FALL COOK WITH ME // HEARTY VEGETABLE HOT POT WITH CHEESE SCONES // CHARLOTTE GROVE FARMHOUSE

Hello my sweet friends and welcome back to another Cook With Me Foodie Friday video. In today's video we're going to be making a fall favorite here in my house and that is this delicious vegetable hot pot with a yummy delicious cheesy scone that you bake on top. This is a huge favorite here in my house however it only comes out during the cold seasons and it is now chilly enough most days for us to whip this meal together. So I am fresh home from work still in my work attire. It is about four o'clock here we're gonna get dinner started before soccer and dance and all the crazy things we have going on. This meal is a little bit more involved however it is a favorite so I try to do it when I can and I wanted to share it with you so let's go ahead and get started. First thing we're going to do today is roughly chop one onion. You're not going to finely dice it just make sure that you're chopping it into smaller bite-sized pieces and you're also going to get your oven preheating at 350 degrees. Today's recipe comes from my favorite vegetarian cookbook. I've had this since I was in high school. I know that sounds really crazy but there was a short period in my life where I was a vegetarian and this recipe is one of my absolute favorites. I still make it all the time. You can add a protein if you want. I don't think it's necessary and we love it just the way it is. Once you have your onion roughly chopped you're going to move over to your stove. You're going to need some kind of pot that you can transfer into the oven so I'm using my dutch oven today. Go ahead and get it going on medium high heat and get some olive oil warming up and then you're going to saute your onions until they are translucent and sweet and delicious. Saute those in a little bit of olive oil maybe a little bit. We're going to also add in some garlic. So I never really follow the recipe all the way. If this is your first cooking video with me you will learn that I kind of just do things on my own. So the recipe calls for 12 ounces of carrots. I used six large carrots that I peeled and roughly chopped. I also used two leeks. It calls for 12 ounces of leeks, trimmed leeks. However I ended up just using two and only using the stem of the leek and then it also calls for a pound of potatoes. So I've got five peeled russet potatoes there that we're going to also chop up and it also calls for eight ounces of mushrooms. So I did just grab one package of already sliced mushrooms to keep my life a little bit easier. When you're chopping your vegetables for this recipe make sure that you keep them large. You're going to be boiling this on the stove and then transferring it into the oven and it's going to bake for almost an hour both without our scones that we're going to add to the top and with our scones. So if you notice here I am cutting my carrots into bite-sized pieces but they're large. They're not bite-sized yet they're bigger but once they soak and they boil and they bake they're going to get tender and you want them to be able to hold up to all of the cooking that we're about to do. If you make them too small they'll disintegrate when you're trying to eat them or into your hot pot and this recipe although it is more like a stew it's definitely more of a hot pot where you want these items to be able to be the main focus. So there's not going to be a meatball or you know chicken or anything like that in this recipe. These are going to be your large pieces that you're eating out of your hot pot so keep your vegetables nice and large so that they can withstand all of the cooking they're about to do and just remember that you do have your onions cooking on the stove. So I did kind of neglect mine a little bit and I had my heat up a little bit too high which you'll see here in just a moment but it was perfectly fine. I didn't burn any of my onions it was just the oil that was burning a little bit but it still tasted fantastic. Once your onions are pretty much cooked go ahead and add in some garlic. So the recipe does call for two garlic cloves. Definitely did a little bit more than two garlic cloves. I'm using minced garlic today that's already prepared. That's probably about three garlic cloves but we like a lot of garlic in this house. Go ahead and cook that until it's fragrant and then you're going to add in your vegetables. Now I will mention that the one vegetable I didn't have on hand today was celery. I had used it the night before for some clam chowder and forgot that I had bought it for this recipe but that's okay it was perfectly fine without it. So add in your vegetables add in your mushrooms give them a good stir and you're going to let those cook for a few minutes just to kind of take off the edge a little bit before we move on to the next step. Next up we're going to add in our first seasoning and that's chili powder. You're going to add in a teaspoon of chili powder just sprinkle that across the top stir it in and let that cook for a couple of minutes so that way it kind of just cooks into your vegetables. Now we're going to add our thickening agent. So we're going to add one fourth a cup of regular all-purpose flour to our vegetables and go ahead and stir that in. You want to let that cook for a minute or so just to kind