Has anyone tried Paula Deene's recipes? Are they any good?

[Aristus]

I haven't tried them, and am not interested in doing so. But I figure: if you put enough butter, salt and sugar in it, you can make anything taste good.

So I'm curious as to any real skill or talent she may have.

Not that I'd care otherwise. If she falls into utter obscurity, it would be simple justice, and nothing else...

[Skittles]

1. she is disgusting and so is her food

[murielm99]

2. No, I haven't.

But if I am looking for a certain type of recipe and it happens to be hers, I will try it, regardless of her name on it.

Right now, I am mostly looking for vegetarian main dishes that I can cook ahead. My daughter-in-law is vegetarian. She is a wonderful person, and I want to be sure she eats well at my table. I have discovered a great vegetarian chili and it is very filling. I have a chowder that I am going to try next. I have always made vegetarian lasagna, for anyone who wants to eat something not as heavy.

Anyway, I am not going to jump all over Paula Deene any more. She has had her fifteen minutes. We have to try to educate people about trans individuals. We have to make sure Planned Parenthood stays funded, that voting rights are not flushed down the toilet. We have midterm elections to face. So, if I see an interesting recipe with her name on it, I will try it. The real question might be whether I have any skill or talent as a cook. LOL.

Have a great day.

[nolabear]

3. Yes, some are very good. I grew up on versions of some of them. But many are upscale poverty food.

Paula Deen is her own animal, a woman who found a way to become a character, as did Martha Stewart and Rachel Ray and Gordon Ramsey and a lot of others. She's paying for some dreadful roots and I hope she sincerely learns and finds a way to do good.

But the food...I grew up with this food. My grandmother ran a little cafe in Mississippi and I know fried chicken and banana pudding and grits and butter and gravy and on and on. Lots of it came from having little money, so cheap, fatty meats and offal went into the meals. Pigs' feet, chit'lins, head cheese, liver and lights (lungs), pork because pigs eat anything and could be fed wild and cows need care and the proper diet. Biscuits and gravy? Flour, water, and lard, and that's about it. Greens? My granddaddy picked poke salet off the side of the road and we put bacon grease in collards and turnip greens and salted hell out of it, and it was good. And kept people from having the rickets that the rest of the diet would have given them. And since we are predisposed to seek out that kind of thing, great in survival culture but awful in culture of plenty, it tastes wonderful (except for that offal stuff which I gag at). Paula has taken great advantage of that, but didn't manage to convey that these days you'd better save it for special or it will kill you. It killed people then, but slowly as opposed to the fast death of starvation.

[Are_grits_groceries]

7. Oh Lawd!!!

Now you have done gone and done it.
I WANT everything except for random pig parts.

[nolabear]

9. Sorry, Baby. And I didn't even bring UP fried catfish and hushpuppies.

*sob!*

[juajen]

40. And, grits are groceries, and absolutely delicious!

I love mine with a piece of sausage and fried egg mixed in, and yes, a lot of butter. Of course, I don't have this daily, but I still love it. It reminds me of my mother, who managed to feed seven children from a garden and a chicken coup, pigs and fresh milk, butter and buttermilk from our own cow. Don't knock it. I also hafresh peaches fresh tomatoes, squash, beans, spinach and peach and apple cobbler and fresh homemade ice cream and lots of watermelon and cantaloup. BTW, butter is a lot better for you than margarine, and I have no weight problem. The only oil I use is extra virgin olive oil, which I used to brown and saute with, along with a portion of butter, for a delicious taste. I now live in Cajun country and my food is even better, a combination of plain southern and spicy Cajun.

[temporary311]

4. I did use a pumpkin cheesecake recipe of hers.

But then that probably falls into the 'sugar/salt/butter' thing, though it didn't seem to have any more butter or sugar than other baked goods I've made.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. For some reason, they all taste like butter.

[Tanuki]

6. Yes, she actually does have some good recipes, if you like that style of food.

You could try them out here, without buying her book or in any way supporting her. These are billed as her 100 top recipes:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/paula-deen/recipes/index.html

[JVS]

26. Wow look, no butter in this dish!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/chicken-and-dumplings-recipe/index.html

[loli phabay]

41. mmmmmmm. chicken and dumplings. yummy

[dem in texas]

8. I grew up on that kind of cooking, that doesn't mean I want to eat it now.

I have watched her show a few times and thought her foods were too unhealthy. I love coconut Cake, fried chicken and collard greens and all that good ole Southern cooking. I have learned how to cook these things, so they are not so loaded with fat, salt and sugar.

