Old School Southern Salmon Croquettes and Smoked Gouda Grits

I'm getting ready to take some of y'all down that soul food, old school, you know, time machine, right? So Gideon, come with me. We finna make salmon croquettes. We finna do some gouda grits, and then I think we're gonna make some cheesy eggs. Let's get it. Okay, so look, we finna get right into this video. You guys can see there's quite a few ingredients right here, but listen, it's gonna be well worth your time, right? The real star right here is we gonna be doing it with fresh salmon. Let me know down in the comment section below how many of y'all have done that. You know what I mean, made it with fresh salmon. All right, so I gotta quit calling it. My brain wants me to pronounce that L, you know what I mean, which I know it's not supposed to have it. So what I'm doing is now I'm clearing all of my ingredients, right? And once I got all these clear, we finna go ahead and prepare, you know, the salmon. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this down. Let's get it down to like some, you know, some manageable pieces, right? So we cut it there. I'll cut it there and just cut this down like that. Now, I'm sure some of you guys have not really done it. Most people I know, they make it out of a canned salmon, you know what I mean? But I'm gonna take it like that. And what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna skin this. And the reason I'm doing it, cause listen, my knife, the way I'm gonna run it down, it's like a little long. So if I cut it this way, I'm just cutting it down to manageable pieces, right? Now, all you wanna do is I'm gonna start here on this side. I'm gonna start off by leaving just a little bit. I go all the way down until I get to the skin, right? Then I turn it here and then I just bring it down. Let me just get me a little piece where I can hold it and I just run this across the bottom of this right here, right? So all we doing is just skinning the salmon, right? So when you bring it like that, I take this off, look, and that's how you do it. Now, listen, I've made this before and I usually do. I'm doing this now because, you know, just trying to cover all of my bases. I can go ahead and chop this up into cubes and then do my thing. But I like to go ahead and skin it just for those of you guys that don't wanna cook it with the skin, right? So I'll set that there. All right, so once you got it filleted, now you gotta see these, look at these. These are nice, nice pieces, right? No skin, and then you can see a little bit of the coloration of the skin. This is when you know you got it right. You got most of the meat as possible on there, right? So look, I get myself a meat cleaver. This is where you have a little fun in here. You know, I remember when we was a kid, we used to see, you know, like somebody on TV doing it, but that's what we finna do right now, right? So just bring it all in here like this. And listen, we just, hey, let me just tell you this. If you're not, you think it's easy, make sure you keep your hand away. All right, folks, once you have it done like this, now for those of you guys that always make it from the can, after seeing this right here, you probably won't do it no more. It just makes sense doing it by, you know, it's fresh, right? So once we have it, it's done right here. And you know what? You gotta really like catch salmon on sale. This is what we gonna really do. Since I pre-measured everything and it was a whole lot out here, right? What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my cornmeal, my flour, right? Over here, I got hot soapy water. I'm getting ready to get on my dishes and I got some Creole kick. You guys, if you don't have that, you can use any of your occasional seasoning that you would like. I'm gonna add that there. Drop that in there. Let me go ahead and grab my whisk. Now we just whisk this together. And this is what we gonna be putting the patties in, right? You'll see how it go. But you gotta get the gist of it, right? So once I got this completely mixed, I'm gonna set this off to the side. This right here is done. All right, so look, I got my onions and I got my bell peppers down, right? Normally I start my... I'm gonna do it that way anyway. Just to stay true to how I normally do it. I'm gonna go ahead and give these like a one minute head start. That'll be my onions. Reason I wasn't gonna do it, cause look, it's so small. You know, I got them diced down pretty small. Not as small as they can be, but when they small like this, they get ready at the right time, right? So now I'll just, like I say, sweat these down just a little bit. One minute, folks. Then after that, I'm gonna go ahead and add my bell peppers. All right, so all I'm doing is softening these up. You know what I mean? Don't wanna like just take them like super soft. We just wanna get some of that bite off of there. Sweat some of that into the, some of the flavor into the butter that we put in here. You know what I mean? And just render them down just a little bit. Yeah, onions should be a little bit, like these are starting to become translucent already. Right, let me check my fire underneath the bottom. Turn this down. We got a medium, medium flame. All right, so these are ready, right? What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut these off, right? These is off and I'm gonna let this cool. I don't wanna put nothing hot on top of my salmon, right? So we'll let this cool. I'll spread this out. I'm gonna set this off to the side. Now we get ready to start on them grits. Let's get them going. Okay, so listen, now we're finna do our grits, right? So I've said this a thousand times, right? Listen, anytime you guys are using any type of water, I always substitute that wherever I can and use chicken stock. If you got broth, that'll work too. So listen, we're gonna put four cups of chicken stock in here right now. But listen, we wanna level up and get that flavor, right? So I'm gonna show you this too. I normally would use, you know, kosher salt, but I got that, you know, this is branch and vine, Upland's. This is their bacon sea salt. I'm gonna take this and give this just a little bit of a pinch. And we said breakfast, so why not give it a little bit of a bacon, you know, flavor, but without the bacon. Now, meanwhile, while we're waiting for our water, excuse me, our stock to come up to, you know, temp, we need that to be boiling, right? I'm gonna go ahead and mince my garlic, right? So we got this going in here like this. And then we take all of the rest of the ingredients that we have, right? And then we just put them all in here. We wanna mix them, because once we have them fully mixed, that's when we're gonna go right inside. We're gonna actually put that on top of our salmon and start to get it. That's gonna be the paste, the binder that holds everything together. All right, so now we just add the rest of our ingredients in here, right? And remember, this is everything for that binder. So everything that you had, the mustard, you know what I mean? The paprika, the occasion seasoning, all of that. Goes in here. Better to mix it here than to just stick it on the top. You know what I mean? Because that way we can get it fully incorporated instead of trying to like just overwork our salmon. All right, so once you mix it all together, this is what you'll come up with. You get a little bit of that red undertone, that's from that paprika. All right, once you got it all mixed, now I'm gonna go ahead and just add my egg. You can do it all the same way. I just did it this way, you know, for myself, right? All of this helps, right? This is all gonna be your binder. Now what you guys are seeing right now is, I'm just adding a little bit of, you know, parsley in the inside of here. That's gonna take it all. Just once you got it incorporated, I can hear it in my stock. It's starting to, you know, boil. I can hear it boiling behind me. Now let's go ahead and start that process because it's gonna take just a little bit of a minute to get them, you know, to get that going. Now I'm gonna set that off right there. Let's head back over to the stove. All right. Now we can go ahead and add, you know, our grits, right? I just added just a little bit in. Look at my flow, folks. Don't just dump them in there. We don't want no lumps or nothing like that, right? We just run these back and forth. Now what I do is, I bring my fire, I reduce my fire down to a low, right? We got that on there and I like to put my top on. In about 10 minutes, I'm gonna add a little butter to it also, and then we'll add some cheese. Right now we're gonna let that cook and do its thing. That right there is being infused with a whole lot of flavor, folks. All right, so I brought my salmon back into play. Remember we let our veggies cool, right? So we put that in there. Now you guys understand, like if you put them in there hot, it'll start trying to cook the, you know, the salmon. That's all we're trying to do. It's just like avoid that, right? So let me go ahead and get that in there. Now we have that in there. Now I'm gonna take this and I'm just, you know what? I'm gonna just add this to it. Just a little bit of it. And then we'll go from there, right? So next we finna crush our crackers. All right, so now look at this right here. Now we finna add a little bit of that Gouda to it, folks. Tell me how many of y'all really like Gouda? I see everybody on the internet using it and talking about it and all of that, but are y'all really using the Gouda or do you just use regular, you know, American cheese on the inside of your, you know, that cheddar? That's probably what everybody uses, just cheddar. I like mine a little bit on the cheesy side, right? So we add that there and you can't do grits without this. Now let's go ahead and open up the debate. How many of y'all like your grits sweet or you like it to be savory? I'm gonna tell you right now, I like for mine to be, you know, on the sweet, but I'm not gonna make it like that for everybody. I'm gonna make it the traditional way. I'm gonna hit it with a little bit of this pepper. We finna put this top over here. We gonna let this thicken up just a little bit. And if it get too thick, you know what you can do? Always add yourself just a little bit of, you know, cream to it, milk, whatever you got. I got my Ritz crackers right here. You guys can use any kind of crackers you want. If you see me look like I'm chewing, I've been eating the Ritz crackers. You know what I mean? But look, I just take a glass, anything but a flat bottom. You know what I mean? Let me just crush them. Now what we gonna do is we gonna go ahead and just add this to it, right? I'm gonna go ahead and remove this, right? Cause we gonna get in here with our hand. Sometimes we gotta cook with our hand. Just treat it like a meatloaf, folks. I'm gonna get in here like this and I'm gonna just start folding this over and over. Now here's a little pro tip for you. It depends on how much salmon you make, right? If you got a lot of salmon, you're gonna probably need a little bit more, you know, it really depends. If it's too loose, you want to just add some more cracker to it, right? But you see how I'm just bringing this over here? It's gonna take all of that. And the way I'm looking at it, it look like it might take just a little bit more. So this is where you customize it for yourself. You know, it depends on how much you have, right? So look, I can tell you how I can take it. This is how I determine. If I take it like this, it don't look like it's gonna hold right, right? So I'm gonna get myself some more crackers and we'll just add a little bit more at a time until we get it where we can go ahead and make a patty or just a complete ball and it hold that. Look, you guys can see what I'm talking about now. If I make myself a ball and it stay together like this, then you got enough cracker in there, right? That allows me to be able to push this down, form these edges like this, and then we able to put that in there, right? Now, I'm gonna set this off to the side. I'm gonna clean my hands. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this and you know what? I'll make that next. Let's go ahead and bring our oil up to temp. Let's go. We're gonna look somewhere for right around 325, right? Cause we want it to like cook. We don't want it to brown too much on one side. So let me get this up to temp and then we'll move forward. All right. So you remember we mixed this earlier? This is what we're gonna be frying in, right? So I'm gonna just add that there. Put this in my water. Now I'm gonna set this over here, just off to the side. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna form our patties. You want to keep them kind of like uniform, right? So let's just figure out how big we're gonna make them. So I'm gonna go with this one here. This is a cool size, y'all. Now y'all tell me how many of y'all had that? And I got a little level up, something to really put it and take us back down to, back down in that time machine, right? So if I have it here, I'm just gonna make my patties and I mean my balls and I'll just make them like that. You want to get them about the same. You guys can measure. Once you got the size that you like, you can go ahead and just start weighing them. That's what I mean when I say measure them, you know? All right, so this one's a little bit bigger, but they stand together nicely, right? So let me just go ahead and get some more. I'm probably only gonna put it three at a time. I'm using the cast iron, you know, 12 inch cast iron skillet. I love it when they're done right, right? So, you know what? Matter of fact, let me go ahead and just make all the ones that I am gonna make, but I'm gonna show you something in just one second. Just gonna take y'all back. All right, so my oil's up to temp. I can see it just starting to puff. I tried to put my meat thermometer on there, but I got a shallow, you know, when I tell you it's shallow when it comes to cooking oil, look, it's only about that high. So it's hard for me to be able to get it to measure without, you know, me touching the bottom, right? So I'm telling you, I know that that's right. But this is what we gonna do. I'm gonna take this one over here and I'm gonna flatten this down and just make a patty, right? I kind of like fix the edges a little bit. And what I do is I just take it and I put it right here, right? Once we have it here, I got myself my little fish spatula. I'm gonna take this and get underneath the bottom of it and I'm gonna bring it over here on the top, right? Now you guys can get yourself a spoon, right? And you can go ahead and add some of your breading right here on the top. And this right here is gonna help us. Now, if I move this, I wanna show you guys what I have underneath the bottom of here. That's my cooling rack, right? So when we take these out, after we flip them, we put them on here and we let them, you know, drip dry. Okay, so this is the one that I put in here in the very beginning, right? So I'm gonna get underneath the bottom of this, you know, help myself flip it over. And look at that right there. That there, folks, is what you're trying to achieve. All right, so if you guys come, you know what I mean, this right here is right. I want you guys to let me know down in the comment section below at what temperature is fish ready. I'm gonna see if you guys know. Oh, this is the one. Ooh-wee, wouldn't you guys wanna have one of these? All right, so look, this is what we're gonna do. We take the rest of the ingredients that we have and we're gonna make this little sauce, right? Now, remember at the beginning of this video, I said I got something to show y'all. This is gonna be for my real down home, down south, you know, folks, right? Now, for everybody else, which is nothing wrong with it, I'm gonna make this little sauce for you right now, you know what I mean? So you can go ahead and put a little bit of this on your croquettes, right? But let me just go ahead and break it down. I'm gonna quit talking about it, keeping everybody up in, you know, suspense. Let me get this W sauce in here. I'm gonna get my, need to get myself a whisk, but check this out. Talk to me, folks. How many of y'all know about this? Just for my real folks, my grandfather couldn't eat no croquettes without having this right here. You gotta have the K-roll syrup. You see that? Clear, you know what I mean? Thick, you put a little bit of this on there and that's how you're supposed to eat it, folks. This the only way I know how. Tap in with me down in the comment section below and tell me, is you real or is you not? If you remember that, just let me know. Okay, so now I'm gonna go ahead and do my eggs. Now, you guys can do your eggs how you like them. I do my eggs like this. And after I crack my eggs, I give it a splash of water, right? I like to make like a, I guess I call them restaurant eggs, you know? So we'll get them in here. I did just break a piece of egg. I mean, a shell in here. Luckily I was able to get it. Now, just give it a little bit of a whisk. Now I'm gonna come in here and give it a splash. That's