>> male announcer: Funding for Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking was provided by: >> Prudhomme: Hi, I'm Chef Paul Prudhomme.

Using an open fire really is great for roasting.

We got filet tails with fire-roasted vegetables, yes, and marinated, ooh, wonderful roasted peppers, and a calf's liver that's just going to knock you out.

So come on, join us.

Let's have fun.

[lively Cajun music] ♪ ♪ Oh, I love to cook.

You know, and if you do really good things to cook that has a lot of flavor, then I'm right there, man.

I like it.

And this is filet tails.

And this is, like, if you see a filet mignon, this is what it looks like.

I mean, this is pretty much the size of it.

And then it goes like-- [whistles] like this.

And it gets to the tail at the end.

And you can use this, and it's very-- you know, you can charge a lot of money for it.

And, I mean, it's very expensive for filets.

But if you use the tail, then it's very inexpensive.

And so that's what we did.

We used the tail.

And we got it cut up in here, so-- but you know what a tail on a filet look-- if you don't know, next time you go to the supermarket, go to the meat counter and look at a whole filet and you'll see the tail.

And you can buy it, and it's really good.

I mean, it's beef tenderloin, but it's much cheaper.

And we're going to do roasted things with it.

Oh, wonderful roasted-- fire-roasted vegetables.

We got fire-roasted carrots, and we got fire-roasted bell peppers, two colors, and we got fire-roasted garlic, and we got-- I mean, just-- oh, I love-- I love the smell of fire-roasted garlic.

It's just absolutely wonderful.

We're going to show you how to do a fire-roasted bell pepper right now.

And so we're going to use this beautiful yellow, gorgeous, sweet bell pepper.

And you need a good fire.

I mean, if you're going to do this, you need a serious fire.

So what we're going to do is, we're going to take it and put it there.

And we're going to let it work by itself while we go do something else, because that works really good for me.

Now, I would love to show you the end of the tenderloin but unfortunately we cut it up, so we can't do that.

But I'm going to make a quick roux, and I'm going to start the fire here to get me going with the roux.

This is-- I mean, don't do what I'm doing right now because, you know, I've been dealing with fire for over 50 years and I know when it's hot and not.

But look how-- see, that fire's already started to roast the vegetable.

And see, I've got a set of tongs to deal with it.

But we're going to put a little oil in, and we're going to make a roux.

And I'm sure those who've watched the show before would know, because I like to make roux.

And this is going to be, like, a tan roux.

It's not going to be, like, a gumbo roux, or-- you know, this is going to be a lighter roux.

So I want to get the oil hot because it makes it so much easier to do if the oil is hot.

All right, the pepper.

You need to make sure that if you want it to peel well that you keep turning it, because if you leave it too long in one spot, especially if you've got a hot fire-- and I've got a hot fire-- that you burn it.

But if you keep turning it, you'll eventually get all of it, the skin of it charred, which is what you want.

And after the skin is charred, you have two or three really good options to get that off, because you want to get all the dark, all the black skin off.

And one is, you can just dip it in ice water, and we got some ice water right there.

And the other one is-- and it works very well.

You can take it and cool it down for a second and drop it in a bag and then just let the bag steam.

That'll really pull the skin off.

So it's time to make the roux, and I'm going to do that while this is finishing.

I've got oil in here, and it's hot.

I'm going to lower the fire because it's really hot.

And so I'm going to cool the oil down just a little bit because it got so hot.

But I'm going to add the flour to it.

Oh, look at that.

I mean, it's starting to turn already.

It really is.

Oh, I love to make roux.

The smell of them are just so fantastic.

I mean, it's one of the things of my childhood that I will always remember.

And every time I'm going to do a roux, it's going to talk to me about childhood, because it just brings back the memories.

I love to get that-- this is a good enough color.

And I'm going to add to it a little bit of herbs and spices.

And so now I've got a seasoned roux, and I'm also roasting the herb.

Look at the steam coming out of here.

I'm roasting the herbs and spices, and so I'm accomplishing more than one thing at a time.

