These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty!

"These pretzels are making me thirsty!"  - Everyone that matters on Seinfeld

Let's get to it. My dear friend LP was at dinner with me last month and suggested I try to make these. So, here we are! Thanks LP for the inspiration!

WAIT, I forgot something…. remember, time = glasses of wine while I cook. (Disclaimer: I drink cheap wine, so sometime in the future, sure, I could possibly critique Trader Joe's vino, but no where in the near future).

I don't have recipes in my head just ready to be shown to the world! Yep, my trusty google is my BFF and the first recipe to pop up was a soft pretzel by Alton Brown.

SOLD! He is the bomb.com and knows what he is talking about. Good Eats! is my favorite show on Food Network, ever. Hashtag bringbackgoodeatstoprimetime anyone? I tend to go off on a tangent, click that link above to make these the right way...

Let's make some pretzels. I changed one thing about this recipe because I read the first 10-15 comments about the recipe to see if something worked better for the layman like myself. So always read the comments if you want to know what people really think of it! Please laugh with me at these comments. See what I did differently below:

Here's the ingredients & recipe:

1 1/2 cups warm (110 to 115 degrees F) water (hot to the touch)

1 tablespoon sugar (Totally important food for the yeast)

2 teaspoons kosher salt - this is where I deviated from the recipe: I put the salt in with the flour and butter.

1 package active dry yeast

22 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups - this amount worked perfectly
 
1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted 

Vegetable oil, for pan and bowl (approx 4 tbsp)

10 cups water

2/3 cup baking soda

1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water (pretty spot on)

Pretzel salt, soooooo I am using Kosher Salt because, well, I just am, okay? I couldn't find it at the 

grocery. 

Please, this isn't that boring. Wake up! Realize your worth that you are able to make pretzels from scratch and they aren't just frozen and hung in a spinning hot box waiting for you after a serious dip in the pool. (IDEA: I need to make slushies!)

Please follow the directions except for the salt part. Cause these are DEELISH.

Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam.  (this is really really obvious, you can see it foaming) Add the flour and butter (read the directions, i almost put in non-melted butter) and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined. Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. (these two speeds are totally accurate)

Remove the dough from the bowl, clean the bowl (i just wiped out with a paper towel) and then oil it well with vegetable oil (2 tsp). Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and sit in a warm place for approximately 50 to 55 minutes (I left for about 1:15 because life happens and I had to fold laundry) or until the dough has doubled in size.
 During this step, I drank a glass of your favorite vino.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper (this is very important!) and lightly brush with the vegetable oil. Set aside.
Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in an 8-quart saucepan or roasting pan.


In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24-inch rope. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the parchment-lined half sheet pan.
Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula. Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the pretzel salt. Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving. 

 See the difference after an hour? It's awesome. Yeast (in cooking) is awesome.

 Cut in 8 sections. Pretzel pizza anyone???

After rolling into a snake,

Whip it into this. I can't actually tell you how, just roll and twist into a pretzel. Trust, you will be able to do this. :)

THEN: this is soooooo important. Boil in the bubbly baking soda and water for 30 seconds.. I set a timer. Really, 30 seconds that is IT. Its so the most important thing ever in the world for your pretzels.

DO IT NOW. But, one at a time. You will see that they stick together. 

They are still uncooked, but are shaped. :-)

 Well, well, well…. after spreading salt and a bit of egg yolk (per directions….)

These beauties are the end result!

When I told J that I was making pretzels, he stopped for 2 kinds of mustard. Clutch. One sweet (for me), one spicy (for him). Huh, fitting for our opposite personalities. ;-)

SUCCESS! Challenge accepted! Challenge accomplished.

What's your challenge for me? Joey just said Challah…..holla, ain't no stopping me, copy written, so, don't copy me! (yeah, I said it!) Challenge….Accepted!

Pot Roast

I love my pot roast. Joey loves my pot roast. My daddio loves my pot roast!

So here's how you make you and all of your favorite men and women in your life happy!!

