 Check it out folks. Let me just say happy new year. We're going to bring it in right and I'm going to show you how to make Hopping John. Look at that right there. We. Okay, so look, now let's just go over some of these ingredients. I'm just going to do a fly by so you guys can see them. You know what I mean? Look, we got some, you know, some seasonings right there. Obviously, you guys can see that's the bay leaf. You know what I mean? Right here, we got pepper. And listen, I'm going to give you guys some options because I'm using, you know, better than bouillon. We got our veggies right here. You guys can see we got broth. Excuse me, that's stock. And this right here I want to focus a little bit on right here. And that's because that's my bacon fat. Now I'm going to be doing it in this Dutch oven right here. Now look, I'm using some fresh. I already soaked them the night before. You guys can hot flash them. I'll let you guys know what that is if you don't know already. But I've already cleaned, sorted, soaked them and let them be. Okay, folks. So look, I'm going to start, you know, making a little bit of room right here, right? Taking my seasoning because look, first thing we want to do is because I elected to use, you know, regular beans, right? These are regular dry beans. I soaked them, you know, cleaned them, did all of that and soaked them overnight, right? So I'm going to use this. So what I want to do is I'm going to move everything and get this out the way. So I'm going to be using my pot, right? So this is what I'm going to do because I had the dry greens and I soaked them right, we want these to still be soft, right? So let me get everything in the inside like that. Now, let me show it to you. What I want to do is I want to cover them. And I'm going to guess I'm going to cover them maybe up to about one inch above, right? Okay, so you can see I got it, you know, covered, right? I'm going to take a little bit of this better than bouillon or probably give it like about a heaping, you know, a tablespoon. So what I'm doing here, I'm just mixing this in the inside because I'm going to put this on the stove, right? And what I want to do is I want to get it, bring it up to a boil, then I'm going to set it up to like a simmer and then we're going to let it cook for about 40 minutes, right? We're going to give this a little bit of a head start. Okay, so listen, I didn't, you know, drain my beans, but I want you guys to pay attention right here. I'm going to go ahead and put this right here so you guys can see. Look, I saved myself about a cup of my, you know, my water, right? So don't forget, we put the better bouillon in there. That's the juices and everything that has mixed along with the black beans and we got those, right? You know, our black eyed peas. Then I've already hit them in the colander, those are ready to go, right? So first thing we're going to do is put some heat underneath the bottom of this. You know, now you guys can use whatever you want to the regular pot, whatever. You know, my tool of choice is always going to be a Dutch oven. I'm a fan of the cast iron, right? So I'm going to take my top off and then the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to start with my baking fat, right? So I'll put this here. I don't know if you guys can see it. You guys should be saving this all the time anyway. You know what I mean? For those of you guys that don't, I could have used some infused olive oil. That works too, you know what I mean? So I'm just going to go ahead and just put in about a heap and, you know, a tablespoon. That's about all we need, folks. Now, as our baking fat is melting, you know what I mean? I'm going to go ahead and move my rice off to the side. This was just a rib of celery. I'm going to go ahead and grab some of this here, and I'm just going to go ahead and dice it down. Now, I'm going to let you guys know this now. If you look at this and you see that I went a little bit on the small side, right? That's because we want to do it for the flavor, folks. You know what I mean? So this is all I'm doing is I'm just dicing it, keeping it a little bit on the small side. You know what I mean? I still want to see it because presentation is everything, right? Okay, folks, now we're going to do the exact same thing, but this time we're going to go ahead and do it with our green, you know, bell peppers. Now, if you guys want to add yellow on there and do that whole trio, you can too. This right here is where it gets customizable. Now, when I looked up to, like, what makes it Hopping John's, the only common denominator that I can find is everybody says, you know, you got to have that rice, but you can put whatever. I almost wanted to put some ground, you know, breakfast sausage or some kind of mild Italian sausage inside of that, but then we started to look like dirty rice. You know what I mean? So I just said, I'm going to go ahead and just keep it like this for this video only. And you guys let me know what would you put in your Hopping John's. I can see right now, I see a little smoke coming off. That's telling me that's ready. So first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add my onions, right? Now don't forget, all the veggies, that's nothing but almost like pure water, just enough integrity to hold your structure. But when I tell you it's a lot of water involved, it's a lot of water involved. So you'll see it. Be careful so you don't catch no, you know, no splatter, right? I don't want to saute and get them all super soft. You know what I mean? We just want to go ahead and get them going just like you're going to see. Like I said, I always start with my onion, but I did my onion so fine, this all could have went in the same time. Now what I'm going to do is just going to move this around that everything married together. We want to get some of that