Sometimes you have the best of intentions. You intend to make healthy vegetable based meals, but instead you just want something that has no nutritional value, feels like summer, and will make your taste buds sing. And sometimes, your husband is really happy and excited when you make said unhealthy meal that you just can’t help yourself. So you do it, you make pretzel dogs and eat that instead of the huge amounts of produce that just got delivered from Waitrose. Oops. 

This is a wonderful weekend treat though. The work to make this isn’t all that difficult but it is time consuming, which means it’s not a weeknight dinner. Although, it does make a pretty indulgent and happiness inducing workplace lunch.

The first time I made pretzel dogs was for lunch on my 30th birthday. The end product was delicious but making them was extraordinarily frustrating. I could not get the dough to come together. It stayed sticky until I added almost a cup more flour than listed in the recipe. And once it was dough, it was hard to handle and roll it out to wrap the hot dogs.

But, since pretzel dogs taste so good Ryan and I wanted to make them again. We’ve been missing baseball a lot this summer, and pretzel dogs remind us of the ballpark. I love getting a pretzel dog, with some cheese dipping sauce, and sitting out in the sun, sweating and cheering on the Nats.

For this recipe, I combined what I’ve done before with soft pretzels with some general research, and a recipe from Buns in My Oven. Her recipes uses Auntie Anne’s pretzels from any mall in America as her inspiration. Both those mall pretzels and ball park food are junk foods that you know lack nutritional value, but you just have to have them. Seriously, I just gotta eat pretzels when I smell ’em. They are staples for those places and it’s not a proper outing to the mall, or the ballpark, without a pretzel. This time to ensure successful dough I mixed everything by hand instead of with the stand mixer. Kitchen gadgets are my favorite, but sometimes doing it manually is a safer bet. You’re just unlikely to overwork dough when you do it by hand. Your (ok, my) arms are going to give out before the dough does. And I think that was part of the problem in my first attempt. I used the dough hook attachment in my mixer and I think it overworked the gluten in the flour, which ultimately made everything tough and dense.

This time I used a wooden spoon to bring together the liquid and dry ingredients together. Once they formed a messy dough that could be handled I kneaded it for 4 minutes until it came together as a smooth ball. It’s pretty easy. I think when you’re a dough/bread novice (like me) it’s best to start out using your hands to get a feel of what well done dough looks and feels like. Unsure how to knead? Check out the step by step photo tutorial on Wikihow.

This dough makes enough to cover 10 hot dogs. Originally though I only cut 8 pieces of dough because I didn’t realize how many dogs were in my pack. Oops. This recipe works for 10, but then the pretzel layer is a bit thin. I think 6-8 hot dogs is the sweet spot for this recipe. That way you have a thick enough layer of pretzel so you can really enjoy its flavors, but not so much that you lose the hot dog and feel like you’re just eating bread.

I know the pretzel dogs might sound like a crazy recipe you might never actually make, but I encourage you to think about trying it out. It’s delicious and I think it would please any member of your family – especially children. It’s fun and it’s a different way to eat a classic summertime barbecue food. Also did I mention?  It’s delicious!

Finally, if you can go to a baseball game this summer, please have a pretzel dog for me.

Messy level: I badly want to say this is an easy mess free recipe, but it’s really not. You need to make the dough, then roll it on the counter, then boil the dogs quickly, then bake them. It’s a lot of steps. None of them difficult, but it requires a lot of dishes. And also, drops of baking soda water leave white marks on dark surfaces so you definitely have to wipe down the stove afterwards.

Pretzel Dogs

 

Print

Prep time

90 mins

Cook time

15 mins

Total time

1 hour 45 mins

 

Serves: 8-10 pretzel dogs

Ingredients

• ¾ cup warm beer, or water (about 110°F/43°C)
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1½ teaspoons active dry yeast
• 2¼ cups flour
• 1 tablespoon/14g butter, melted
• Vegetable oil
• 10 cups water
• ⅔ cup baking soda
• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon water
• Coarse salt for topping
• 6-10 hot dogs