The setup - See the pretty cabinets? ehhhhh.
Top: One big onion, 2 baking potatoes deeply scrubbed (no joke, get the sh*t off of them), baby bella mushrooms, S&P (duh)
Bottom: Carrots (i know, I slacked), celery, 3 lb chuck roast
Missing: Garlic (sorry, late memory)

The way to start it off: Preheat oven to 325. Heat your pot on Med/High while you chop up all of your veggies. You won't need to chop them fine…I do around 2 inch cuts. They get SUPER soft and delish when roasting so you really won't be disappointed. I just cut the onion in half, and sliced into chunks. Carrots- I cheated and bought pre-peeled and baby ones. So basically did similar sized cuts. SORRY!!!! The mushrooms were a suggested from Joey. (great suggestion, ps) Garlic should be chopped. It gets soft too so you won't be biting into big chunks when you are eating.

Step Uno: Pat your beef with a paper towel. It helps the searing process. Do it, don't ask questions!!!  S&P your beef. More than you think. Sear that sucker in your hot pan you have been heating up when you've been cutting up your veggies. 

Brown on both sides for about 7-10 minutes a side or when you can see there is a delightful crust of s&p on there…you will know.  Take the roast out of the pan and put on a plate to rest. I don't waste a good plate on it. Use a plastic plate or an ugly plate. Cooking isn't always pretty.

This tool is awesome to help you get the roast out to rest it before you add all the veggies.

See the purdy crust?

Once you pull out the meat - VERY important: turn heat down to medium/low and make sure to pour white wine or chicken stock (1/2 cup) into your pot to save all those yummy fatty beef flavors that stayed on the bottom of the pan. Then add all the veggies to your pot.

Once I put all of my veggies minus the potatoes in the pot, I realized there really wasn't room for the taters. This was kinda awesome because they are better roasted anyway….more on that in a second.

I took all the veggies out onto a plate after about 15 minutes of stirring, and getting a little browning on them...and then put my roast at the bottom of the empty pan, covered it with chicken stock (you can add any stock you want but that's what I had) and then added my veggies back on top!

Cover that sucker and leave it alone for 3 hours!

All the pretty veggies pre-roasted

Best way in the world to make sure you season your potatoes right: big plastic bag. I put my potatoes in the bag (cut them to about equal size), olive oil, rosemary, thyme, and s&p. Really, however much you want.  I do the same method with all veggies. Start small, then close the bag, throw it around, and see what distributed. Add more if you are feeling wild (:-) When there was 30 minutes left on my roast (after 2.5 hours the roast was already in the oven at 325) I put them on a pan and put them in the oven. They will be done at the same time your roast is.

After around 3 hours, your roast should be inventing your own candle scent to how great it smells in your house. But, alas, we all can't do that, so take the top off your pot,  break up the roast with tongs, and dish out as MUCH as you want! 

And that's all she wrote. You can plate it however you feel!

Errrr. Doesn't look like there is roast on there, but there is!! It's hidden behind all the delish veggies. Trust.

Sometimes I make gravy out of the drippings but did not tonight. Will share that later! It's still good with the drippings poured over your whole dish. Make sure you get all the goods on your plate. 

Tell me what you make in one pot!

Homemade Marinara

MUCH, MUCH easier than you think. Now I just need to learn to can stuff and will have this on a whim all the time. So simple, so delicious, and really really easy. Please make this! I know Prego is the solution! I used it up until I made this sauce. Plus, you can say it is homemade!!!!

I actually made some more pasta (whole wheat!) dough the other day but had not made a sauce to go with it yet. Remember, I am a newbie…nothing is always perfect like TV chefs make you think. Was a bit weary about the wheat pasta.. How would the texture be? Would it be mush?  More on that later. Don't you wish sometimes on food network they would cringe when they taste the end result because they messed up? Ok, whatever, I'm the Debbie Downer. But sometimes, your food ain't perfection. It is what it is. This time, it's good.

This marinara is  Giada's and is excellent.  I may have changed a couple of measurements like keeping all the veggies, but it's basically the same. Sweet from the tomatoes, savory, rich, decadent. All you wish for in a great pasta sauce.

I cut Giada's recipe in half (sorta) because it makes a ton and I am just feeding 2!