bacon, you know, grease to touch all of it. Look at that right there. Oh my goodness. So I want you guys to pay attention right here. Look, you see that color down there? That's all of this starting to bleed into the fat. And look at that. That's producing something real nice, folks. It's really about that flavor, right? So we don't want to take it all the way down. I don't want to become like super translucent where I can't even see my color, right? But you can see that that right there, we're working with something great. Now I'm going to bring my rice into play. And don't forget the full ingredient list is on my website now. You guys, I've gotten great feedback. I thank you guys for taking the time to go by there, taking a look, you know what I mean? Because don't forget all of the recipes are now on there, anything that I've released and tons and tons of more that I haven't even made videos for going on there also. So use the tool smoking, including with ab.com. That's W.I.T. AB.com. So I let this cook for about, you know, with the rice in there, just kind of like a little brown up, a little, I don't know. I don't know what you call it. Usually I brown it, but you know, we've got that, we toast it anyway. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and add, you know, my stock, right? I'm going to let this come back up, you know, to a boil. Let me see. I'm going to go ahead and rest this a little bit now that we got some liquid in there, but this is a whole lot of flavor folks. And this right here is where you want to be because now you can start to, you can smell it, you know where it's going. And as we wait for this to come up, you know, on boil, remember these? Y'all see that? Let me go ahead and get you some focus. You see that? Now we dump it. Okay, so now you can see we coming up to a boil again, right? This is what we want, right? I'm going to go ahead and trade this right now for my rubber spatula, right? That's because I like, I can go on here on the edges, you know, get all of my seasoning down here, right? So we'll just move that around just like you see. Now I'm going to go ahead and leave this here, right? Why? Because now it's time to go ahead and introduce our Black Eyed Peas. Okay, so you guys got it play by play. Our beans are nice and ready, you know what I mean? To join this collaboration folks. Now I'm getting ready to, you see what I'm doing? It's all starting to make sense to you now, but we got to let that, those, that rice cook. So it'll probably take about 15, 20 minutes, you know what I mean for it to, you know, get to where we want it to be. And then don't forget I saved some of this, right? So now we're going to add this in here too. This is just nothing but flavor, you know, it comes from the beans, you know? So what we want to do is we want to just continue to cook this down and I just saw something jump out of the pot, you know what I mean? And we'll let this come up to a simmer and we're going to let this simmer until we don't have any more. We want to keep it nice and moist, but we want to cook, what we want to do is we want to cook some of this liquid out. We want our rice to absorb all of that, but that right there folks is a great look for Hopping John's. Okay, folks, look, I just turned it off. I stirred it, you know, mix it up. You want to make sure like when you're using a pot, you got that burner and that fire underneath the bottom that it doesn't, you know, burn the bottom, right? So I constantly come in, I know I'm letting a little heat out, but I don't want nothing to stick, right? So I want you to take a look at that right there. Can you see that right there? That right there is a whole lot of flavor, right? So one of the things that I always say, you know what I mean? We got to preach, you know, and I try to preach to everybody, look, we taste as we go. I don't know if I showed you guys when I put the big leaf in there, but I put the big leaf in there. You know what I mean? I got it. I've already tasted it. I don't want to fake no fun. I can tell you guys right now, this right here is fine. Yeah. Okay, folks, now we're going to go ahead and put some of this in our bowl. I'll just keep it down here so you guys can see it. Oh my goodness, that little big leaf. So you guys just seen it. Listen, only thing that's missing right now, which I got in the oven right now, and that's my, you know, my cornbread muffins, right? I got so many cornbreads, all of them over the top will level up your game, all of that, right? So go ahead, search my page and get it. I'll leave a couple of links to this in this video, but right now I'm not finna over talking. I'm gonna show you guys just one more time. Let me just get bring this into focus one more time. Look at that right there. You see that right there? Wee. Now, let me put it back on me, right? Enjoy. Now, that right there got a little heat to it. I ain't gonna lie to you. Listen, when I first, you know, open the top up, stirred it up a little bit, was looking at it, I tasted it, right? I decided to add just about a tablespoon and a half or something like that of Creole kit, right? I put that in there and that right there just made this. I don't know why this is not jumping off at the top. This right here is finna separate all the hop and jive from all of them. Now, don't forget the full recipe will be on, you know, downloadable and printable on my website, right? Smokingandgrillingwithab.com. Now, with that being said, listen, try this, talk to me down in the comment section below. You know it's far right because it got the holy trinity in it anyway. And don't forget, we started out with that little bacon grease. Now, with that being said, listen, if you're new to my channel, let me take your time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button and again, folks, happy new year and guess what? I'm out.