Hey, isn't that good for an old person?

Yeah.

Look at that.

Beautiful.

I mean, it really is.

If you understand charring and taking the skin off of vegetables, I mean, this is it.

Look at that.

It's just absolutely gorgeous.

So I'm going to take it-- well, maybe I'm going to let the bottom just hang out a little bit longer.

I'm going to take it and put it in here.

Going to cool it down.

And, you see, it's starting to peel already.

You can see in the bowl some of it's coming off.

And I'm going to test it and see how cool it is.

Oh, it's just about ready to cool.

And so I'm going to take that out, get some water out, put it in here.

And all you got to do after it's in here is just scrape it, you know, just scrape it.

See how it just comes right off?

Boom, boom, boom.

Comes right off.

Keep doing that.

Just comes right off.

And so you get all the black off of it, and you got a wonderful roasted pepper.

And so I'm going to clean my hands and I'm going to move this over, 'cause I'm going to get the other skillet out.

I got the roux.

And now I'm putting this on the hot fire.

Now, the rest of this goes very, very quickly because I've already got roasted vegetables.

And so I'm going to use the seasoning first.

I'm going to put a little bit of oil and the beef tender pieces.

And I could put it in a skillet, but I don't want to do that.

And those of you who've watched this series of show knows that the way I feel about the oil is, you put it on whatever you're going to heat, and that makes it cook a lot faster, and it cooks with less oil, and you waste less oil.

And it's just all-around better.

All right, we got a sizzle going.

Now, the herbs and spices are going to go on, and I'm just going to put enough to make them-- what I call, make the meat happy.

Because making the meat happy-- look at that.

It's already turning-- it's already getting a nice color on it.

I need a little bit more.

It's not happy.

It's just-- the beef tenderloin just said, "Hey, guys, I'm not happy," so you got to put a little bit re happiness on them.

And the happiness is herbs and spices, especially when you're cooking.

You know, the filet tails, you go to the supermarket and you specifically ask the butcher-- and if you go to the same market often, be nice to the butcher, because if he helps you-- he knows everything that's going on, and he can give you some really good stuff.

All right, so we've got this going.

Got some brown.

I'm going to start putting the-- I'm going to put the onions in with it.

The rest of the vegetables I'm going to hold off a second until I've got a little bit more brown on the meat.

But I tasted the onions, and they had a wonderful roasted taste to them, and they were smoky.

But they didn't have a lot of color, so if I put them in and put some seasoning on them, I'm going to get more color off of the onions.

And you almost can't-- it's almost impossible to put too much seasoning on it because it's so wonderful and there's so much sweetness in it.

I'm going to add the garlic, the bell peppers, both of them.

That's the red one.

This is the yellow one after it's been roasted.

I'm going to add the carrots.

I'm going to give it a turn.

All right.

For those of you who can't toss it in the air like that, this is the way you stir it.

Makes it easier to toss it.

Now I'm getting close to the really good stuff.

I mean, if I would put water in here, it would just take away all my roasted flavors, and it would just take away-- I mean, it would lower the seasoning.

It would just not be very intelligent to do after working so hard to get this to this point.

And so I'm putting a stock in it.

And then the next step is to take the roux that I made and thicken it a little bit.

I'm going to take all the roux out because I didn't make a whole lot and I know it's just about enough that it's going to give it a nice thickening.

All right.

Now all I got to do is bring this to a boil, and as soon as it does, it's going to start getting thick.

Now, I've got this, and it's just starting to get thick because it's just around the side of the rim of the skillet, that it's starting to boil.

And it needs to boil to get thick.

And I'm going to take a little bit of this and see what it... oh, smells great.

Mm.

Shouldn't talk when you have stuff in your mouth, but-- I mean, it's almost too much seasoning, and then it just drops off and you get the beef taste.

You get the vegetable taste.

The roast is not quite the real roasted flavor that I'm looking for.

It's not quite there.

