How to Make New Orleans Favorites like Shrimp Po' Boys and Chicken Sauce Piquant

today on cook's country we're headed to the big easy brian makes julia a new orleans classic shrimp po boys jack challenges bridget to a tasting of king cakes and ashley makes bridget a regional specialty chicken sauce pecan that's all right here on cook's country a po boy sandwich is found all over louisiana it's a baguette like roll stuffed with seafood or meat or even french fries and gravy now it's said that the name started with benny and clovis martin they were new orleans streetcar conductors until they opened martin brothers coffee stand and restaurant in the french market in 1922. then in 1929 new orleans streetcar workers went on strike during this two-week standoff local businesses donated goods and services to the streetcar union including sandwiches from the martin brothers restaurant benny said we fed those men free of charge until the strike ended whenever we saw one of the striking men coming one of us would say here comes another poor boy the brothers also brought the free sandwiches out to the strikers so that no one had to put down a picket sign today we're celebrating the pool boy sandwich and brian's going to show us how it's done [Music] there are lots of different types of po boy sandwiches from roast beef to shredded barbecue but today brian's going to show us how to make the classic shrimp po boy that's right and shrimp po boys are probably my favorite sandwich in the world so i hope you know what you're doing then you know i've messed around with it a fair amount so i've got it down pat you get this crispy slightly spicy shrimp and remoulade which is basically mayonnaise on steroids fortified with horseradish and hot sauce and it's a messy sandwich i know you can rate a pobo about how many napkins you use when you eat it yeah it should be dripping down your arm under your shirt we're going to start by making our own creole seasoning bite you could buy seasoning blend from the grocery store but oftentimes they're very salty when we make it at home we're able to control the amount of salt that we put into it and this one's going to make about three quarters of a cup and we're only going to need two tablespoons for our recipe but this is great to throw in all kinds of dishes and on grilled meats especially i have five tablespoons of hungarian paprika two tablespoons of garlic powder i can really smell that garlic powder that's good a tablespoon of dried thyme a tablespoon of cayenne pepper a tablespoon of celery salt a tablespoon of table salt and a tablespoon of ground black pepper so we're only going to use two tablespoons of this for our flour mixture so we can pull that out right now we'll transfer that to two cups of all-purpose flour and to that we're going to add a quarter cup of yellow cornmeal now the cornmeal is important because it gives the shrimp a little bit of texture once it's fried okay now we found that a lot of times if we were just to take the shrimp dip in an egg and then dip it in the flour the coating would fall off the shrimp so what we're gonna do is we're gonna create a little bit of a batter so we have four whole eggs here and to that we're going to add one half cup of our flour mixture now we can turn our attention to the shrimp now these are 3140 shrimp meaning they're 31 to 40 per pound and we have one pound of them here so we're going to begin by peeling and deveining them so the way i like to peel into veina shrimp is i like to invert my knife so the blade is facing up then i hold the shrimp in my hands like that and i just about an eighth of an inch from the top of the shrimp kind of come in with the tip of the knife and start sliding it and wedging my knife upwards a little bit at a time you almost want to move the shrimp around the tip of the blade not force the blade into the shrimp and oftentimes if there is a vein to remove it will stick to the knife and you could just peel it and wipe it on the side so then i've got the shell in my hand i can just kind of peel off and then to remove the tail you want to squeeze right at the base of the tail to kind of force that meat out you wiggle it a little bit yes yeah okay so all the shrimp is peeled again this is one pound of shrimp and that'll make four sandwiches so you'll get anywhere between nine and ten shrimp percent not skimpy no these are big big sandwiches okay so we're gonna start by working with half of the shrimp at a time we're gonna hit it into the dry mixture we're going to take it from the dry mixture and put it into the batter and then back into the dry so oh it's a little two-step two-step po boy and we're only working with half the shrimp at a time because we don't want to over saturate this flour mixture to introduce too much water to it just kind of shake off the excess flour okay so all the shrimp's in there so i'll take my wet hand here and i'll just kind of toss the shrimp in the batter and then we go right back into the flour mixture and we'll just lightly toss those in the flour and we'll transfer them to our rim baking sheet this shrimp is a little bit more wet than it was when it came right out of that bowl so we don't want to add too much of this battered shrimp to the flour mixture because then we just create two batters yeah exactly all right julia we're going to finish spreading this shrimp here then we're going to wrap the tray in plastic wrap and throw it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes and that time is going to really allow the batter to stick to the shrimp sounds good and i might also wash my hands yeah i was thinking you might want to do that all right now we're ready for my favorite part of the sandwich of cajun life this is remy lodge and remoulade is just souped up mayonnaise this is a very simple version of it but they can get very complicated and very long ingredient lists we're going to start off with 2 3 cup of mayonnaise to that we're going to add 2 tablespoons of horseradish 1 tablespoon of worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon of hot sauce and one quarter teaspoon of ground black pepper the sandwich is all about hitting you upside the head with some flavor okay and that sauce is done so now we're going to do our vegetable garnish for the sandwich traditionally a po-boy comes with lettuce tomatoes and some pickles all right so we're just going to shred two cups of lettuce i saw this neat trick once on how to core uh a head of iceberg lettuce apparently you just slam it down on the court well hey it actually worked that kind of worked and it kind of went in there and like took out its heart i don't want the shreds to be too long so i'm going to cut this portion in half and we'll just finely shred this and that's about two cups right there and now we're going to slice two tomatoes these are vine ripened tomatoes we're going to first twist off the stem there and we're going to remove the core from the tomato now i like to do this by holding the tip of the knife with my thumb and my forefinger about a half inch away from the tip so i go in right next to the core and i've got a 45 degree angle i stick my thumb right in that core and then i just rotate the tomato not really doing anything with the knife but just holding it still and i move the tomato around the core very cool we'll just slice the tomato into thin sandwich slices now before we are going to turn our attention to the shrimp we're going to toast up our rolls here for our poboys now traditionally in new orleans and louisiana they have a very specific kind of bread you know it's crispy on the outside and pillowy almost cottony on the inside outside of louisiana it's hard to find that exact roll so you look around and see what you can find it should just have a little bit of texture on the outside but the inside should be nice and soft you should be able to push it in with your thumb and leave a nice little thumb print okay so i'm going to lay them out here split open and i'm going to broil them on the upper middle rack which is about six to eight inches away from the boiler element for just one to two minutes you don't want to walk away from it because they tend to burn very quickly under the boiler okay so the shrimp has been chilling out in the refrigerator for 30 minutes you can see that the coating looks a little bit more hydrated on it and we have two quarts of vegetable oil here that have heated to 375 degrees and now we're ready to fry the shrimp so i'm going to do half a batch at a time just so we don't overcrowd the oil oh i was going to say i'm happy to see using tongs he always likes to tempt fate a little bit i like to do both tongs and fingers wow you get your fingers dangerously close to that oil it's impressive it's actually safer to get your hands close to the oil rather than let the food drop from way up here because that way you don't create the splatter it's safer to use tongs so that's about half the shrimp we're going to let that fry until it's nice and golden brown that takes about four minutes per batch alright you can see our shrimp are nice and golden brown and they're starting to float to the top cooked through oh we're just gonna transfer them to a paper towel lined plate look at those beauties so we're gonna return the oil to 375 degrees and fry up the second batch of shrimp and now we're ready to build some po boys you need to put an ample amount of remy lot on these so this makes about approximately a quarter cup per sandwich oh you're not fooling around no this is a heavy duty sandwich quarter cup per sandwich all right then we'll go a little bit of lettuce and about three slices of tomato now a few pickles oh lots of pickles on mine extra pickles yes please i also like a good number of pickles on mine now the star of the show we have our shrimp how many we could fit on here and how many we have available is two different stores so you fit as many as you can on now you're up to eight that's pretty good so i like to give it a smash here with your right hand with your left hand forcefully press down the top bun i like to take on a wide legged stance here to protect your shirt it is perfection the little bit of seasoning you're right with all that cayenne and black pepper i thought that spice mixture was going to be too spicy but it's pretty mild all things considered yeah you get each one of them on the tongue but you hit that hot oil it really tempers down the uh the spiciness and the mayonnaise with the wishes here and the horseradish and you can get a little bit of the crunchiness from the uh the cornmeal brian this shrimp po boy is something else it is my pleasure if you want to make an authentic shrimp po-boy sandwich start by making a batch of creole seasoning with paprika cayenne and celery salt combine some of that seasoning with flour and cornmeal then combine some of that flour mixture with eggs dredging flour one pound of shrimp then the eggs then the flour again and let the coating sit before deep frying to serve layer the remoulade sauce lettuce tomatoes pickles and fried shrimp in a toasted sub roll and don't forget the napkins from cook's country a bonafide recipe for shrimp po boys i put her down shouldn't have done that you're in trouble now [Music] they say in new orleans there are three foods that typify mardi gras and that is king cake fried chicken and king cake so i think king cake's pretty important now there are mail order versions but are any of them worth the price of postage jack's here and he's going to tell us more we're having a party here today it's mardi gras this is totally fun we mail ordered cakes we spent from 45 to 70 including the shipping in order to have a little mardi gras come to us brought three samples here for you to taste okay let's start with this one you can start wherever you like so the audience chose our winner now the test kitchen made sure to remove the baby from their slices i'm not promising anything for you oh really i might find a baby in mine well you know you never know so this cake is a mardi gras tradition as you know and part of it is baking in little babies little baby figurines oh baby figurines there is some argument among new orleans historians whether this is related to epiphany and this is supposed to be baby jesus other people said it's the only thing that was available when the tradition started and somebody just baked something into a cake right and that it doesn't have anything to do with epiphany the colored sprinkles do the purple green and gold sprinkles they translate to justice faith and power justice faith and power i like that they're also the jewel tones for the three kings gotcha all right so this is you know it's brioche i would say um so it's buttery it's tender there's cinnamon in there icing a couple of these come with icing that you diy yourself um and then you put the sprinkles on some of them come already decorated we didn't really find a plus or minus some of them come with the baby already baked in some of them come with a baby that you can stick in yourself finding a baby this way would be the easiest way i've ever had a baby that's for sure that is the goal of the mardi gras party with the king cake is to actually get the slice with the baby and what do you get if you get the slice besides the heimlich maneuver well you you you get to wear the crown you get to have an extra drink you get to have a kiss i mean you know you get to decide what you want bridgette how does that sound i'm going to tear these up to find that baby then so anything you're noticing here that's different about these these two definitely have a cinnamon presents especially a streusel in the middle this one there might be a little bit cinnamon baked in there but i'm not tasting a lot there's a little bit in there this is very soft very brioche quite a bit of frosting on the top which i like i don't think you can get enough frosting and i love the crackling sugar this one has a very distinct cinnamon layer which i like a lot let me just take another bite make sure i still like it no i should say so these all them with the exception of one which is from mississippi the rest are from louisiana not sacrilege they still celebrate mardi gras and mississippi yeah none of them were from boston let's just put it that way but that might be sacrilege that's sacrilegious all right i'm gonna say i really like this one it's light it's fluffy it's very brioche which i'm loving usually i love a big cinnamon swirl you know me my cinnamon bun addiction so this one i certainly would not get rid of i'm going to take that with me as well um this is my favorite this is my second favorite this is fine it's a little bit too coarse a little too yeasted it tastes slightly dried out to me okay well the good news is and really there is only good news here is that you perfectly aligned with the audience and with the expert panel so nice let's let's start with what you liked all right that's the winner yeah it's joe gambino we loved it for just the reasons that you loved it it's kind of simple but it's delicious it's the cakiest of all i think that's what i like about it it's like a pillow you can put your head on at night isn't it yeah and that's when you get to decorate that yourself oh you do it diy yeah you can frost and sprinkle them on yourself oh i like that i could put bridget's king cake all around it okay and then this one uh this is the runner-up it's delicious yeah as you said it's a lot more cinnamony but another great choice okay and then this one which wasn't bad was just a little bit mmm i don't know it tasted like it'd been around for a couple days so this is from rouse's which is a supermarket chain and it was at the bottom of the rankings i mean it's sweet it's cake it's good but it didn't seem quite as spectacular as the winner right well there you go we've got a winner of a king cake and it's got a little diy joe gambino's bakery traditional king cake and it retails for 65.78 thanks guys king cake for everyone [Music] if you think of louisiana cooking what do you think of gumbo there's jambalaya etouffee sauce pecan perhaps well it's a lesser-known dish it's a braise and they cook all sorts of things in it down there in louisiana everything from alligator to today's chicken and ashley's here she's going to tell us more about this dish i sure am yeah if you didn't grow up in louisiana the chances are you probably haven't heard of chicken sauce pecan i had never heard of it until before we tried it here in the test kitchen yeah and i am so excited to share it with everybody today because it is a really really good dish and easy to do so no squirrel no alligator we're going to be using chicken here we have two pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs and i just want to show you how we got this to look like that and i'm going to start just by trimming the fat off and then i'm going to quarter it so i'm just going to run my knife really lightly along the top and then i'll run my knife just along the outer edge there cleaning it up cleaning it off that's exactly right so now i'm going to run my knife just right down the center to quarter it turn that to the side and run that just along the center just like so and this really is just going to make life a little bit easier when we are ready to eat great i'm gonna wash my hands real quick all right so here we have what's called louisiana seasoning this is one tablespoon i'm just going to sprinkle that over the chicken and i'm going to toss just to make sure it's all nicely coated great and you can buy louisiana seasoning at your supermarket sometimes it's called creole or cajun seasoning i'm not going to get into that argument or you can make your own we've got a great recipe on our website cookscountry.com and here i have one half