1/4 c olive oil
1 medium white onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic (we love garlic in our house), minced
2 carrots chopped
3 celery stalks (they were very small), chopped
1 32 oz can crushed tomatoes (we used Hunt's brand it was amazing but any crushed will do!)
2 bay leaves (still used 2 because I love the flavor they give to a sauce)

Add olive oil to your pot- any pot will do!!! - and sweat (stir every 3 minutes until they look glossy) your chopped onions down for about 10 minutes. Giada's recipe tells you to add the garlic as same time as the onions, but I find that makes the garlic burn and turn bitter. I added the garlic after the onions turned translucent. When you add the garlic, add the chopped celery and carrot.  Let those cook and stir every couple of minutes for about 10-15 minutes.

Then, add a 32 oz can of crushed tomatoes, 2 bay leaves, and stir…. THEN WALK AWAY. Really. For an hour. You have to let all those yummy flavors marry. But really, you are done making the sauce! All you have to do is stir every so often…but yes, you are going to make homemade marinara that quick!

I peeked - and stirred. MMMMMM

You don't have to do this next step, but I did just to make it a little smoother. If you like chunky sauce skip this step.  I used an immersion blender for just a couple of whirls to get it a little smoother. 

Here's my yummy pasta recipe- For the whole wheat pasta I cut the all purpose flour in half and used whole wheat in place. You still need the gluten in the AP flour to make the particular recipe I used work. Here's where it went awry! So, when you freeze your pasta, make SURE you flour it liberally…i mean, coat those babies with more flour than you think. Luckily, I defrosted some dough I hadn't cut into spaghetti yet and did it the right way. See the pic below. Those noodles need to be DRESSED in flour. Just do it. You will thank me later. I thought it looked wrong, but it was soooo right.

My cheat boil - a fry daddy basket :-)

When I boil my pasta I used SALTY SALTY water. 

Ooooh weeeeeee. Doesn't this look excellent? Don't say so if not.

Sprinkle some parm on there. 

Enjoy! Let me know what sauces you like with pasta. Mine obviously are those of the unhealthy variety. :-)

Super Easy Southwest Chicken Salad

Adapted from the salad bar "signature salad" at work. Seriously, if you don't love a good salad bar, pssshhh. C'mon!!! You get to create your own thing!

The salad at work is my usual go-to. I love the really awesome chick that always makes me my special salad who knows I say "I want this already designed salad, but not this, and add this" and doesn't eye roll at me.  The standard salad at work goes a little something like this:

Combo of salad (you know the kind you get bagged at grocery)
Black Beans
Red Onion
Cherry Tomatoes
Corn
Shredded Cheddar
Tortilla Strips
Chipotle Lime Dressing
Chicken Strips

Sorry, place-of-work, that combo sounds great to most, but didn't work for this girl.

I always say - no red onion (onion breath at work is an afternoon ladykiller), no tomato, add red pepper. Switch for ranch dressing. I didn't say this was a healthy salad. Oy Vey.

The chicken is always meh at work, so I decided to change it up and get really fancy with it: season with Taco seasoning. Revolutionary, huh? 2 chicken breasts (for the 2 of us) at 350 degrees for 25 minutes and let them sit for about 5-10 so it doesn't completely wilt your salad.

I always tell my friend at work to 86 the tomatoes but I think I just have a thing - I don't like cherry tomatoes in a salad - sorry!! I do like chopped tomatoes…. Cherry Tomato,  Chopped Tomato? (Toe-may-toe, Toe-mah-toe?)

Anyway, I drained black beans and rinsed them because your salad would be a weird gray color and taste only of black beans and be soggy if you didn't... and drained a can of sweet whole kernel corn and put as much as I wanted of both on top of my salad mix! Yes, my salad mix. It's a big bag of crisp good stuff that I thought was fresh and had the most distant expiration date.. Just do what you want when you make your stuff! I bet this salad would be great with baby spinach, but it's a little too much for my boo. Plus, I always add way too much cheese for my own good that would make others be grossed out. This time I added a mexican cheese mix.

For the dressing I went a bit crazy. I had left over taco seasoning….and OMG added it to my bottled ranch dressing. It was awesome.

So I made my fave salad! What do you like on yours? I always love listening to the combos people request on theirs in line at work and they disgust me, but it makes them happy! I always wonder if the person behind me thinks I have horrible taste in salad toppings!

Plus, I am brainwashing my husband into thinking this salad is healthy….it is, sorta. ;-)