And the reason it's not quite there is because it hadn't come to a boil yet and it hadn't simmered for a couple-- but look how it's getting thick.

Look at that.

And, I mean, that butter roux is just wonderful as it thickens things.

It really, really is.

And if you do this at home, you're going to have an absolute wonderful happy, happy family.

But I've got a dish here, and it's got mashed potatoes with it.

Now, if you take mashed potatoes, and what you do with the potatoes is, you boil them, and then you put some cream and some seasoning and some butter in another pot.

And then as soon as those potatoes are boiled-- I mean, just as soon as their boiled, you mix them.

You don't let them cool down at all.

You mix them with the cream and the butter and the seasoning, and you're going to have a creamy, wonderful, incredible mashed potato.

And you put those two together with this roasted sauce-- mm.

You know, I'm always saying it's good, but this is really hard to put down.

Yum.

Yeah, we're going to have some good, rich marinated roasted peppers.

Yum.

Marinated roasted peppers, yeah.

We got a great seasoning mix.

But first we want to take one of these beautiful, gorgeous, woerful red peppers, and we're going to put them right on this hot grill.

And this grill is hot.

I mean, you can see it, and it's red hot.

But we're going to let that happen.

And then we're going to show you how to peel it real easy.

And so we've got, literally, an array of things that we want to put together to make this work.

And so we're going to start with some brown sugar.

And then we're going to add to it-- you got to have the seasoning blend, very, very important.

Little extra salt just to make sure.

We got some-- mm, we got some really good brown mustard seeds, yes.

And then we got some yellow mustard seeds.

And then we got some peppercorns.

And then can't stack that w-- [chuckles] And then I got allspice berries.

And then I got some cloves.

And that's really an array of stuff that really delivers a huge amount of flavor.

Let me turn my pepper over.

And, see, it's starting to show some signs of roasting.

I'm going to take this and just kind of mix it up a little bit.

And I got some liquids I'm going to put in.

I'm going to put in the balsamic vinegar first.

And then, going to give it another stir, because my brown sugar wasn't dissolving by itself, and it should.

Then I've got some rice vinegar.

And then I've got some tamari.

Tamari's really good s-- I love the flavor of tamari.

I mean, it one of those things that just really, really pops up with the flavors.

And so we're going to let that set awhile while we pay attention to the bell pepper.

Now, there's a couple of ways to do this.

If you have an open fire, you don't need a rack.

You can just put it right into the fire.

If you have an electric stove, then-- I've never tried it on an electric stove, but I would imagine that-- you know, just try it and see what happens.

I mean, that would be the best thing.

You know, doing these kinds of things, especially roasting like this, like roasting the vegetables and using vinegars and using strong-- is very popular in parts of Mexico.

And, you know, when the people travel here, you know, they bring some of their dishes, and we like them.

And so we started mimicking them, or we started producing those dishes.

And so-- all right, well, this is going to go a little slow.

I'm going to give it a stir.

Again, I want to taste it to see what the flavors are like.

Oh, it really does smell good.

I mean, honest.

Now, I'd let this-- I'd put the peppers in and let it set for a while.

After you've roasted them, then you put them in this and let them set for a while.

I'm going to put the red bells in-- and you got to shake them all out-- the green ones and the yellow ones.

And I think a good 18, 20 hours would be really great in the refrigerator.

It's very important to do that, put it in the fridge.

And once you've done that, you can use those for all kinds of things.

And the neat thing is that you can use them by themselves when they've been roasted.

And so we've got this pepper going.

For those of you who watched the last show, it was a lot faster to do it right over the burner.

And so if you know that and you have a burner, then go ahead.

But this would be a good try if you had a gas stove because it may work for you.

Now, watch the difference.

I mean, it's just going to really fire up now.

I love that.

Boy, it just really goes, man, goes, goes.

I mean, it's turning-- I got fire going all over this bell pepper, and it's just making it happy, happy, happy.

There's several methods of peeling this, getting this dark peel off.

And one of the ones that I showed you earlier was to put it in ice water and then peel it in one of the bags.