[nolabear]

10. Me too. I'm not sure it's as good, but good enough, and I'm alive!

[cbayer]

11. Have you ever seen her donut burger?

That's right - it's a Krispy Kreme donut as a bun.

http://cdn.cstatic.net/gridnailer/500x/

[WorseBeforeBetter]

14. It would take a lot for me to pass up a glazed Krispy Kreme...

but that would do it.

[Autumn]

15. Looking at that brings a tear to my eye.

She should be charged for aggravated assault on a lovely Krispy Kreme donut. My God, an egg and bacon too as if the hamburger wasn't bad enough .

[Link Speed]

22. I had a Krispy Kreme burger at the County Fair a couple of weeks ago

Blue cheese, bacon, jalapeno, dill pickle and lettuce with a bucket of chili-cheese fries.

But I decided to forgo a beer and went with fresh-squeezed lemonade for health's sake.

I would do it again, right now, and I just finished an outstanding BLTA.

[cbayer]

23. Mmmmm.. sounds really good actually.

I love a good fair and all that good food.

[Link Speed]

24. It was fantastic

I live in an extremely foodie region (Wine Country, CA) and plan on featuring those burgers at our next party. If you make one, leave the tomato off or the tomato will melt the split Krispy Kreme. Use a really sharp dill as it will really sing with the sweetness of the 'bun'.

I think I will try grilling the cut surface of the bun, as well.

Heck, my motto has always been, "I'll try anything twice".

Anything.

[cbayer]

25. Not sure I would make it, but I would taste it if offered.

Went to Jazz Fest in New Orleans this year, where the food stands are the best on earth, imo.

Small plates of extraordinarily good things - that's my favorite way to eat.

[NuclearDem]

29. Steak and donut sandwich please.

You want cigarettes on that sandwich?

YES, I want cigarettes!

[xmas74]

38. That's a big thing right now.

I don't know where it started, but it wasn't with her.

The idea is that the bacon is salty, the donut is warmed and the glaze melts onto the meat, and the egg yolk and extra sharp cheddar give it a creamy taste of sorts.

I had one at a charity event a few years ago. It's not my thing but the appeal is really out there for the product.

[1-Old-Man]

12. First off understand that nothing she does is actually traditional southern food

She is a charlatan in a lot of ways and mostly in calling that grease and salt she brews up traditional southern cooking. Mostly they are rehashed common recipes with more butter than any normal person would eat in a lifetime. If you want to find some new twists on cooking from a TV Chef try Emerald, many of his on-line recipes are very good. Of course there is also the god of TV cooking, Alton Brown. Anything Alton makes is going to be good.

[nyquil_man]

13. Surely you've heard of her English peas recipe.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/english-peas-recipe/index.html

Ingredients
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
2 cans (14 1/2-ounces) English peas, drained

Directions
Melt the butter in small pot and add the peas. Cook over medium heat until peas are warm.

[shanti]

34. canned peas??

[WorseBeforeBetter]

16. No, and I turn to Fred Thompson of Raleigh, NC (and NYC)...

when looking for Southern recipes. He's genuine, not that phony baloney Paula Deen "heyyyyyy y'alllllllllllll" southern.

http://www.curiousgeorge.com/shop/books/Crazy-for-Crab/9781558322653

A sample:

Grilled Fresh Figs with Country Ham
http://leitesculinaria.com/1747/recipes-grilled-fresh-figs-with-country-ham.html

Mmm mmm good...

[Le Taz Hot]

17. I gotta say her fried chicken recipe is the easiest

and the best I've ever tasted. Basically mix 3 eggs and a whole bunch of Louisiana Hot Sauce in one bowl, mix flour, salt, peppers and garlic powder in another bowl, and dredge the chicken parts first in the egg mixture , then in the flour mixture and deep fry parts for about 15 minutes. Needless to say it's not something you want to indulge in often but every now and then it's a good Sunday meal.

[Brigid]

18. Absolutely not. Are you nuts?

I have no desire to have another heart attack.

[Warren DeMontague]

19. Elvis did.

it didn't end well.

[Cleita]

20. My grandma from Arkansas made the best fried chicken.

It was fried in pork fat. She raised and killed her own chickens too like an old woman raised on a farm would. They were organically raised on corn, grains and all the worms they could scratch out of the ground. Her chicken was truly delicious, however, I don't think I would want a steady diet of that grease feast today although fried chicken dinner was always special not any every day or even Sunday dinner offering from her kitchen.

Daily, we had plainer and not so greasy meals many of them in casseroles baked in the oven with lots of starchy food like rice, noodles, potatoes, or beans, various in season vegetables and actually very little meat. It was during WWII as well so butter was rationed as were many other food staples so it was not used as freely in her kitchen as Paula does. Meat was stretched in the casseroles so many could eat what a few do today. Even hamburgers were a luxury item you ate on special occasions and you had to go out to get one because the buns were not available in the market like they are today.

[LadyHawkAZ]

21. Southern cooking, right?

I have never seen her recipes, but I could probably quote them to you anyway. My mom came from backwoods KY.

Which means her recipes are probably insanely delicious and incredibly bad for you.

[1-Old-Man]

28. No, not really.

Calling her food southern cooking is just a gimmick that her shows use. Its pretty easy to tell. Just look at her ingredients. Most of them were not available anywhere south of Virginia before about 1955 or so. So to call her concoctions 'traditional souther cooking" is about as absurd as calling the food they feed on the Space Shuttle mom's own home cooking.

[charmay]

27. I like to take her corn salad to pot lucks.

It's easy and everyone loves it, but it's also loaded with fat and calories. So it's relegated to special occasions.

[NuclearDem]

30. I stole her secret recipe, works for all her meals:

1) Order Hardee's.
2) Add four lbs butter.
3) ???
4) Diabediac arrest!

[Dr Hobbitstein]

31. I was looking for a bacon-meatloaf recipe I used to have...

Couldn't find it, but found Paula's. Her recipe called for a pound of ground beef, and a pound of cooked chopped bacon.

I used 6 slices of cooked bacon. There was bacon-ny goodness in every bite. I couldn't imagine the heart attack that the full pound would have brought on.

[Douglas Carpenter]

32. I like her version of over-the-top comfort food. Frankly there are a lot of talented artist with

horrible politics. I'm not going to refuse to like Frasier because Kelsey Grammer has horrible politics. I'm not going to hate John Malkovich's work and pretend he is untalented even though his politics are as one of his friends described, " so extreme you think he must be putting you on. But he is not.". Robert Duvall is a fantastic actor who also has horrible politics. Jon Voight is one of the most talented actors in America if not the world and his politics are straight out of cloud cuckoo land. Even now grown up little Ricky Schroder is a right-wing kook. And Meatloaf who produced some really fantastic songs campaigned for Mitt Romney. I tend to think Paula Deen was more of an airhead who was and probably is too unsophisticated to realize the implication of things she was saying than someone who was consciously and intentionally racistly hateful.

[juajen]

33. How foolish. She is a wonderful cook, and her cookbook sales prove it.

Accepting her talent doesn't make what she did ok, you know. I am really tired of this fake outrage. As if I don't hear outrageous remarks daily from every corner disguised as having comedic value, i.e., "These three people entered a bar.........

Racial slights do not only come from little ole rich ladies.

[Incitatus]

35. Wonderful is subjective

McDonald's has high sales.

FOx News has high ratings.

Her recipes may taste good, but if you eat that kind of fat and sodium on a regular basis you can look forward to an early grave.

[bhikkhu]

36. Paula Deen's are almost as bad as Martha Stewart's to me

...everything fatty and buttery and creamy, my system can't take it after eating mostly Asian-style for so many years. A typical meal at our house is steamed rice, poached chicken, and boiled broccoli; easy to cook and easy to digest, and I can eat a good-sized dinner and then go out for a bike ride or putter around the garden or whatever. Much of the "traditional American" cooking just makes me want to lay on the sofa like a beached whale.

[aikoaiko]

37. I like her grits and shrimp recipe.

mmmm.

[tammywammy]

39. The Not Yo Mama's Banana Pudding is fantastic. n/t