicken our gravy. All right, now I've got my my

cast-iron Dutch oven heating up. And I'm gonna be putting a little oil in that

But before I do that, I want to get me some bell pepper

and onions sliced up to go in this pot. I'm just gonna cut it in strips

I'm not gonna dice it up, because I want you to be able to see that bell pepper in that dish when you go to dip it up

dip it up and put it on top of your rice. Mmm, I want you to see it

Okay. Now I'm gonna take my garlic cloves. I'm just gonna smash those just like that

And that'll help get that flavor released out of those. All right

And then our onion. And I like a lot of onion in mine

This is a smaller onion that I had this morning. I'd probably use two of these

All right, we're just gonna paddle it. Once again, we don't want it cut so fine that we can't see it

All right. So, that's ready to go in our pot. Now I'm gonna come on over here

over here and I'm gonna put about a third of a cup of oil. We don't need a lot

While we're waiting on our pot to heat up, I'm gonna run over here to the sink real quick

Like, don't go anywhere. I'll be right back. I'm just gonna wash the goop off my hands

Okay. And here we go. Let's drop our meat in quickly

Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm. All right, so I'm going to just brown this on all sides

and it won't take long. I don't have to cook it until it's totally done

because we're going to slow cook it after I've browned it off

So all we want to do is get a nice little brown edge to it

We make this dish all the time at the Lady and Sons

Oh, and people just love it. I mean, they love it. All right

Our steak is browning, and I'm going to flip it over. I'm going to add..

What the heck? I think I'll put a tablespoon of butter in it

Just because I saw the butter sitting back here. Can't resist it

All right. Now, I'm going to just let it just sit there for a minute

while I sear off the onions and the bell peppers. And I told you, that doesn't have to be all the way done

All right. All right In with our fresh garlic

So now I just want to run those peppers and onions around in that wonderful drippings that

have accumulated down there from the flour on the steak. Mmm. All righty

All right, now I'm just going to pour my steak back on top of my onions and my peppers

And look at all that wonderful stock coming out of that steak

All right. Now I'm going to take a can of just plain diced tomato

All right. And I'm gonna use probably a can of water. Oh! Doesn't that look good

I'm gonna put the lid on this and I'm gonna put it on low and I'm gonna let it simmer

probably for about an hour and a half or two hours. or two hours, but I'm gonna come check on it

and I'm gonna test that meat using a fork. And when it's good and tender, our Swiss steak is ready

Well, now, I'm real excited about this next dish that I'm gonna make for you

It's a macaroni and cheese, but we're gonna make it in the crock pot

Now, I've got a pot over here going. I've got some hot, salty water

I've got two cups of macaroni, elbow macaroni, and I'm gonna go ahead and put it down into my pot

because I want to get that cooked. Because when we come back

I'm gonna show you how to put together macaroni and cheese for the crock pot

Then I'm gonna be making a sinful peach and blueberry cobbler and my Aunt Peggy's potpourri

And it smells heavenly. Hey, y'all, welcome back. Today's show is all about slow cooking

and the next recipe I'm making is a creamy macaroni and cheese

What's really going to put this dish over the top, y'all, is I'm cooking it with a cheddar cheese soup and a crock pot

And I love it because you can just put it in your cooker

and walk away and forget about it for three hours. Now, I'm gonna melt a half a stick of butter

and I'm gonna mix into that butter two and a half cups of a sharp shredded cheddar cheese

And we're just gonna stir that until it's all melted. All right, so I got our cheese and our butter melting

You know, I don't know how many tons of macaroni and cheese

macaroni and cheese we serve a year at the Lady and Sons. I can tell you right now, it's a lot

And I've shared that recipe with y'all before. But this recipe's got a little twist

Well, one, it's done in the crock pot, and two, it's got a soup in it

A cheddar cheese soup. Oh, look at that. Can y'all see down in there? Look

Is that having kids or what? Oh, wow. All right

Now, to this, I'm going to add one can of cheddar cheese soup

Yum. Look at that. All right. I'm going to mix that together

This really does not require a whole bunch of skill. Now I'm gonna add a half a cup of sour cream

Not many ways you can mess this up, kids. All right. I'm gonna add a half a teaspoon of ground mustard

a half a teaspoon of salt, and a half a teaspoon of pepper

pepper. All right, now we're gonna add one cup of milk. Mmm. All right, now I'm gonna

beat up three eggs, because here in the South, we just like eggs in our macaroni and cheese

And I know other parts of the country doesn't do this. But if you don't like it, you can

and leave them out. All right, in the crock pot they go

Now I gonna stir in our macaroni that I had over here draining And this is about two cups of cooked elbow macaroni Okay

We're just gonna stir that up, put it on low, and we're gonna let this cook for three hours