it. I used to put milk in there. My grandmama taught me to put milk in mine. Makes it a little bit more fluffy. You know what? But the water does the trick. Now I'm gonna add, you know, like a pinch of salt. Just a little bit of salt in there, right? And then here's the key. As my butter is melting, we let that sit up. Don't mess with it, right? So I got my butter in here. You can see I got it on extremely low. We just melt this. And I'm gonna give it a little bit of protection, right? So I'm gonna give you guys the real trick. I don't know what it is because I don't know the scientific part about it. But the longer you let this sit up, so I'll say like if this can sit up between five and 10 minutes, your eggs come out the best way, right? So now I'm gonna take some of my extra virgin olive oil and this is garlic infused, right? I'm just gonna give this just a little bit, about a teaspoon, right? Just to give, you know, my butter a little protection. Keep it from turning brown, right? Now we gotta think about this. What are we gonna do? How are we gonna push this around? And for me, I use a rubber spatula. I do go ahead and give it a little bit more of a whisk. And then look, the salt does something. Look, when you take it like this, see it's not as stringy as how it is. You know what I mean? I still didn't give it like a full 10 minutes, but this is like it is at five, this'll be good. Now I'm just gonna go ahead and add that. And then I'm gonna just leave it alone, folks. Don't touch it. All right, so look, if you come in here, you see how it moves around like that? That's cool. Now what I do is I take my spatula and I tilt it back down and let some of the egg run off the other side, right? I just do that. We wanna get some of this to cook. Now that's up to you guys. If you guys wanna do it like this, I could turn this into an omelet. You know what I mean? But like I say, actually when I get it to looking like this, I turn my fire off. There's enough heat here. I like my eggs scrambled, you know, soft, right? So you guys let me know. And I think earlier I said I was gonna add some cheese to it, but I'll add some on there, you know, later. You can put a top on here and let it cook any of this that you want to be, you know, like a little bit more firm. You can do that. But this right here is right for me, right? So I'm gonna leave that like that. Now I got my grits. What did I do with my, oh, let me go ahead and grab my plate. We're gonna put it right here. I'm gonna take these, just a little bit more. I'm gonna grab which one of these croquettes? You know what? I like this one. I don't know why, this one been talking to me. You know what I mean? I'll take this one and this one over here. You know what I mean? We'll add that. Now, I'm gonna take this. I know you guys gonna say like, dang, A.B., that's four eggs. You don't care, but it is what it is. Y'all do you, I'm gonna do me. And let me know how many of y'all had this for dinner, especially when y'all are down South. When you got it like that, you guys let me know. All right, so you guys get a chance to see it. I'm finna go ahead and just hurry up and eat one of these. I can, now, I said earlier, we were talking about the grits. You know what I mean? You know, we did these Gouda, you know, they cheesy, you know, and then to be honest with you, I add a little bit of K-roll syrup inside of my grits. You know, I like mine to be sweet. I know you guys gonna beat me up because some of y'all, we really split down the middle. That's the way I see it. Either you're on one side of the gate or you're not. You like them savory or you like them sweet. I like mine sweet and savory. I still like to be able to taste it. And don't forget, I put that bacon sea salt on there. You know what I mean? So that gave it a little bit of a nice little savory, you know, taste to it. The Gouda cheese added a smoky flavor to it. And you know what, then the K-roll, that right there made it a little bit on the sweet side. So with that being said, I'm finna go in here and I don't know what to eat first. Since we're gonna go ahead and do these, I'm gonna do it like this. Let me go in here and just cut me a piece like this. Just break it out of there like that. Look at that. They're not overcooked. Still got a little bit of that peak in the middle. Now let me go ahead and give me a little taster. We're gonna hit this little, this little sauce right here. All right, I'm gonna add that right there. Now, for those of y'all that are new, I don't wanna overpower it. If you're new, you might not understand how we can have breakfast or dinner, right? But now I'm taking you guys down that aisle. We getting in that time machine and going back in time, back to how it was when I was a kid. You know, me eating at my grandparents' house without me over-talking it any more than I have already. Cheers, y'all. Now listen, I know we got a lot of talking to do down in that comment section below. Please let me know. I'm gonna be all over these comments, you know, just to see what you guys think. And then let me know this. What would you have added into these croquettes that you guys did that was maybe one of your family little, you know, little secrets or whatever. But let us know. Let us all read it. Let us try it. You know what I'm saying? And maybe we just pay homage to you, you know, your family also for the addition. Now, if you're new to my channel, let me take this time to say, thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button, and tell everybody out there. There's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. And do I need to say anything about these stone ground grits? Come on, folks. Smoky, cheesy, and then that's it. I'm out, y'all. Peace.