Carmine's Jambalaya - Remember never trust a skinny cook!!!!

hi my name is Carmen Gibson and I would like to welcome you to my Cajun kitchen I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself I was raised beneath my mother her sister and my grandmother that was some of the best Cajun cooks that I've ever known in my life and I still use some of my grandmother's recipes a little over eleven years I've had a restaurant on the Gulf Coast I had two restaurants prior to that and was very successful unfortunately took ill had a stroke and only by God's grace I'm here today to be able to share some of my talent with you God has given me a talent and it's cooking I would love to cook all my life and I'll continue to do that as long as I can I have a few little mishaps every now and then I stutter I forget what I want to say sometimes and I've got a little shaking in my hand but as long as I'm using it chopping an onion bell pepper and garlic and all the good seasonings that go into this food I don't shake anymore so I'm welcoming you to my kitchen and maybe we can bring some of my cooking into your home and today we're going to be cooking shrimp and sausage jambalaya the first thing I'd like to show you is the how to clean garlic it's one of the easiest things to clean I have some garlic chopped here it's about a half a cup and we're going to use that in this recipe today but I wanted to show you how to clean the the easiest way to clean garlic you take the flat of your knife and you just hit it one time and this garlic appeal right out of the paper it's so easy and then I like to chop it up there's little machines that you can use that will chop up the garlic for you if you want to use them I prefer to see my my vegetables in my food when I'm cooking so there you have it and that's so easy try to choose the garlic if you'll see these are bigger bigger toes I call the whole piece a bulb of garlic and I call these little toes or but try to pick the one the garlic that has a purple tint to it on the outside because that produces a bigger piece of garlic for you okay now that we've chopped up this garlic we're going to take it straight over to the pot we're going to start by putting two sticks of butter in the pot and we're going to turn this on number seven on my stove it's a medium-high heat and we're going to put the garlic in we're going to cut some parsley this is already oh this has already been washed don't take this little wire off the bottom of it start with the very little piece on the end I love these little cut boards they're so handy and you just go right down just as thin as you can and if you want to you can put it in the microwave and it you can make your own dried parsley but I always like to use the fresh you know when I had my stroke of my doctor told me he said corpsman you know you got a little bit of brain damage and he was just as serious as he could be and I said I said doctor I have brain damage before I had my stroke and he just thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard but you gotta laugh about it now you don't want to cut this parsley you know what these stems in there then you scrape off the little leaves if you want to but these stems aren't they're real real tough and they're hard to hard to chew and they really don't cook that well so you can just get rid of that and I'm taking this right over to the pump same pot I like to try to use a minimum of the least cooking utensils that I can oh my goodness it smells so good in here already okay green onions most people want to cut the weight off the onion just cut the little bitty root off the very edge because this is really your onion all this has been cleaned washed okay now the easiest way that I need to do usually cut the onion I cut it in half and I put that other half on top of this and that way you can make it never use a dull knife it's a good way to cut yourself on accident see how easy this is okay back to the pot okay onion you can choose a yellow or white onion it makes no difference I'm a bargain shopper so if one's on sale I buy that one it doesn't really make any difference but this is about I'd say medium to large onion oh I used seven pretty thick green onions in the pot and one little bunch of parsley so you can write that down if you want to I have a medium-sized bell pepper here and okay I always like to pull that outside layer of the onion off because it's tough and it doesn't cook okay now if you this is the proper way to cut an onion start slicing it as thin as you can going right down the side top of the onion then you turn it around and you follow it all the way down to the end you turn it around and you start slicing this other side and look it's just it's little pieces it's so wonderful if you get a big piece in there every now and then you can chop it up put this inside takes us over to the part you don't fit Oh does this ever smell good I can't wait till you taste it now I know you're probably thinking that a half a cup of garlic is a lot but it's really not let me show you what it looks like so far these onions and parsley is just simmering in this butter kind of smells like heaven okay let me cut the other half of this onion in be sure not to cut your hands in my case I got long fingernails so and sometimes to cut them off the aroma in this kitchen is so divine mummy used to say lush pas la patate la Liang Liang we say they used to talk French to keep us kids from hearing what they said my grandmother could hardly speak any English at all she was from Marksville a Mansura area she was a sweet old lady I'll never forget the first time she my dad put electricity in her house she never had a light bulb in her house don't worry about this cooking ahead of the other because it all it's tender you want to just keep stirring it until it gets as clear as you want those linens to be and a belt that okay I'll take out the seeds but I don't take out the white the white part that's bell pepper too and you want to always cut the bell pepper from the inside out because if you try to cut it with this waxy side up your knife can slip and it's very very dangerous it can be don't worry about the ends because once you once you slice it like this you can hold those ends and you going to cut it just like you cut you green onions you're just going to pretend like it's all one little piece Chantal formally protection some of you Cajuns out there know what I'm saying it's all good okay hate to make so many trips to the pop but this is what I do make sure you get at least a good size bell pepper because sometimes you can only find small ones in the store there's a black piece right here and will cut out you can only find real small ones in the store but and if that's the case just use to let me tell you about I was I was going to tell you about the difference between Cajun and Creole if you start with jambalaya like we're doing today we're doing a sausage and shrimp jambalaya and you can start with that you can use chicken if you want to you make sure that it's already boiled and deboned instead of shrimp because a lot of people don't like seafood but if you don't care for seafood you can use that chicken it's just as good and tasty as a matter of fact sometimes I do chicken even though I like shrimp but anyway Kay Cajun and Creole Cajun will go you have to phase you're Gumbo's your Mach shoes and that all the way up into some Italian food there's a lot of Italians in Louisiana and they introduced us to a lot of Italian food so we've learned to just kind of incorporate that in our foods on the other hand you can go from jambalaya to which is considered Creole - red beans and rice all the way down to mustard greens and ham hocks so it's all a combination of just real tasty good foods let me tell you another thing um let me finish chopping this up well while I'm talking but a misconception of Cajun food is hot and that's not true if you wanted hot you can make it hot the Cajuns are Cajun cooking is not always full of cayenne pepper if you want to put cayenne pepper in it make it hot you know that's okay or maybe you can put a little jalapeno in there every once in a while that's okay but if you go into our restaurant and you order a bowl of seafood gumbo it's not going to be hot so a lot of people have a misconception of Cajun cooking being extra spicy well that's not really the case like I said you can make it hot if you want it hot but that gives like if you want to order at you say in a restaurant it's not going to be hot some people put so much peppers in their food or cayenne pepper I don't know they're just trying to impress somebody with the cookin or all right I like to enjoy the taste the key is the seasoning all this makes up your food okay the last ingredient to go in this pot our seasoning is going to be the okay this is the way I cut my celery just kind of little strips like this and we're going to cut it just like we did the green onions right this piece off and I don't throw away that green party there that's celery you're going to find out in my in my cook and I don't like to waste a lot but uh okay now you just cut it down at this I like to see my vegetables in the pot if you don't like to see them put all this stuff in a blender and blend it up and make it look like mush or if you want to hide something from some of the kids if they don't like onion stop tell them that don't tell them it's in there just put it in there anyway I'll tell you what we were raised you better eat what's on our plate sometimes you didn't have the next meal all this the you hear people talking about the Holy Trinity they call it the Holy Trinity because they use onions garlic and bell pepper or whatever but there's really two Holy Trinity two onions green onions and bell peppers celery parsley and garlic so I just always say that there's two Ola Trinity's so if you're going to follow us from week to week cooking make sure you have all those ingredients the only other thing that I can think of that we might need later on and some of the cooking videos is bay leaf Italian seasoning and Tony's and I'll warn you ahead of time if you're going to need something else okay the hardest part is over chopping chopping up all these ingredients it's the longest exactly what it's supposed to look like it's starting to caramelize the garlic is changing colors just like we want it the Parsley's changing colors just like we want it yeah I hate to keep saying this kitchen smells good but it surely does this right here is the most important part of cooking is your seasonings the amount of seasonings you put in I know you're going to say Carmen I don't like garlic if you don't put it in it's not going to taste if you it's not going to taste right so just try it one time like this if you don't like it then don't cook it like that no more but I'm just telling you that this this right here the seasonings that you put in it is the most important part of the cooking okay the next ingredient that we're going to put in the pot is our sausage and our rice and the cans I've already got opened on the side here I just like to cut my sausage slice it I cut that little crooked part off right there because it's not easy some people like to cut it on the side on a slant but the pieces end up being too big for me so I just slice it like this and you can buy any kind of sausage you want turkey beef this is beef today and any kind of any of your favorite smoked sausages it doesn't make any difference what it is I know a lot of you don't usually cut your food like I do but it it's just a faster way for me especially when you're cooking for a lot of customers okay we're going to put this in the pot on top of all these delicious smelling vegetables again we're cooking shrimp and sausage jambalaya okay we're going to put in one eight ounce can of tomato sauce I took the labels off because I didn't want to advertise for anybody unless they want to pay me of course one 14 ounce can of chicken broth we're going to stir this around right cover back up turn it on medium okay this is a 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes and up dump dump the tomatoes in a bowl and there's little cores in there that's kind of hard you want to take those out and then sometimes there's pieces of tomato that doesn't look too sporty take that out sometimes there's a little stem in there if the Machine didn't remove it wonder how the Saints are doing they're playing today who dad who dad who dare say gonna beat them saints you know I usually cook with one and sometimes I put it in my food but I'm on some medication today so I'm not going to pour me a glass but whenever you buy it you better call Keith he knows what's the good stuff okay once you see like this is the skin off the tomato and you want you don't want to put that in your food so make sure you peel all this stuff off a lot of people don't know this I'm going to show you how a bunch of tricks okay once you got them all done then you take your hands and you're going to squish them up my hands are clean don't ask you know we would use our hands for a lot of things in the kitchen I found enough piece but you need to remember always wash your hands very very good okay we're going to add this to the pot this is all the garbage now when you cook with any kind of tomatoes and I always do this it doesn't make any difference if it's tomato sauce canned tomatoes whatever it is you always want to put at least a little teaspoon of sugar in it I'm going to measure 1 teaspoon teaspoon how about that it takes the bitterness out of the tomatoes my daughter doesn't agree with me on that but I'm the cook I'm the mom she always calls me for recipes okay the next thing we're going to do is I've got a cup and a half of rice in here and sometimes when people cook rice it gets really gummy and the reason why is because you don't wash it if you've ever noticed um when you fry like rice-a-roni or something like that your rice will get coated on the outside with the butter and kind of brown that way your rice won't stick but if you're going to cook it in something like this it's going to have to be washed prior to cooking it otherwise it will get gummed up on you and make sure you always have a lot of rice because us is we eat a lot or rice honey and we you need to always have it on hand because you never know what i'm going to eat it okay you want your water to run clear see how milky it looks right now you want to dump all that water off and you're going to wash it again you want to wash it at least two or three times because you want your water to be clear if you water's not clear it's going to be gummy and this is long grain rice I don't ever use anything other than long grain rice now if you have a rice cooker at home that's even better but I'm so used to cooking rice on the stove that I very rarely use a rice cooker I have one okay that's about as clear as you're going to get it okay and you're going to just dump this right in the pot and rice usually only takes about 20 minutes to cook so if you got something else to do in the meantime you can turn the put your rice in stir it up okay I'm going to raise the temperature just a little bit so that will start coming to a high a higher heat I'm going to cover it and we'll be back in a few minutes so just check it out okay after we've added the rice and it's got a boil for just a couple of minutes and then you're going to turn it down to simmer because that's how your rice will cook okay we're going to add in one teaspoon of Italian seasoning and we're going to put two teaspoons of Tony's now there's two different kinds of Tony's one is a more spice which has less salt and that's what I prefer the regular tony's has a lot of salt it's a salt base so you want to use less salt now you've got your salt and pepper in here by using this tony's so instead of don't add any more salt and pepper you're going to wait until it's at the table in case you want more salt and pepper but this has got enough salt and pepper in it for you or I think it does okay Mui we got one more thing to add okay now I'm going to turn this down a couple of notches will let it cook a couple more minutes fire down to a minimum I'm sorry not not all the way minimum but about 3/4 of the way and you want to return to this pot about every five minutes because you have to stir it look at this see see boom this is real jambalaya okay the last thing I'm going to add is the shrimp but i'ma let this rice cook a little bit more we'll be back in just a couple of minutes to stir it again okay the last one last thing you want to put in it as your shrimp because that takes the least amount of time to cook and you want to cook them just to like once they turn pink for maybe a minute or two then you're going to turn it off and it's going to be finished starting to look like it's supposed to I don't never taste my food while it's cooking I dump it all in the pot I don't even like to measure really but I'm doing this for you guys but I know it's always going to be good if I cook it I'm gonna leave the lid off for about two or three minutes so that some of the juice can steam out and then I'm going to add three cups of shrimp these are peeled and deveined exactly three cups people if you don't have access to fresh shrimp they sell it frozen in the grocery stores but don't ever buy a shrimp that are pink if they're supposed to be raw because the pink means that they were rotten before you before you bought them but they need to be kind of tan in color just like this okay I think I'm going to go ahead and add my shrimp now stir all that up again and this is almost done you want to make sure you push those shrimp down in the heat so they'll cook and I'm gonna cover that up steam it for about 10 minutes and we'll be ready to eat okay stir this one more time before we turn it off and let it sit for just a couple of minutes the boy this looks delicious Christine Amy I love you dearly but this is dedicated to my beautiful grandkids Caleb Aiden and Lauren and never forget grandma folks thank you for watching today I really do appreciate it but if you ever want good food just remember don't never trust a skinny cook

Channel: nevertrustaskinnycoo

Views: 104,209

Rating: 4.9014492 out of 5

Keywords: Google, Electoral district of Cook, food, cooking, kitchen, recipe, restaurant, Recipe, Food, recipes, chicken, Chicken (food), dinner, meat, Meat, cuisine, sauce, salad, eating, foods, beef, pasta, rice, soup, Soup

Id: k-tbdO-N_fQ

Length: 38min 13sec (2293 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2011