And you could actually let it cool down a little bit and then put it in one of the bags, and I think it would work very well also.

So there's a huge amount of methods of trying that you can do with roasting the peppers.

And so I'm going to take it and put it in the bag.

And then, you see what's happening here?

I mean, it's literally pulling off.

Watch.

I'll show you.

That's what's so neat.

I mean, it's just amazing how the skin just-- I mean, it just-- see, it's just pulling off, just pulling off.

And so it makes sense if you put it in a bag and it's not on fire.

I mean, the bag's going to make it go super, super, super-- I mean, just peel it right off.

Well, hopefully it'll do that.

I didn't have a conference with the bag yet so I don't know, but I'm working at it.

So going to slide it in.

You can use a bigger bag.

You know, that would be okay too.

But we made it in, and the bag is safe.

And what you got to do is, don't make your tongs really hot like I did and then put a hole in the bag, because then it sort of defeats the whole thing.

No, it doesn't.

I'm kidding.

Oh, you remove the black skin.

And once the black skin's removed-- and then you cut it up and you do whatever you want with it.

I'm going to take a taste with this marinated roasted peppers with some meat in it.

And this is chicken.

And the chicken's been bronzed, which is a method of just making it-- oh, it smells great.

I mean, when you bronze something, that means you just give it color like this on the outside.

And so-- oh, these have been setting for a while.

Oh, the vinegar's wonderful.

And I've never been a strong vinegar person, but with all those flavors in it-- now I've got the chicken in the vinegar, mm, and the bell pepper.

It's wonderful.

You should marinate and roast your peppers so you can know I'm telling you the truth.

[chuckles] And that is the truth.

Calf's liver with fire-roasted sweet pepper sauce.

Oh, yes, we got some calf's liver with fire-roasted pepper sauce.

Oh, fire roasting is a good thing.

It really is.

It builds flavors.

We're going to cook the liver.

And so we're going to take some flour and put it in here, 'cause we want to batter the liver.

And then we're going to add some herbs and spices to the flour.

And to me, that's one of the keys to really making good flavors when you're using flour, is to put some seasoning in it.

And actually, you can actually put more than that.

I'm going to put it all in because I like to be able to see the-- yeah, see how you can see the seasoning there?

Well, because not so much of it attaches to whatever you're going to batter, you know, you need to have a lot of seasoning in it.

We got the pan preheated.

I'm going to just turn it up a bit to make sure.

I'm also going to add some oil to the pan.

And normally, as you've been seeing me, if you've been watching this series, I normally put the oil on whatever it is.

But with this, because we're putting flour with it, the oil is not going to work as well.

And so I'm going to just put it right in the pan.

And then-- oh, yes.

And just dredge it, dredge it, dredge it, dredge it, and put it in there.

And I've got the fire all the way up.

And it's just starting to go crackle, crackle, so you want to cook it quickly.

You don't want to overcook liver because liver's one of those things that, when it gets dry, it doesn't have a great taste to it.

So I'm going to put this on the side.

I'm also going to start a fire on this onion, because I'm going to fire roast this onion.

And I took the peel off, and, I mean, it's working.

It really is.

We got the fire on, and we're going to roast this onion.

I love roasted onions and just char-roasted, just-- look at this side.

I mean, look at this side.

See how it's pretty?

Absolutely gorgeous.

Oh, I wish you could smell it.

I mean, it's just absolutely wonderful.

This one is done.

I mean, there's just no doubt about it.

That one's done.

I'm going to put-- isn't that pretty?

This one's a little bit thicker, but it's really great.

I've got the onion going, and it's starting to pick up a little bit of color.

It's not the whole onion.

It's just a part of it.

It's because part of it went away.

And that started browning first.

And I'd better pay attention to this.

I'm going to add a little bit more oil because I'm going to make a roux.

And I got my whisk out here.

There it is.

And I'm going to lower the fire because I don't want it to go away on me.

Scrape up everything that's in there and then just put some flour in it and make a roux.

Oh, look it.

