Ree Drummond is making things easy with four great recipes. First, there's Easy Queso to go with Pork Carnitas that have a shortened cooking time thanks to a multicooker. A humble sheet of foil is the secret to awesome Brown Sugar Ribs and Pineapple Relish for the boys. Then it's over to the slow cooker for Roasted Vegetable Soup to stock the freezer, and Ree's Slow Cooker Irish Oats make an incredible get-ahead breakfast.
Trisha's girlfriend Karri Turner, a Southern girl who now lives in California, comes to visit for the night. Trisha dishes her up some classic Southern food to give her friend the Southern fix she craves: Crock-Pot Mac and Cheese, her Mama's Fried Chicken With Gravy and for dessert, her favorite recipe for Pecan Pie.
The Kitchen hosts show how to use your kitchen tools to make cooking easier! Katie Lee Biegel uses the rice cooker and hand mixer to make Sesame Ginger Chicken and Rice Bowls, and Sunny Anderson gets out the mandoline to create her Simple Pizza Frico Crisp. Geoffrey Zakarian turns on the microwave for Mushroom Toast with Herbed Goat Cheese, and Alex Guarnaschelli puts the slow cooker to good use with her Slow Cooker Brownies. Plus, Ayesha Nurdjaja stops by to give the scoop on the new season of "Bobby's Triple Threat" and uses a wire cooling rack to make Tunisian Egg Salad.
Between the anticipation and the flavor, slow-cooked pork is phenomenal. Michael Symon takes the time to make a Slow-Cooked Pork Butt Steak, and while that's on the grill, he works on Roasted Cauliflower. No epic dinner would be complete without dessert, so Michael's wife, Lizzie, pulls out all the stops to create an All-American Crepe Cake with layers of strawberry, blueberry and lemon.
Can a dish of mac-and-cheese revitalize a city? If it’s made by Ashley Christensen, chef-owner of Poole’s Diner and six other restaurants in Raleigh, North Carolina, it’s possible. Poole’s turns out 15,000 of the gooey 3-cheese macaroni dishes a year (The New York Times says it’ll leave you “speechless”). In fact, there’s a whole station in the kitchen dedicated to making it, and it’s become an attraction in what was once a languishing downtown. The story of Poole's Diner begins with dessert: it was a pie shop that became a luncheonette in the 1940s, and stands as one of the oldest restaurants in the city. While studying at nearby N.C. State, 18-year-old Christensen got a job as a line cook at Poole’s. After she graduated from school and had several other restaurant jobs under her belt, the proprietor offered to sell the diner to her. Although all the appliances needed replacing, Christensen was still enchanted by the retro, emotional decor: a double-horseshoe counter, formica green top, worn in places where longtime customers put their elbows while drinking coffee. As you'd expect from any diner serving and mac-and-cheese, Poole’s feels classic and comfortable. But Christensen also wanted to offer something more: a celebration of local ingredients re-imagined with new flavors, like her slow shrimp with tangy marinated peppers— a modern riff on a Southern dish that has stood the test of time. When Christensen creates her food, she starts with a specific feeling: "The way it felt to eat dinner as a kid with my parents—it was an escape from the day but also a reminder of its blessings.” And when you sit down to a dish of Christensen's macaroni au gratin, cheese bubbling at the edges, or a plate of tender asparagus mingled with savory mushrooms, we think you’ll be transported, too.Ashley's Restaurants:Death & Taxes (Raleigh, NC)Poole's Diner (Raleigh, NC)Ashley's Book:Poole's Diner (2016)