of cook off the starchy taste but this is going to allow for the liquid in our recipe today to thicken and make our hot pot really stewy and delicious more like a vegetable chili if you will. And then we're going to add in our liquids today we're using chicken broth however the recipe does call for vegetable broth or vegetable stock so if you have that you can use that. Like I said today we're using actually chicken stock not broth I'm so sorry and the recipe calls for two and a half cups so that's what I'm starting with however I always add in more vegetables than the recipe calls for and so I do end up adding in more fluid so that way our vegetables are completely covered by the stock but I don't want you to start by doing that unless you put in more vegetables like me. Next up we're going to open up one can of diced tomatoes which we're going to add to our pot as well as some tomato paste that we're going to add to our pot. This is going to deepen the flavor of our hot pot and make it absolutely delicious so go ahead and toss in your one can of tomatoes that are diced with the juices and then add in about a tablespoon of your tomato paste and get that stirred in. The next seasoning is optional and that is thyme. You can use fresh thyme if you have it. I'm using ground thyme about an eighth of a teaspoon or so just to give it a little bit of flavor and now you're also going to add in some salt. Make sure that you use a liberal amount of salt when you are using when you're seasoning this because all these vegetables are going to need a good dose of salt and we're really not using anything that has a lot of sodium. I used low sodium chicken stock so make sure that you're seasoning those vegetables up otherwise this is going to have a very bland taste and in a little bit we're going to taste it and season it up a little bit more but for now this is what we're starting with. We can always add in more so I try not to overdo it and now I'm noticing I need to add in a little bit more stock so I'm adding in about another half a cup just to give all of my vegetables a good cover before we're sticking it into the oven. Now you're going to go ahead and turn the heat up put your top on and let that come to a boil before we add it into our oven and while that's going we're going to get started on our cheddar chive scones. So this is probably the most delicious part of this entire recipe and what takes it over the top so you're going to start with one stick of softened butter and put that into a mixing bowl. I'm just using this mixing bowl here from TJ Maxx that I found and now you're going to use all purpose not all purpose I'm sorry you're going to use self-rising flour so this is really important because it has all the other ingredients that you need. So you're going to need two cups of this do not scoop your flour directly into your one cup measuring cup use a spoon and put it into your cup that way you don't get too much flour these can get really really stiff over you know if you over flour them. While that was happening my vegetable hot pot did come to a boil as you see here I'm giving it a good stir and then we're going to pop it into the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes and this is going to allow for all those vegetables to completely soften and cook through and just bubble up and get so delicious. My mouth is watering but while that's cooking we're going to finish up our scones so you're going to want to go ahead and cut in your butter into your flour. Now I don't have a pastry cutter so I'm just using my fingers pinching the butter into the flour until it's all combined to the best of my ability. I really do need to get a pastry cutter I have a antique pastry cutter but it's not one that I would ever actually use it's pretty rusty but your fingers are perfectly fine if you don't have that tool. Now you're going to shred in about four ounces or half of an eight ounce block of cheddar cheese. I'm using Cabot Vermont sharp you can use whatever you prefer if you would like to have that orange color of the cheddar cheese you could use you know a different one and you can use pre-shredded as well this just is so much fresher in my opinion it keeps your your cheese really fresh. So you're going to add in like I said about four ounces of cheddar cheese to your scones and your next ingredient is going to be chives. So for the chives you're going to need about a tablespoon or so and I'm just trimming those in with my kitchen shears and this is the easiest way to add any kind of chive into a recipe. So I'm just trimming these in and then we're going to get this mixed up and it's going to make a delicious flaky scone. So a scone if you've ever had one is a buttery pastry if you will however this is not sweet whatsoever so when I say pastry I don't want you to think that it's sweet but it's like a I don't know like a crusty topping if you will for a hot pot. Now we're going to add in three tablespoons of milk the recipe says we can use up to five and we do end up using all five but start with three first get that mixed in you can use your pastry cutter here if you want but your hands work really really well just move that around once you have that combined all to the best of your ability go ahead and add in another tablespoon or two if you need it. For me I definitely needed