It's going fast.

I love making roux.

I've been doing this since I'm a kid.

And it's just something that, you know, if you understand controlling it-- I mean, the smells that come out of it is just absolutely awesome, just absolutely awesome.

Now, I want this-- I don't want it to be a real dark roux.

I want it to be just pretty much what you see in here.

Maybe just a little bit more.

I don't want the oil to come out, so I'm putting a little extra flour in.

e next step is, I'm going to put some stock in here, and that's going to really calm it down, and that's-- oh, I wish you could smell-- I really do wish you could smell it.

I mean, this smell here is just fantastic.

So I'm going to take that, add more stock to it.

And I'm going to just stir it a little bit at a time, little bit at a time, because I want to make sure I get it away from this cast-iron skillet.

And by the way, this is a cast-iron skillet.

And so cast-iron skillet just really delivers an awesome amount of flavor and an awesome amount of heat.

And so we've got it in.

The next step is, I'm going to put the onions in.

Yes.

And the onions have been roasted.

And then I've got some bell peppers, and these are green.

I've got-- I'd better turn my-- here we go.

Turn this.

I can smell it.

It's losing its pants.

Oh, there you go.

The pants is gone.

I got some red roasted bell peppers.

And these have been fire roasted.

And I've got some yellow roasted bell peppers.

Oh, we're going to have a great sauce for that liver.

Got some roasted garlic and then some herbs and spices.

Whoa, herbs and spices, almost dropped them, yes.

Wouldn't that have been funny?

All right, I'm working on the sauce.

And we need to stop a second and let it cook.

And I'm going to turn this onion.

Look at that.

Look at that beauty thing.

Look at that beauty thing.

Now, I've got some more stock over here.

We're going to add some stock to it.

And I got the flavor.

And this is a little bit strong right now.

But soon as I add this stock to it, the thickness is going to start shedding or go away a little bit.

And then I'm going to turn the fire up because I want to be able to bring it to a boil.

And when you bring it to a boil, you really know how the thkness is.

And until you get it to that boil, you don't know how the thickness is.

But I'm going to add a little t more of that-- oh, that stock is like a jelly.

I mean, it's so wonderful.

Ooh, yum.

All right, this is done.

I'm going to turn it off.

And I'm going to get a ladle here and just take some-- or a spoon and put some right next to my liver.

Yes.

Oh, I wish you was here to smell it.

It's just great.

And you can do this any way you want to.

You can put it right on the liver or you can put it on the side.

And that's liver and a fire-roasted wonderful pepper sauce.

All right, now, let me show you this.

See, it's got this wonderful, I mean, really charred color to it.

But what's happening on the inside of the onion is that it's just right here.

It's just picking up smoke from the cooking.

And it's just getting-- I mean, I know it because I do this so often.

And you should try it.

And it's just really-- I mean, it gives the onion a totally different flavor than normal.

And it just uplifts the dish or the sauce that you're putting it in.

And that's good cookin', good eating, good lovin'.

We love you guys out there.

>> announcer: A cookbook featuring all the recipes from Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking is available for $15.95 plus $7.95 shipping and handling.

The cookbook features 97 recipes, color photos, and cooking tips from Chef Paul.

To order a copy of the companion cookbook, call: And pay by credit card.

Or send a check or money order to: Captioning by CaptionMax www.captionmax.com >> Prudhomme: ♪ De-da-dee-da ♪ ♪ dee-da-da-da-da.

♪ ♪ Anytime you're ready.

♪ And so we're going to add some liquid to it, but we're also going to add more ingredients.

And we've got some-- ahh, does that smell good.

Wish I knew what it was.

>> Don't give me that face.

>> Prudhomme: All right, I'll do it.

[mutters] Hello, y'all.

Pineapple--[laughs] I'm going to have a hard time with this one.

Pineapple glaze fruit basket skewers.

[laughter] Cooking, cooking, cooking, cooking, cooking, cooking, cooking... Ahh, help.

>> announcer: Funding for Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking was provided by: