Some Like It Hot

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen, and if y'all can't stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen today, because we're fixing to light up your taste buds

But first we're off to Cookouts, Savannah's very own spice shop, to select our savory seasonings

And we're gonna pack them up and hurry on back to my kitchen, where Father Hank's Griots and Grits are first up on the menu

And if that's not enough to get your mouth warmed up, it's jalapeno crackling cornbread and spicy green beans

Just the perfect side dishes. And finally, it's going to be my fiery Cajun shrimp

They're simple, spicy, and delicious. So y'all bring your appetite and the fire extinguishers

because some of us like it hot. I've got some recipes today that I really want to heat up

up. And in order for me to do that, I'm going to have to go to a cute little store here in Savannah

called Cookouts. They've got all the spices I need. So y'all come with me because this is going to be

a hot show. I'm on my way to Savannah's own Cookouts where my friend Tom offers everything

from spices to sauces to a huge selection of smokers. And I even called ahead so Tom could

have all of my fiery spices ready for me when I get there. Hey Tommy. Paula, how you doing

Fine, how you doing? Doing good. I'm getting your black peppercorns, your cayenne, your

basil and your tine ready for you. Thank you. You heard I'm cooking up a hot, hot meal today

didn't you? Well, that cayenne will do it. There's no doubt about that. Good. Thanks so much

Tommy. I know I can always count on cookouts. See you again. I'll see you soon. Bye-bye

I got a hot stuff gang. If y'all are ready to turn the heat on, I am too

We're going to start with a hot spicy pot of griots. So I'm going to start with this beautiful meat

I'm going to salt him. And garlic powder him. And for a little extra heat, peppering

and I'm just going to toss that around in there and then I'm going to dust them with just a little bit of flour

Not a whole lot, but just a little. Now I've got a good heavy cast iron pot here on the stove

Now to this hot pot, I'm going to add some bacon grease. Oh, really adds nice, nice flavor to this dish

And a little vegetable oil. Okay. The meat's ready to go into our pot, and we want our pot hot enough so that it's going to sear and really brown our meat for us

I've told y'all before that Michael's brother, Hank, is a priest in New Orleans, so I just talk food with Hank all the time

and Hank was actually here in Savannah, Viston. I had been out of town working for four or five days

and I was so starved for home cooking. I called the house to let Michael know

what time to pick me up at the airport and he said, Hank's sitting here with me

and I said, put him on the phone please. I said, Hank, would you please have me something good cooked

And he said, yeah honey, I'll do that. I'll have you something. Well, I got home about 10.30 or 11 that night, and Hank had a big old pot of buttery, creamy grits and a big old pot of steaming grillades

And I had never had this dish before. So you can see that meat is sizzling and searing in that bacon grease and that vegetable oil

All right, we've got our meat brown, and now I'm gonna take it out and put it in our bowl

because we've got some vegetables to cook now. And we actually want about three tablespoons of grease left in here

So now to the pot, I'm adding fresh garlic, celery, onions, and bell pepper

and cook those a few minutes until they're just coated with the bacon grease and tender

Okay, those look done enough. So I'm just gonna scoop these out

All right, we're gonna need about three tablespoons of oil in here to make our roux Now to make my roux I gonna switch spoons because I love making my roux with a wooden spoon And we got it hot and we going to add some flour

And we're just going to stir that up until it gets a nice brown color

All right, now I have got some beef stock that I heated back here on the back stove

and I'm just gonna add that into our flour. All right, just a minute to get hot

Now I'm gonna put everything back in our pot. We'll get all those little crumbies off of there

I definitely want those in the pot. We're on our way. All right, to our pot now, I'm gonna add a little salt

and if it needs more, I can always add it. And then I'll throw in about three bay leaves

and about a teaspoon of basil and about a teaspoon of thyme

All right, the ingredient that's gonna make this really hot and spicy is a can of Rotel tomatoes

and I always use extra hot. and I'm gonna put in about a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce

And just in case the Rotel tomatoes didn't do the trick, a couple of tablespoons of hot sauce

Our pot is just looking fabulous already. To this, I like the chunkiness of a fresh tomato in it

and I just kind of crunch them in my hand and tear them up

I don't chop them or dice them, because I actually want to be able to see those tomatoes

That looks delicious. Now I'm gonna cover this and let it simmer

for about an hour and a half, or as long as it takes for our meat

to really be fork tender. Now I've already got a pot back here that's ready

Because I knew we wouldn't have that long to wait on that pot to cook

So let's see what we've got. Look how good that looks. You just don't eat griots without grits

Now I've got a pot of hot, steamy grits. Now I've actually cooked these grits with a little cream and a little butter

But I have to have just a little bit of butter when I bowl up my grits

I just can't seem to eat them without it. So here goes the griots

And this is just how Hank taught me to eat them. with lots of butter

Looks just yummy. Mm, they're so out of this world

Y'all don't go anywhere because next, crackling cornbread and spicy green beans

I'm going to move right along to now one of my favorite breads

My Aunt Peggy makes the best crackling corn bread I've ever put in my mouth

And a couple of weeks ago, I was home in Albany, and I said, okay, now let's get that formulated today, and we did

because I so want to share this with you. Now, I've got two cups of boiling water in my pot

and I've got a cup of cracklings. Now, for those people that don't know what cracklings is

it's actually pig skins. I don't know a nice way to say that

I'm going to put them in our water and soften them up because cracklings are really, really hard

And so I like to kind of soften them up. All right, now I've got these soft

So I'm going to cut off our fire and I'm going to add one cup of plain cornmeal

along with about a teaspoon of salt. And I'm going to do something to these that Aunt Peggy usually doesn't do

I'm going to add some minced, fresh jalapeno peppers. I'm going to stir that up real good, and this should be real, real thick

And it takes just a minute for that hot water to absorb the meal

And you can see what that looks like, the thickness of it

It's really thick. Now, I've got our black skillet in our oven getting piping hot

so when we drop these corn pones onto it, they'll immediately start browning

And that pan is hot, hot, hot. which is exactly the way we wanted it And I gonna spray it just a little bit You find that a lot of grease is gonna cook out from our cracklings

But you can see it smoking. And Aunt Peggy is so cute when she does this

She said, now Paula Ann, knock your spoon down and get it to stay up kinda high in fat

I'm gonna make about three puns. I'm gonna come in here and drop the last one down and tap that spoon

Now I'm gonna stick these back in the oven and we're gonna cook them for about 15 minutes

on 450 degrees. And after 15 minutes, we're gonna cut our oven down

to about 350, and these actually take almost an hour to cook

And you may find that the tops don't get as brown as you like, but you can switch your oven to broil

and they'll brown nicely. All right, now I'd like to show you how to really spice up

that ordinary green bean that can be a little bland, but we're gonna heat him up

Now I've got my pan here where I cooked about four slices of bacon

And you can see that I've left my bacon grease in the pan

And I'm gonna saute my onions. Okay, so I've cooked those until they're

just kinda translucent. And now I'm gonna add a couple of pounds

of fresh green beans. Just toss those around and get them nice and coated

with that bacon grease. And now we're just gonna put about a cup

of boiling water over these. Gonna put the lid on these and we're gonna let them cook

for about 15 minutes. We're not cooking these southern style. We want these still kinda crisp

And I've got some back here that's ready that has actually cooked for about 15 minutes

See how good those look. All right, now we're just going to salt these

and butter them. About three tablespoons of vinegar is going to go in the pot

And some cracked black pepper. The older I get, the more I just love cracked pepper

I don't know what that says about me. It says something, though

The real heat is going to come from cayenne pepper. For this, just do it to your taste

If you like it a little hot, use a little bit. If you like it really hot, use a lot

And now I'm just going to throw back in that wonderful bacon

that I fried earlier. We've got a nice pot of doctored up fresh green beans

All right, and I've got some cornbread in this other oven and it should be ready

I wanna take a look at it and hopefully it's gotten nice and brown on the top

Our crackling bread looks perfectly delicious. It's nice and crispy and our green beans are ready

And this will be so good along with our griots and grits

Look at the nice hunks of crackling in that cornbread. It looks yummy

I know the first piece I'm biting off of. Just put a little butter right there

This will be so good. Mmm. This is going to be perfect with the rest of the meal

Y'all stay tuned because those folks that don't like beef, I'm going to be doing some spicy, spicy Cajun shrimp

This last recipe I'm going to share with y'all today

you're going to be amazed at how easy and scrumptious it is

I'd be willing to bet that you'll want to serve it at your house probably weekly

because it's that good and that fast. This recipe really serves a big crowd

I've got my shrimp over here, and now I'm going to make a quick sauce. I've got two cups of butter that I'm gonna pour into my bowl

along with fresh garlic fresh lemon juice about 1 fourth of a cup of Worcestershire two tablespoons of pepper

Now, you don't want to skimp on this because the pepper is what makes these so fiery

And a little salt. and a couple of tablespoons of Texas Pete

Great hot sauce. I'm just going to stir this up, and look at that pepper just clumped in there

So that's how simple our sauce is. So I'm just going to put a little bit in the bottom of the dish

Just kind of cover the bottom of it, so our shrimp will have some sauce to sit in

Layer the shrimp in there, about half of them, and you can see I'm using nice, fat, plump shrimp

I'm going to take some lemon wheels and lay on top of our shrimp

and then I'm going to drizzle some more sauce over that. So delicious

All right, and then we're going to pile the rest of our shrimp on top of that

We just have the best shrimp in Savannah. All right, and then we're going to top those with more lemon

and pour on the rest of our sauce, and that's it. We're going to run these into our oven

and we're going to cook these just until the shrimp turn pink on us

The secret to good shrimp is not overcooking them. That's it. Just that easy

I've already got some ready in this other oven. Let's take a look at them and see what they look like

All this dish truly needs is French bread to dip in that sauce and a green salad

and you've got a full, nutritious meal just in a matter of a few minutes

And y'all will notice that my shrimp are in the jacket. They still have the shell on, which is the fun of eating these little things

Now, I've split them down the back and deveined them, but they're still in the shell, which holds in all those flavors

and I've got to get me some of that good shrimpy butter sauce

and a chunk of French bread. Oh, this is probably one of my favorite ways to eat shrimp

And let me show you the best way to eat these. You need to dunk them in your sauce

Mmm. and suck all that juice out of the shell. And it's hot and spicy and delicious

And then strip your shell off, back into the butter sauce, and chase it with a nice, crusty piece of hot French bread

Y'all hang in there with me because I got some hot tips coming up for you

I want to share with y'all just a few quick tips that I have found that are awfully handy in the

kitchen. When you're cooking bacon, don't ever throw away that bacon grease. Store it in a tin can

put it in the freezer and it will last a long time. It won't go rancid on you

You can pull it out and just put that bacon grease in some vegetables that'll really kick them up

And for your green beans, when you want to cook them al dente, make sure that you've got a little lemon juice in your water

and cook them just for about three minutes and then dunk them in an ice bath

and that'll keep your green beans nice and green. And on your griots, don't forget that crock pot

It works perfectly for this recipe. I really had a good time in the kitchen today

heating up some old-timey standard dishes. The crackling cornbread with the little bits of jalapeno

and the griots and grits and the spicy green beans and the fiery Cajun shrimp should work perfectly for one night

when you're ready to turn the heat on. So until next time, America

I wish y'all best dishes from my kitchen to yours