Fried Cabbage with Smoked Sausage and Shrimp | New Years Recipe

Okay, folks. Look, I'm going to start over on this video by saying happy new year. You guys listen, we going to go ahead and we going to make, you know, fried cabbage. And you guys have seen me do it before. I've even done it with, you know, with the shrimp, right? But this time, we going to put a little bit of twist on how we make it. And we want this to be over the top, right? So, in this video, I'm going to go ahead and explain to you what this represents, you know, for the culture. You know what I mean? But other than that, let's jump right into it. All right. Did you guys know that cabbage leaves resemble folded paper money? So, eating cabbage is believed to bring money and financial success in the coming year as a hearty vegetable that stores well. Check this out. Cabbage is also linked to strength, nourishment, and endurance for the year ahead. All right, listen. So, this is what we going to do. We going to go over this like I always do, right? So, if you've been following me for a minute, you know I like to go over these ingredients. As you guys can see, it's not a whole lot to it, right? I got my hand right here. This is an extra-virgin olive oil and this right here is infused with garlic. I always cook with this. You start off with the best stuff and then you straight, right? But we going to have this and we going to have a little bit of this, you know, bacon fat, right? This is the bacon grease that I had rendered down and I save it. You see how small it's getting? Don't ask me, do I use it? Proof is in the pudding. Right? So then we got some uh apple cider vinegar. I'm going to put a little bit in this just to give us a little bit of that tart. You know what I mean? To keep, you know, to get everything in balance. We got an onion. You got to have garlic, folk, right? This going to be a real star. This right here is a smoked sausage. You know, you got to have this cuz listen, once we put that in there, we cut this down. And you guys can cut it into medallions. You can cut it into halves. You can cut it into quarters. However you get it, you just want to get it in there along with this. This these three things right here get together and this renders something down that's incredible for the flavor. And then of course, we got the star. This is a nice head of cabbage, right? We talked about this. Now, we want to talk about where we going to get our seasoning from. For me, you know, I like to use that creole kick. To me, there really is no other. Now, this is number one. I like my a or check this out. Even if you guys don't have this or the a seasoning, you guys can go ahead and get yourself uh whatever you have that's in your cabinet that you like for yourself. You can do that. We always going to have kosher salt, fresh black pepper, and then this is where we put the twist in. It's going to be two twists. A lot of you guys have never ever had cabbage with shrimp. Well, this time we going to do it, right? But I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going to sauté this along inside of that fat and all of them flavors right there. Then I'm going to remove this. We just going to add that at the end and I'm going to show you how to make something, you know, really, really truly special. All right. So, a lot of times I'm trying to get myself in the habit to start talking about the tools that we use. Now, look, I got a hex clad pot right here. I'm going to go ahead and turn this on. We're going to go ahead and start with a medium flame. I don't know if you guys can see that. Maybe if I put this here, maybe you guys can see the flame. Now, this got a propane canister in here. You know what I mean? So, propane and gas, they burn a little bit different when it come to the color and the heat wise, too. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put just a little bit of this in here. Maybe about a teaspoon. That's all. Now, we getting ready to add Here it is. You know, some of my bacon grease. That right there is good. Look, we want to have the flavor. Some of y'all probably say, "Well, that's a lot." No, it's not. You want to have the flavor, folks. And by having the extra virgin olive oil, did you guys know like when you use olive oil, say we put some butter in there, it changes the the smoke point for the butter. That's why it protects it. It kind of like protects that uh grease too. Even though the bacon grease will take a little heat, you know, with the combination of both, it does a lot. Look at that right there. Now, I'm going to go ahead and let this warm up. Then we'll go ahead and move on to the next. Let's go ahead and do a little bit of our prep work. Right. So, usually when you buy yourself smoked sauces or whatever, it come in the packaging and it's like this. This part be a little tricky for everybody cutting that down. So, if you take it like this, just keep it like that. Just cut that. You see how it kind of like comes out straight. Now, I said we going to be doing rounds, right? This right here, you guys forgive me. Listen, I'm the chef. I'm the one that's doing this. So these pieces right here is mine. Now we just going to cut these down like this. And this is what I mean when I say rounds, right? So it's about how much you want to put in there. To be honest with you, just this little half with one head really doesn't I'm going to do something a little differently. You know what I mean? Normally I add my shrimp in at the end, but I'm looking for a certain look, right? And I don't want them to be overcooked. Even though they not overcooked when you put them at the end, cuz if you put them in at the very end, that's enough. But right now, I want you to go ahead look inside my pot right now. You see that right there? I just put myself a tablespoon of butter along with that bacon fat. You know what I mean? That bacon grease that I got in there and that extra virgin olive oil. And don't forget that's infused with garlic, right? So, now I have this. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and season this with a little bit of this creole kick, right? Cuz you you want to get it on here. To be honest with you, I should have done this in the very beginning. So, as you watching this, remember, you want to do this first. I'll make all the adjustments to everything that's inside, you know, on the recipe card, right? And don't forget the full ingredient list is on my website. smoking and grilling with ab.com and that's wittab.com. Look at that right there. These are some nice shrimp, right? For one head of lettuce, you know what I mean? Like just hopefully you don't have nobody, no guests or nothing like that. That's just going to be out there beating it up. I suggest you guys just double this recipe. Get yourself two heads and then get yourself some of these large or you can go small. You can double these, triple these, quadruple. It depends on how much, you know, shrimp you have. And then again, I can tell you this part too. Some of you guys don't even know that you can have, you know, cabbage and have shrimp in it also. But you see that right there? Let's look at my fire again. Oh yeah, we on super low. Now, let me go ahead and get it back up to that medium. Right now, we going to stay with it cuz listen, shrimp only needs about four minutes, folks. I'm going to drop this in here like this. Take this glove off so I can touch these utensils. Right. And what we going to do is we going to get them down here just like this. What we want them to do is make sure everything is touching the hot surface on the bottom. This is 2 minutes on each side. Actually, what I said was 4 minutes. So, we just do the math. You'll see they start to curl up, tighten up. I want to make sure my pot Yeah, we good. Remember, the heat is concentrated here and it's got to come out. It's been exactly 2 minutes. So, what I'm getting ready to do now is I'm getting ready to start flipping these over here. I don't know if you guys are capturing that, but you see, look at that little piece of the tail right there. It's starting to cook its way through. So, all we do now is kind of like turn this over just like this, right? Look at that. And the reason I do it this way, this is my new way of doing it, folks, because I want to make Oh, that's perfect. Look at this right here. Look at how you can see that side that was on the bottom. See how that cooked? That's perfect. And this side right here needs to be cooked. When they look like that and you flip them, you know that you got everything right. You know your heat is right on the bottom and all of this is key. Even when we make some of these dishes and sometime that shrimp be in there, I just know that I like my shrimp to be a certain texture. And I promise you, you don't need no more than 4 minutes. We just probably go another minute and a half. We'll take those out. I'mma leave this. However, I'm not going to line this with no paper or nothing like that. We put that in there and whatever drips cuz we going to use that as we reintroduce it back into the cabbage. All right. Now, you see where we at right here? Now, I'm going just move these around. Look. The whole purpose of this, this is important folks, is so that we don't have no issues with it being overcooked. This is going to be the the shrimp that you going to start your year off, right? You'll never make shrimp again the same way. You guys will be so concerned about the timing. It makes it real real different. Right? So, these are nice soft. I can just feel the way they are. I still want them to be buttery. So, now I'm going to turn this off. Right. We're going to take these out. Again, if I put this right here, I want all y'all to say right there. Ooh, AB, we are now kitchen certified. Look at that. All right, so I got my fire back to where I wanted it to be. I usually cut things off as I'm moving through my segments, right? But if I was cooking, I just would have reduced it down a little bit and went on. We have already prepped our medallions. We just dropped those in there like that. You hear how soft that that sizzle is? I like to do everything a little bit on the slow side. You know what I mean? So, we just put this in here. What I'm doing now is moving this around, letting it pick up all of the flavors that we have down at the bottom. All of that fine and all of that. All of this. You want everything to be coated. I can look at them all, see them like that. Now, what I'm going to do is just try to get these as flat as I can, right? And then we move on. Now, some of you guys, if you anything like me, you'll make everything like extra meaty. That's the way I normally do it. But this time, I'm making something that looks good. You know what I mean? It's not over the top. And we bringing them new year in, you know, right now. I don't know if my mic is picking up everything, but you can hear the little, you know, they're right there. There them smoked sausages working right. So look this at the bottom right here. Obviously this is where it was rooted at. I'm going to take this and I just cut this right down the middle just like this. So I take my chef knife. There you go. Let's get it like this. You see that right there? Now I like it this way cuz look what I do is got to kind of like take your time cuz you don't want to cut yourself, right? I cut this little core out, right? So we just take it like this and then I just take it here and I just break it out. This is it right here. This take a little bit of a minute to, you know, render down. So I just get rid of it. We do the exact same thing over here. And boom, they ready. So, we putting a little brown. I can see they starting to hump up a little bit. I can see that I got a little bit more liquid. That mean all of the grease that's inside of here, all of that smoke value and everything that's here, you know, is starting to come down there. Now, we starting to look good. Look at these pieces right here. Let me go ahead. Let me grab my tongs so you guys can see. Let me see. Here's one. You know when they cup up. Remember that old school baloney? Talk to me. Remember when you ever fried baloney? Am I telling too much? You know what I'm saying? I think we all done fried boni at one time, right? Look at this right here. Yes, sir. Now, when it get like that, I'm going to turn this down. I don't want nothing burnt. You know what I mean? Uh I don't want my crispy edges to be too hard. So, now I'm down back on the low. Right. What we going to do now is we going to take our garlic and we're going to load this up. Now, we just take this. Now, notice what I'm going to do. You know, I always like to put my garlic on top of something, right? I don't want it to be just in there as I'm, you know, reloading my, you know, my press, right? So, if I have it like this, I'm just going to take it, right? We'll do it like this. You see that? And now, I'm just going to go ahead and take the back end of my knife. Get that down and make sure it just comes down that way. Now, I put this last clove in there. Get all of this cuz we going to press that. We want all of it. We want maximum, right? So, we get that in there. Let's get it like this. Go ahead and get it closed. Now, we press and we do the same thing. Now, you want to get your spatula. We on low. Now, we move this around. Look at this right here. And to be honest with you right now, I'm going to go ahead and turn this up. Just turn it off. We'll let it cool. I just don't want to I don't want to overcook, you know, my garlic. But you do want it to sweat out. Look at that right there. Yes, sir. I done reduced that heat. Matter of fact, I done turned it all off. Look at this right here. Okay. So, here's what we're going to do now, folks. It's really about cutting this down. It depends on the size of your bites that you want. Like, I've seen people cut it down like this, right? But this ain't lettuce. I like mine to be just a little bit on the bigger side. You know what I mean? I like them like this. Then when they come out big like this, I'm just going to go ahead and finish this. Now, don't forget you guys, you want to invest yourself into investing some decent size, you know, I mean, decent knives, you know, something that's decent. Something that you can have, you know what I mean? Something that'll last you throughout. We not into buying 35,455, $65 knives, you know, I mean, they don't hold the edge long. You spend more time sharpening these right here. Middle tomade knives, folks. And look at this red handle right here. I hope that's showing the way it is. You know what I and I get to all the information. Matter of fact, he manufacturing these right now for the people that, you know, follow smoking and grilling with AB. Now, you guys see I got a white one like that. That's my, you know what I mean? But I decided to go with the red cuz this right here is right. Now, back to this part right here. If you see this, remember I said the size, you can take these and then you can cut them down like this and that works. Or you can leave them whole like I just had. That's one half. And don't forget, this is basically water. Just enough, you know, structure inside the DNA of the cabbage to where they form and be solid. Right. So, now I'm coming back over here to my fire. I'm going to go ahead and get my fire back up now because I got my garlic in there. What I'm going to do is I'm going to keep moving this around as it comes up cuz again, I don't want to burn nothing. And anyway, it's starting to it's almost dissolved anyway. All of that flavor and everything is inside of here. What I'm doing now is refraining from taking one of these out of here and eating it. Okay, so look, I'm going to take a little chicken stock and just put this down here on the bottom. We going to render a lot of liquid anyway. Right here, just to stretch that. Look at that right there. Look at the fine that was on the bottom of my pan by just putting just a little bit of this in here. Ooh, my goodness. We going the extra mile. And to be honest with you, this the right way to make it. You know what I mean? Uh that heat under there. This will start to boil again in just one second. It's just cool. I just use some just chicken stock, folks. Just a little bit. Now, again, I'm going to show you this by adding that little bit of chicken broth or stock, whichever you guys have. Right. I'mma take this right now. I'mma pull this back. You guys saw what the bottom of the pan the pot look like when I pull it back like that. Look how clean that is. That's what just with a little bit of that liquid do. And we starting to boil right now. We don't need no more liquid. You know why? Cuz this is going to do it. Now I'm getting ready to take all of my, you know, cut cabbage. We'll just put that in there. I'm going to put a lid on here so it'll just get a head start on getting withered down. Right. So we'll put that on top. I'm going to put this away from myself. I'm getting ready to raise this up to a true medium. There we go. And we going to let that work. Right. It's just going to steam in there just for a minute. I'll stir and do everything in just one second. Now we going to come over here. And now we going to just prep the rest of this. All right. So I get this in here. Now we got it all in here. This is just one head. Now I'm going to come in here with my spatula, start pushing this down a little bit. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this top back on here and we going to go cuz it's a little bit on the unmanageable side right now. Right. So when I put this on top of here like that, we got enough liquid down on the bottom to give it a little steam. I'm going to leave this on here for maybe about 5 minutes. You'll see everything has gotten smaller. Then we'll stir. We'll go ahead and add our seasoning to it. Hit it with this, you know, this apple cider vinegar, a little salt, pepper, and that's it, folks. Remember, break away from yourself, folks. Don't just lift the top up and catch yourself no steam burn. You see that right there? All the liquid that's in here is getting ready to come out of here. You know what I mean? It's on its way down. Let's look down at the bottom. You see we got a little bit of liquid. You can see the color now. That all that's all natural. That's the smoked sausage, you know, uh the olive oil, a little bit of that butter that was in there, some of the flavoring from the uh shrimp. You see that right there? It's on its way. These dishes right here don't take long. This how we going to do this. Now, I haven't done anything here. We got to put a little bit of salt. Remember, salt is for to enhance the flavor that's already in here. And I'm going to be using this Creole kicker. This is another low sodium product, right? So you got to have a little bit of salt just to wake it up. So all of my people that's watching that got that hypertension and all that, this is where we control everything, right? So I just give it a couple of pinches. It's all we need. Then we check it again at the end. And then if you ask me, the way my palette is, I tell everybody just to go ahead and uh you know, if you need more salt or something like that, you do it to your individual bowl. Right now we got to add that flavor to it. Right? And obviously we going with the creole flavor. Right? So we'll just add some of this on here like this. I know some of y'all thinking like, "Oh, that's a lot." No, it is not. I'm going to show you why. You going to see right now in real time. Look at this here. Start getting this going around like that. You still feel like it's a lot. Now that we getting this incorporated, we need to be able to see the flavor. Seeing is believing. And then I did lead with this is a low sodium product. So listen, it's okay. All right. So the next thing we going to do is listen, we got to add that pepper to it. I'm going to add it in a couple of different stages. Now, if you guys know that when you follow me and I talk about like when I'm cooking on the grill and stuff like that, pepper takes on a different taste when it is hot, right? So we going to add some here, right? And then you going to ask me, well, how much AB? If you got yourself a pepper grinder like this and we doing it fresh black crack, we just going to squeeze this. We f to turn it until we get tired. But you see how I can see it right there on the top. This is a great start right here. So now that you saw that I put that pepper in there. Look at this here. Look at how this is going. I don't even have a top on there. Remember we talked about how it weathers down. Look at that. Look at all the liquid that's rendering down there at the bottom. I don't know about y'all. I don't know how you eat your uh cabbage, but I'm going to ask this question. Does it involve cornbread? Holler at your boy down in the comment section below. Now you see the steam is, you know, pewing out of this right here. Pewing out. Okay, we got it coming out the side a little bit. Remember, we break it away. See how my form and everything is down this way. So, I break it this way. I'm going to always talk to y'all about that, man. I don't want to see nobody get that burn. Right. So, now that we have that, I'm getting ready to turn this off cuz I'm sure this is the texture that I'm looking for. You see this right here? Now, you guys cook it down to the texture that you guys like. Oh, yeah. I like mine to have just a little bit of integrity to it. I like it to be soft. All of that in one, you know, in one bowl, right? So, now that you seeing this right here, look at that. You can see that we got, you know, our sauces in there. We know we put garlic in there. It's garlic infused olive oil. We got a little hint of butter and mainly we we know we put in there. We put that bacon grease in there. You see this right here? We talked about this in the very beginning. Apple cider vinegar. This is what I'm going to do. I'm just going to go ahead and just get myself just a little bit of a capful, you know, drop that in there. Well, that's enough. We just want to taste it right here. For those of you guys that don't like the little tanginess, you can completely skip that step all together. Right now, this is right. Right where we tasted that. We'll find out if we need to make any adjustments. Does it need anything else? Do you want to add more pepper to it? What about that creole seasoning that we add to it? Do you want to add more, you know, creole kick? Talk to me. This is where you do that. Now, again, my fire is off, right? Just so you guys know, it's still nice and hot in there, but it's cooling off as I'm talking, right? So, we beyond that. Now, you remember these shrimp? Y'all must have thought I forgot about that. Now, we dump these in here, right? Cuz all we want to do now is just warm them up. We do not want to cook them anymore cuz we took the time to get our shrimp the way we wanted it in the very beginning. After looking at this, tell me it don't do does it call for shrimp? Yes, it do. You see that right there? I'mma taste this. I'm not gonna eat none of the shrimp because I didn't make no a whole lot of it, right? But we gonna taste it. See where we at. Make our adjustments if needed. And then we going to take some pictures. Okay, folks. Now, listen to some of y'all. Like I said, you know, just hearing the word shrimp and cabbage, you might not be able to understand it, but you truly want to do something like down south. Like this is down there. It's like deep down there. Like down there in Bayou, stuff like that. So, here it is again. Look at that right there. I didn't go over the top with all of the seasoning. If you guys want to add some more seasoning or somebody needs more salt, let them do that to their individual bowl like that right here. I promise you when you taste this, you'll probably never make it the other way. Unless you don't have no shrimp and buy time. You taste this, you probably going to keep shrimp on, you know, at the ready. Now listen, I feel like I'm over talking. You know what I mean? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get in here and get me some of this. My goodness, these are some Look at that. I hate to put this big piece right here, but you see that right there? Look, let me bring it around so y'all can see it. Smoked sausage. We got cabbage. and know we got that infused flavor all over the whole thing. Now, that being said, so it don't leak no more. Cheers, y'all. Almost made me cuss. Okay, folks. Look, I really didn't have nothing to say. You know what I'm saying? Kind of like overwhelmed with just like the flavor and just the fact that this time I did this on camera where you guys saw me do my shrimp, you know, at the beginning. That part is key. You know what I mean? Just about having that right texture, you know what I mean? So listen, when you see this, when you guys go to the website, which is smoking grillingwithab.com, and that's wittab.com, it'll be all written down for you cuz we going to go ahead and season them shrimp, you know, prior to getting everything started. That'll be done way before, you know, when you saw this video. But doing it that way, it is worth the extra little bit of effort that we put into that. This right here is fire. You know, uh you can pick the size that you want. I like the larger size shrimp. Hey, but with that being said, let me know down in the comment section below what else would you have added to this or what kind of seasonings are you guys going to be using. Now, with that being said, I'm going to take this and you know what I'm about to do. So, if you're new to my channel, let me just take this time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button, and tell everybody out here. There's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. And look, I'm going to show you this right now so you guys can say you seen it here first. This right here is called Bayou Swamp Water. You guys just stay on the lookout for it. It's coming soon. I'm out y'all. Peace. Heat.