cup of all-purpose flour toss in here as well so i have some oil that's been heating this is a quarter cup of vegetable oil that's been preheating in this dutch oven it's been set over medium high heat and as you can see it's shimmering nicely so i'm going to add in two batches the chicken to the pot and an important note don't get rid of the extra flour in the bowl we're going to use it a little bit later on in the recipe great three to five minutes per side and then we're going to transfer the chicken once it's nice and golden brown to a plate great all right so as you can see the second batch is nice and golden brown so let's take it out now i just want to bring attention to these beautiful brown bits that are forming on the bottom of the pan as you know that is called fond and that is flavor flavor all right so i am going to set that aside for now i'm going to just turn that off for just one second because i have a few things to focus on over here now this is going to be the foundation of our sauce pecan so here i have one green bell pepper and i want to chop it so i'm going to start by trimming off the top and then trimming off the bottom set that aside because i will be using that now just cut a slit down the side there then you're going to open it up and then run your knife just along the outer interior of the pepper and then you have a flat pepper to chop from about half inch pieces is perfect so you notice i don't have any carrots on the counter it's not a traditional french mirepoix and the french use carrot celery and onion but it's louisiana that's right so we are going to be using celery onion and green bell pepper that's the trinity all right perfect so i'm going to turn my pot back on now we have it back on medium high heat and now let's add the rest of our ingredients so one onion that is chopped good sizzle sound there and our chopped green bell pepper starting to smell good one rib of celery that was chopped as well this is two cloves of minced garlic and one tablespoon more of vegetable oil and then one more half teaspoon of that louisiana seasoning and it's missing our last ingredient and that's the remaining bit of flour that we set aside earlier again we're not using a roux so we're going to be pouring this remaining flour on top of the vegetables and it's going to just help to slightly thicken our sauce pecan great idea you can really smell the spices as soon as they hit that hot oil they have a lot of oil soluble compounds in them for flavor but also the heat is just really activating it yeah you can see i'm already getting some of that fonda all right it's been five minutes and as you can see our vegetables are nice and just softened just softened so now let's make the sauce okay we have one 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes and we're going with crushed instead of diced because we wanted it to fall apart yes okay we love the texture of that as opposed to the diced tomatoes which held onto their texture a little bit too much here i have three cups of chicken broth and as if things couldn't get any better than they already are we're going to add a little bit of bacon two slices of bacon no need to render it or pre-cook it ahead of time it's merely in there just for flavor and to add a little bit of smokiness to the background two tablespoons of worcestershire or some umami and depth of flavor serious savory flavor going in there one bay leaf now stir up any brown bits that formed on the bottom of the pan that bond i was talking about earlier yes i'm going to return the chicken to the pot i'm going to nestle it right on in there and sometimes some juices have accumulated at this step so if so i'm just going to pour those right back into the pot because that is some good flavor right there sure is all right but as you can see the sauce is up to a simmer so i'm going to put the lid on the pot and transfer this dutch oven to an oven that's preheated to 350 degrees and i'm going to cook it until the chicken is tender which should take about 45 minutes all right the time has come oh yes beautiful i do want to discard the bacon and the bay leaf it sacrificed its flavor for the betterment of the sauce a little bit of seasoning one teaspoon of tabasco sauce tabasco has that very distinct vinegary flavor i'm just gonna mix that in here just taste for some seasoning real quick and the great thing about braising especially small pieces of chicken like that you don't have to worry about taking the temp you know after 40 some minutes it's going to be done nice and tender yes great okay so as you can see we have some white rice i'm just going to add a few spoonfuls of this gorgeous sauce with a few pieces of that chicken okay gorgeous almost done some scallions oh man check into that chicken first don't even need a knife nope that's because we quartered it and the sauce isn't too thick without being cooked with that roux the tomatoes add a really nice acidic component to it but what i like is that it's not too stodgy yes that meat is fall apart tender it's gorgeous so uncomplicated and so complex with flavor one pot one pot yeah ashley thank you so much for bringing this fabulous dish to our attention you're welcome yeah gonna make it all the time and you are too chicken sauce pecan well it starts with chicken thighs fry the chicken in two batches then cook onion bell pepper and celery add tomatoes bacon and worcestershire simmer the chicken in the sauce season with tabasco and serve with rice and scallions so from cook's country an amazing louisiana chicken sauce pecan i'm starting to feel that tabasco a little bit creeping up on you huh right here thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 181,075

Keywords: new orleans, shrimp po boys, po boys, chicken sauce piquant, cooks country, cooks illustrated, americas test kitchen

Id: P_qsTEEc6Ek

Length: 23min 48sec (1428 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020