And about 30 minutes before it's ready, we're gonna come back and we're gonna top it

with a little bit more cheddar cheese, put the top back on it, and let it finish cooking

for that last 30 minutes. Ready? Look. Gosh, I wish y'all were here

Now you know there is no box of macaroni and cheese

that's gonna taste that good anywhere. Look at the steam coming off of that

Mm. Here, open wide

Mmm. Oh, my goodness, this is so good. But you know what

I'm fixing to go one better, because you know what I'm fixing when we get back

A Dutch oven, peach cobbler. And then I'm going to show you how to make my Aunt Peggy's potpourri

So stick around, y'all. Ooh, this looks so good. In case y'all weren't here at the top of the show, it's all about slow cooking today in a crock pot and in a Dutch oven

And I have just stirred up my mother's Swiss steak, and it's cooking along

It looks fabulous. I can't wait to eat it. I always loved doing dishes that my mother did

She's always near to me, but when I'm making her dishes, it's like she's right there inside my heart

All right, well, let's move on because I want to show y'all how to make

the best peach cobbler in a Dutch oven you ever put in your mouth, and it's easy and simple

Now, I'm going to spray my pan because sometimes crust can get kind of sticky on cobblers

and I want to be able to scoop every bit of that out of my Dutch oven

Now, because it's not peach season, I'm gonna be using a canned peach

Now, I'm gonna take one of them, and I'm gonna drain them. Because I don't need quite so much liquid

So I'm gonna throw those... Whoops! A runaway peach! And then I'm gonna take the other can

and I'm gonna add it, juice and all. All right, now come on over here in this bowl

I'm gonna add a third of a cup of sugar. and a half a cup of a biscuit mix

And I'm gonna add a little bit of cinnamon, just a little bit

because I'm gonna be adding cinnamon, more cinnamon at the end. All right

Now I'm gonna take a pint of blueberries, and you don't have to do this

If you don't like blueberries, you don't have to add them. You can just go with a straight peach

But I love what the blueberries do to it. Now I'm gonna take these dry ingredients and I'm just gonna pour that in with our fruit

And I'm just gonna stir that up. Now that's gonna make our juice from our fruit nice and thick

It's not gonna be thin and watery. Now for our topping, I'm gonna use two and a quarter cups of biscuit mix

Just gonna kind of stir that around. I'm gonna use a half a stick of melted butter

a fourth of a cup of granulated sugar. All right, now I'm gonna add a half a cup of milk

I'm just gonna stir that up. And now you don't worry about the lumps in your mix

in your mix because that's just part of a biscuit mix. All right

Now we're gonna drop dollops on top of our fruit. And this is gonna make like a wonderful fat dumpling

that's gonna sit on top of that fruit. Looks pretty good doesn it All right now I dropped all those dumplings

on top of our fruit. Doesn't that look delicious? Now I mixed up our sugar and our cinnamon a while ago

and put it in my shaker so that I could shake some of that mixture on top

It's gonna be delicious. All right, now I'm gonna put the lid on our cobbler

and I'm gonna bake this inside in my oven at 350, covered for 45 minutes

So I'm gonna put it in the oven, and I couldn't stand waiting that long, y'all

so I have another one. Oops. Wrong oven. All right, so we're gonna put this in the oven

and I couldn't wait 45 minutes, so I've got y'all one ready here

in this other oven that I want you to see. And you're not going to believe

how good this dish turns out. Look at that

It's pretty good, isn't it? Oh, the cinnamon. And the blueberries. Yum, yum, yum, yum

Now the only thing that could make this cobbler better is either some cream poured over it

just a straight heavy cream, or ice cream. Oh, can you imagine sitting around an open fire with your buddies

telling war stories, and eating peach and blueberry cobbler? You know, I'm going to garnish it just because it's so beautiful on it

Look at the steam coming off of that. You know, there's some dishes that just make me laugh out loud

Because they're so good, it's just insane. Mmm

This is one of those dishes that requires some one-on-one personal time

So I'm going to take it. And when we come back, I'm going to give y'all a tip for making my Aunt Peggy's potpourri

My Aunt Peggy, every holiday season, you can walk into her house and it smells heavenly

because she's got on her stove, cooking away, simmering away, is a potpourri

Now, this is the way my Aunt Peggy does it. I'm going to take my apples

I'm going to take my lemons. I'm going to take my oranges

Mmm. This is probably my favorite part of a potpourri. I'm going to put lots of oranges

and I'm going to cover my fruit with water. I'm going to add cinnamon sticks

bay leaves, and whole cloves, just like my Aunt Peggy. Plug it in

and your house is smelling like the best of holidays. Thanks, Aunt Peggy

I hope y'all have had a good time today, have you? I've had a great time being with y'all

Oh, my goodness. There's nothing like slow cooking. You can run, get your errands done

and have your food cooking waiting on you when you walk in the door

You know, I got my mama's Swiss steak ready. Look at that

Look at that. How tender. Brings back the sweetest memories. the Dutch oven peach and blueberry cobbler

and I've got some of the best macaroni and cheese I've ever tasted. I've got my mama's dish sitting right here

and right next to it, my Aunt Peggy's dish, her potpourri. I hope that y'all enjoy these ideas for your crock pot

and I hope to see you again real, real soon. And as always, I send y'all best dishes and love from my kitchen to yours