Poultry

This pasta salad is one of Jamie’s “greatest hits” meals. It’s perfect for leftover grilled or store-bought rotisserie chicken, and it’s got everything we could want Jack to eat in it: pasta, chicken, and veggies. A little ranch dressing makes the salad nice and creamy and helps bring all the ingredients together.

When we were traveling around the country shooting episodes of our Food Network show, Road Tasted, we ate lots of fried, barbecued, and sugary food (Hey, it’s a tough job but somebody has to do it). Wherever we were, Bobby would seek out a salad for lunch or dinner to add a little balance to his diet. The night he discovered chopped salad, it was love at first sight. He developed this easy week-night recipe as soon as we were back home. It’s a salad that accommodates almost any ingredient—feel free to add your own personal favorites into the mix.

Bobby loves his goulash. It’s still the dish he begs Mama to make for him, even though he can have this easier, leaner version ready for himself when he gets home whenever he likes. Mama often serves her goulash the next day to let the flavors marry; cooking it in a crockpot in a single day achieves the same delicious effect.

Cooking chicken with mushrooms gives you such a nice intense and meaty-tasting broth. Along with meltingly soft bell peppers and onions, this throw-it-all-in-the-pot stew has wonderful Italian flavor. We love it over buttered noodles.

Mama’s chicken and dumplings are sooo good. She simmers her chicken for ages until she has the richest stock—that’s how we do it at The Lady & Sons. All that effort certainly pays off, but we just never have time to cook like that. That’s where the slow cooker comes in. Along with easy-to-make drop dumplings (Mama would roll hers out), you’ll get that hearty chicken flavor and the light, fluffy, comforting dumplings without having to stay by the stove all day.

Jamie’s a fan of shrimp scampi, but Jack is not. Turns out they can both agree on this chicken version.

We took Mama’s classic pineapple rings off the ham and put them on our grilled chicken breasts. This sweet-and-sour, quick-cooking dish is a real crowd-pleaser. Pineapple slices coated in brown sugar and Bourbon turn sweet and caramelized on the grill, and a salad dressing marinade makes the chicken tangy, moist, and tender. Perfect with a nice green spinach salad.

At The Lady & Sons, barbecued chicken and fried chicken are staples of our business—that’s what we’re known for. And barbecued chicken is the first thing on the list when we think about firing up the grill. It’s a classic. We add a squeeze of lime juice and some zest to bring out the smoky sweetness of the sauce. What you really want to taste is the fire—that’s our favorite flavor.

If you’ve ever had Frito pie down South, then you know where we’re coming from here. This creamy turkey casserole, topped with a crispy layer of melted cheese and crushed corn chips, is the kind of thing that can make grown men cry on Super Bowl Sunday. Bobby loves to serve this with a side of crunchy, garlicky broccoli.

Can you guess how many turkey-bean burgers we ate when we were growing up? Zero! We’re big beef burger fans and we could eat a burger every few nights if we let ourselves. So every now and then, we lighten things up with turkey and black beans in this Mexican-inspired twist on a traditional burger. It’s about as healthy a burger as you could ask for, and it’s a real crowd-pleaser, too—even little Jack likes it! And since we usually serve this burger without the bun, we like to make our corn bread to go with it.

This is our Granny Paul’s recipe for fried chicken, and it’s as simple a taste of Southern home cooking as there ever could be. Serve it with collard greens and some mashed potatoes, and before you know it you’ll be whistlin’ “Dixie.” And you don’t need to save this meal for Sunday suppers—if you’re short on time, just skip the refrigeration and season the chicken right before you fry it to have yourself a down-home after-work treat.

Coating chicken with mayonnaise and spices before you bake it not only makes for a beautifully browned outside, it also helps bring out the flavor of your seasonings. We use the same technique for our beer-in-the-rear whole chicken on the grill. But chicken breasts cook up faster, and this preparation couldn’t be simpler.

Serve this lean, veggie-heavy stir-fry with white rice to sop up the delicious Tabasco-spiked soy sauce.

We can get behind any recipe with peanut butter in it! This savory dish, with just a hint of fiery red pepper flakes, is a nod to our favorite Thai take-out dish from Kao Thai in Savannah. Best of all, it’s based on ingredients you probably already have in the house.

Baking chicken on top of zucchini is a great way to get your green vegetables in. The zucchini absorbs all the chicken and herb flavors in the pan and winds up tasting a whole lot better than any vegetable really should. We love to bake chicken pieces with a slice of lemon on top because the lemon browns right along with the chicken skin and adds a nice zesty flavor.

Drumsticks are always our favorite, but Mama always likes the thighs, so we make it so that everyone can get what they want. Rosemary really complements the new red potatoes and gives them a hearty garden flavor, and using dark meat keeps the dish juicy. We love this with a light side salad like our crunchy iceberg lettuce salad with blue cheese.

We try to eat a healthy, balanced diet, but you know Paula Deen’s boys have a taste for rich, creamy sauces. One of our favorite foods in a jar is Alfredo sauce, and it’s the perfect base for the world’s fastest chicken and pasta casserole. We throw in peas for a little green color, and add a nice tomato salad to get our veggies in.

We perfected making honey mustard during the early days at The Lady & Sons, where it’s served mostly on the side as a condiment, or as a dipping sauce for the kids’ menu (see The Lady & Sons Honey Mustard Sauce, page 159). At home, we throw store-bought honey mustard in with chicken for this family-pleasing dish that’s a little sweet on the outside and nice and juicy inside. Warm macaroni and mozzarella salad is a nice complement to the chicken.

In his late twenties, Jamie spent a lot of time eating at his favorite pizza place in Savannah, called Cousin Vinny’s. He became obsessed with their pesto pizza, which uses savory basil sauce in place of the usual tomato. We don’t eat quite as much pizza these days, but we do keep pesto in our freezers for whenever we want fresh garlic and basil flavor. Try tossing pesto with cherry tomatoes and leftover grilled chicken and serve it on top of greens for a main-course salad, or make this easy, healthy recipe, which takes about fifteen minutes and looks as good as it tastes. For a little decadence, try serving it with Cheesy Garlic Bread (page 102).