the other two tablespoons of milk so I'm going to go ahead and add those in now and this will be just the right amount of liquid to get our dough completely combined and it will come together in a nice neat ball which will allow for us to roll this out and get it cut into our scones. All right my friends so the lights are on now it is getting super dark it is now um about 5 20 or so and everybody is kind of just scrambling around trying to get ready to go so we've got about seven minutes left on our um hot pot that is in the oven I'm going to go ahead and roll out our sconces get those cut sconces they're not a sconce they're a scone a sconce is the thing that you put in your house as a light I was just catching up on some Instagram stories and I saw um somebody that I'm sure we both follow posting about sconces so we are going to get the scones cut off and ready to go on top of our hot pot and then it'll go back in the oven for a little while to get those baked up and then it's going to be delicious it smells so good in here so let's get those ready to go. To roll out our scones today I'm just adding a little bit more of that uh self-rising flour onto my counter and I've got my rolling pin here this rolling pin is great it has those tools on the end there those plastic rings that keep your dough all at the same size so if you do a lot of baking of sheet cookies of any kind this is a great rolling pin to have I'll have it linked for you down below it is from Amazon and I love it so I'm just rolling these out doesn't have to be anything fancy I'm just making sure that they're all roughly the same thickness and then we're going to cut them into triangles so I'm going to be using a little wooden charcuterie knife today it's also just a little wooden butter knife and cut this into roughly similar sized triangles which is what you're going to see me do right now and this is going to allow for them to fit nicely all around our hot pot and they're going to cook and become just so very delicious just a warm and yummy crust to the top of our hot pot once the timer goes off on your hot pot go ahead and pull it out from the oven and now we're going to add in our final ingredient and that is one can of red kidney beans now you can drain yours if you prefer I like to add the liquid into mine I just like that little extra flavor of the bean but this is completely up to you go ahead and stir those in and now we're going to make sure that we've got enough seasoning on our hot pot so if you notice all of our vegetables have completely cooked and they are delicious this is when I just come in and make sure that it's got enough seasoning because nothing is worse than under seasoned food and once you have your scones on top it's really hard to know if it's seasoned enough so for mine I'm just grabbing a spoon giving it a little taste I ended up adding in a little bit more salt as well as some seasoned salt which just has some garlic in it and a little bit of paprika so that's what I'm adding in now I'm going to give that a really good stir and then we're going to top it with our scones before putting it back in the oven so if this is not enough liquid for you you can add a little bit more in as well but this is perfect for me I'm just giving it another little taste to make sure that it's good I didn't want a bean because we hadn't cooked them yet but it tasted perfect and now we're going to add in our scones so just layer them across the top kind of fit them in like a puzzle you want them to be spread out across the top of your hot pot and you guys you have to try this recipe it is so delicious we have leftovers I'm having it today for lunch and I cannot wait this is just so very good once you have all of your scones on the top of your hot pot go ahead and put it back in the oven still at 350 without a top and you're going to cook this for about another 20 minutes or so I started mine at 20 you can check it then if your scones aren't ready to go you can add a few more minutes however mine was ready to go a little bit before my 20 minute mark and it is ready to go and it is time to eat I cannot wait all right my friends the lighting is a little bit wonky right now so we're gonna go ahead and try our dinner I have my bowl all plated up I'm ready to eat it smells fantastic and it looks delicious now the scone is like super flaky and delicious and buttery with our yummy vegetable hot pot can you see the steam oh my goodness oh it's so good it's so good and so comforting and that scone on top is just a buttery delicious goodness that tops the entire thing also don't knock it until you try it have yourself a blueberry muffin on the side it's absolutely delicious kind of like when you have yourself a cinnamon roll on the side of your chili let me know down below if you're a cinnamon roll kind of person but try a blueberry muffin on the side of your vegetable hot pot it is so good so okay my friends that is it for this week's foodie friday I hope that you enjoyed this recipe I would really recommend you give it a try it is delicious and filling and it just warms you from the inside out if you enjoyed this video I would love for you to give it a big thumbs up if you're not already subscribed make sure you subscribe for new videos I'd love to have you come back for more and until the next one my friends happy eating