Summer Salad

Hey y'all, welcome to my garden

I'm out here collecting some herbs and a little Swiss chard, a little rosemary, a little flat leaf parsley, a little curly parsley

Guess what I'm making today, y'all? This might surprise you a little bit, because today I'm just making salads

But you know, just because you say the word salad doesn't mean it has to be lettuce

I'm making an oriental chicken salad. I'm making a sweet and sour bean salad

I'm making a broccoli salad. And Tracy, who is a fan of Paula's Home Cooking

thank you Tracy, she shared with me her couscous recipe. So I hope you all will join me in the kitchen

because today it's all about salads. So I hope to see you inside

Okay

so who's hungry for salad? Like I said, that don't mean lettuce. The first salad that I'm going to be

making is an oriental chicken salad. I'm using four cooked boneless diced chicken breasts. I'm

going to throw it in there with the rest of the things and one and a half cups of fresh snow peas

Now to this I'm going to add one and a fourth of a cup of bean sprouts

and I'm going to add a third of a cup, fourth of a cup, just a few chopped green onions or scallions

and then I'm going to throw in a can of sliced water chestnuts. I love the crunch that it gives

it. Now you'll want to make sure that you drain those and then I'm going to add a fourth of a cup

of diced celery. I'm just going to kind of hand toss that. Now I'm going to move right over here

and I'm going to make the dressing for it. There's several different ways that you can

make dressing for an oriental chicken salad, but this is one that I've tried and tried and tried

and everybody seems to like it a lot. I'm going to use a fourth of a cup of oil

five teaspoons of soy sauce, one teaspoon of ground ginger. I'm gonna put in an eighth of a teaspoon of sugar

a little salt, a little fresh ground pepper. Now I'm just going to whisk this up and just drizzle it over our meat and vegetables

And we've got a wonderful, healthy salad that's got lots of flavor

So just that simple. We've got a meal. I want to just wash my hands real quickly

And this moved down to the other end of the counter. Because I'm going to make a salad that everybody loves

And it's that good old broccoli salad. I'm going to take just one head of broccoli

I'm just going to cut them off so that it just yields us a bunch of little flouettes

Just like that. And if some of them are big, I'll take them and cut them a little bit

All right. So I'm going to add 8 ounces of cheddar cheese

The cheese really does give it a nice flavor. I'm going to add one diced purple onion, about a half a cup

My favorite ingredient in this broccoli salad is the raisins. To me, it's so incredibly good, but this is optional if you don't like raisins

I'm going to add a half a cup of little cherry tomatoes that have been sliced in half

and then I'm going to take six pieces of bacon. Now, you can use as much bacon as you like

I really love what the bacon does to this salad. Just like that

I'm going to throw that in the bowl, and look at all those beautiful colors coming together

It looks very, very appetizing. Now the dressing is just as simple as the salad itself

I going to start by mixing a cup of mayonnaise with two tablespoons of white vinegar

a fourth of a cup of sugar, and I'm just going to whisk that together

Now I'm going to add just a little bit of pepper and just a wee little bit of salt

And that's all it is to it. I'm just going to pour that over all of our ingredients

ham would be wonderful in it, or turkey or chicken. So that's all it is for these two salads

They're great for lunch boxes. They're great to keep in the refrigerator for an afternoon snack for the children

And they're even great for a bedtime snack, especially during the summer, you know, when it's hot

and you want just a little bite of something, bite of something, but you don't want anything too heavy, because you know you gotta put on that

stinking swimsuit next weekend. These are perfect for that late night snack. Mmm. The broccoli is

my favorite. And this chicken salad, you can eat plenty of that. It's not fattening at all. Mmm

When we come back, I want to share with you a recipe that was sent in by another viewer

Her name is Loretta, and I think you're going to like this little twist

It's really, really good. So I'll meet y'all back here in a minute

I'm going to finish eating my broccoli salad and get cleaned up, and then we're moving on to the next one

Hey, y'all. Welcome back. Today is all about salads and I'm standing up here looking at a picture of two of the cutest little boys

Matthew's grandmother sent me in a salad recipe that I think you're going to find wonderful and delicious

It's a sweet and sour bean salad. Isn't he so cute? He loves cooking with grandmama

And this little guy right here is Mason and he's Loretta's next door neighbor's child

and they just love getting in the kitchen with Loretta and cooking and making memories together

which warms my heart. You know how I feel about getting children in the kitchen

So thanks, Loretta, and thanks, Matthew. Let's move on down here, and I'm going to show you the dressing

that we're going to serve over this bean salad. I'm going to start with a cup and a half

of apple cider vinegar. I'm going to stir in two cups of sugar

A little pepper. About two teaspoons of salt. And you want to make sure you don't forget that

because you don't want this so sweet. I mean, you want to kind of counteract that sugar

All right, now I'm just going to mix that up. And to these ingredients, I'm going to add one can of tomato soup

And we're using that straight up. We're not going to dilute it

This kind of reminds me of a salad that I make called Copper Pennies using fresh carrots

And it's a very, very good dressing. All right. I'm gonna let this come to a bowl, and then I'm gonna take it off the heat. While I'm getting all

the vegetables together, we're just gonna let it do its thing over here. I'm just gonna run the

whisk through it a few times to kind of break down that soup. All right. Now, at this end of the

counter, I've got all our vegetables. I'm gonna start with one can of red kidney beans that have

been drained. One can of green beans drained. One can of waxed green beans that has been drained

And this next bean I'm going to add, some people may call it a butter bean, but to me it's a white

I just love these big, big old white lima butter beans in there

And so these are drained also. And now to this I going to add a small jar of diced pimentas that has not been drained I going to add one diced bell pepper

one large purple onion that's been sliced. We're just going to kind of feather that through like that

And then I'm going to add two cups of celery. I'm going to slice it fairly thin

And you can see I'm starting with the end that's got the leaves

because I love the leaves. I think they add texture and a really, really enticing look to the dish

But it also has a tremendous amount of flavor. Okay, this looks like about two cups

So I'm going to toss this in the bowl. All right, this is getting hot over here

We just want to make sure it gets good and hot so that it will dilute that sugar

We want to make sure that sugar melts and it's not grainy when we put it in our salad

All right, to our vegetables now. I'm going to take a half a cup of just a regular salad oil

and just pour it all over our vegetables. This has come to a bowl

Now we're going to take our hot liquid and we're going to pour it over our vegetables

It has a wonderful, wonderful flavor. So that's pretty good

Now I'm just going to toss this. And this salad is best chilled and marinated for, I would say, at least four hours overnight is even better

This would probably hold nicely in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, which is great

It's another one of those wonderful little TV snacks for night without going through your lips straight to your hips

Before I put it away, though, y'all, I've just got to taste a little bit. but it's not nearly going to be as flavorful right now as it will this time tomorrow

Mmm... It's good even hot and not marinated. So when you get ready to serve your bean salad, you can drain it

but don't throw away your liquid, because you'll want to store your salad back in the marinade

When we come back, I'm going to be making another salad that was sent in by a viewer

I'm going to be making Tracy's salad. So I'll see y'all back here in the kitchen in just a few minutes

I've got one more salad to share with y'all

And this one, too, was sent in to me from a viewer and a fan and a friend

Her name is Tracy. Isn't she pretty? Tracy came to one of my cooking schools, and we had a wonderful time

and I was thrilled to see that Tracy wanted to share one of her recipes with me

because I always love getting you recipes and talking to you girls out there

You know, I'm just nosy enough that I want to know what y'all are doing

So thanks, Tracy. You sure are pretty. All right, so let's get started with Tracy's couscous salad

We're going to start by preparing one package of Parmesan-flavored couscous. Now you can find this ingredient in your rice and pasta section

and it probably won't take you any more than five or six minutes to cook it

Just go by the directions that are on the box. So I'm going to dump that in our bowl

This is another one of those dump recipes. I just love fixing these kind of things because they're so simple

and they're not intimidating, and they're delicious. Now to our couscous, I'm going to add one can of drained chickpeas

I just love these in salads. I think they're so good. Again, doesn't have a lot of flavor, but I love the way it feels in my mouth

And to that, I'm going to add a half a cup of crumbled up feta cheese

I do love feta. Now I'm going to add about a fourth of a cup of fresh chopped parsley

I'm going to add one diced red bell pepper, about a half of a large Vidalia onion that's been diced pretty nicely

You can see how fine that is. I'm going to use one English cucumber that's been seeded and diced

All right and in the bowl it goes Now I going to take one tomato and give it just a rough chop And

you'll want to make sure that you put that skin side down on your board because if you

try to go cut into that skin, the knife could slip on you because that skin's a little tough

All right, just like that, just a nice rough chop. All right, that gets it

All right, to make our dressing, we're going to use a fourth of a cup of olive oil

the juice of two to three fresh limes, some fresh ground black pepper

and a little bit of salt. And if this is not salty enough

we can taste it and then correct our seasonings. Mmm, that smells real nice and light but fresh

So we're just going to pour that over our bowl of ingredients

Give it a toss. Get those chickpeas off the bottom. I love those

And that's all it is to it. Thank you, Tracy, so much for sharing your recipe with me

You know, I love dishes that are quick, simple, non-intimidating, and especially when they taste good

Mmm. It's so good. The feta cheese and the cucumbers and the tomatoes and the onions

and the chickpeas and the couscous, they all go just right together

It's yummy. Perfect for that hot summer day. Thanks, Tracy. I really do appreciate it

Come back to cooking school and I'll teach you something else, okay? I'm kidding you

Listen, y'all don't go anywhere because when we come back, I've got some dressing tips for you

And that's not like putting on your clothes. it's like salad dressing. So I'll see y'all back in a minute

I want to share with y'all a basic Italian dressing recipe. I'm going to start with six

tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of white vinegar, two tablespoons of fresh

chopped parsley, one tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, one teaspoon of dried basil

a pinch of oregano and two cloves of fresh garlic minced. A little salt

A little pepper. All right, now we're just going to stir this up

Okay, so that's your basic Italian dressing. So, Cole, this is delicious over a green salad

but you want to make it a little different for the next meal. Put it in a saucepan, heat it up, drizzle it over spinach

You'll be so surprised how that hot dressing is so very good

All right, now you've got a nice piece of fish that you want to cook tonight, but you don't want to fry it

All you have to do is drizzle some of your cold Italian dressing over it

put it in the oven, bake or broil it, and you have got a yummy, yummy meal

So who knew that Italian dressing could be so versatile? Even in my world, y'all, sometimes nothing will do but a salad

And I just love what I've prepared for y'all today. I think you're going to love Tracy's couscous salad

Thank you again, Tracy. And Oriental chicken salad, great time of day

It's just perfect for a warm summer day. and the broccoli salad is always in order

And what a nice little twist is this on a sweet and sour bean salad

I really think you're gonna like these if you're having a picnic, if you're going boating

or if you're just sitting on the back porch. I think you'll love these recipes

So until next time, y'all, it's time for me to say goodbye, but I always send y'all loving best dishes

from my kitchen to yours