Instructions

1. To heat the beer or water microwave it in 15 second bursts. Use a thermometer if you have one to check its temperature. Otherwise, if it feels warm to your finger but not scalding hot, then it's probably fine.
2. Once the beer is warm stir in the sugar and yeast. Let stand for 5 minutes. In this time the yeast will get foamy and smell like bread.
3. In a large bowl, mix together the salt and flour. Create a well in the center of the flour mixture.
4. Pour the beer mixture and the melted butter into the well of the flour mixture. Using a wooden spoon (or a dough hook on low) mix together the liquid and flour mixtures. Mix until you have a shaggy ball.
5. Knead the dough for 4-5 minutes or until it forms a smooth ball. I recommend doing this by hand, but you can use the mixer.
6. Lightly oil a medium bowl with vegetable oil. Put the prepared dough in the bowl and roll it around a bit so it's lightly coated in oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit for 1 hour or until it's doubled in size.
7. Towards the end of that 1 hour, preheat the oven to 450°F/230°C.
8. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and grease the parchment.
9. In a large pot combine the water and baking soda. Bring to a boil.
10. Now that the dough is ready, divide it into the same number of pieces as the number of hot dogs you have.
11. Using a rolling pin or your hand flatten the dough so it's about ¼"-1/2" in thickness. Put the hot dog in the middle and wrap the dough around it. Depending on what look you prefer you can cover the hot dog entirely or let the ends stick out. Pinch the edges of the dough together to form a seal so that the dough won't unravel.
12. Once all the hot dogs are covered, in batches of 3-4, drop the hot dogs into the boiling water. Let them boil for 30 seconds them remove with a slotted spoon.
13. Place the pretzel dogs on the prepared baking sheet. Leave at least 1" in between the pretzel dogs.
14. In a small bowl beat together the egg and 1 tablespoon of water.
15. Brush the egg over the tops of the pretzel dogs. Sprinkle each dog with some coarse salt.
16. Bake for 15 minutes, or until nicely browned all over.
17. Let cool just slightly.
18. Serve with ketchup, mustard, or cheese sauce and a beer.

3.3.3077

The post Pretzel Dogs appeared first on Cooking is Messy.

I like to look at my site statistics from time to time. My absolute favorite is seeing what Google searches people use to get to the blog. My top two favorite searches are:

1. Demon pig

2. Pig excited about funnel cake

But the most popular searches are some variation on “Puerto Rican arepas recipe.” When I was searching out recipes, I had a really difficult time finding Puerto Rican specific recipes and so I’m glad that I might be able to help others find what they’re looking for. But, it also shows me that I should get back to testing recipes so I can find a perfect recipe. So here is my second attempt.

I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go after my first attempt. If you haven’t read it, you can find it here. So I did some searching and I found an email my dad sent me in 2010. So you can see, I’ve been thinking about this for a looooong time. This recipe is almost totally different from what I did before, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

The pocket!!

Here are the pros: I got the arepas to puff up and have pockets. They were so easy to stuff with rice and beans! Ryan actually deserves all the credit for the pockets existing. I was kneading the dough into the shape I wanted them to be and then frying them. My way, the dough was coming out like deep-fried bread rolls and were completely thick and dense in the inside. Ryan suggested I use less dough then use a rolling pin to shape the dough to the diameter I wanted (about the size of my hand). Then when we put it into the fryer they puffed up to exactly the size I wanted and I squealed with glee. So now I want to know, if I had done this the first time and kneaded the dough for longer and into thinner patties, would I have gotten pockets?

The con is that I felt like the consistency was too much like bread. It wasn’t quite the like the fried dough I remembered. I though the my first arepas were closer in texture to my grandmother’s arepa.

Now the problem with doing something totally different is that there are too many variables. What made it be different? Is it the self-rising flour vs all-purpose? Is it the added salt? The milk instead of water? Now I have to go back to the drawing board. I’m thinking arepas 3.0 will be this recipe but with all-purpose flour instead.

Anyway, I think I’m on to something. So for all you Google searchers out there, I hope this is what you’re looking for.

Ingredients

4 cups self-rising flour

1 tbsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp lard/shortening/butter ( I used shortening)

1 cup milk

Directions

1. Put the flour in a large bowl. Add salt and baking soda. Mix

2. Cut the lard/shortening/butter into the dry ingredients.

3. Make a hole in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the milk.

4. Mix until everything is incorporated and you have dough that has the consistency of pizza dough. This is hard to do by hand or with a fork so you can also use a mixer with a dough hook set on low.

5. Cover the bowl and let sit for 3 hours.

6. Knead the dough for a few minutes (about 3-5).

7. Take a golf ball size ball of dough. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out to about 1/8″ thick and about 5-6″ wide.

8. Heat about 1″ of oil in a skillet until very hot. Or heat a deep fryer to 350°.

9. Place an arepa in the hot oil until it is golden brown. Then flip it and brown the other side. This takes about 2-3 minutes per side.

Look at that bubble!

10. Remove from oil and drain on a paper towel.

11. Serve with rice and beans!

Messy Level: This is mildly messy. Mixing the dough takes a ton of work and if you do it by hand you are likely to have flour glob all over yourself and your counter. I tried mixing by hand, before I gave up and used the dough hook. I washed my hands of the dough and Ryan looked in the sink and was a little surprised to see yucky, lumpy, white clumps in the sink.  But that’s not so bad. Mostly using a lot of oil can lead to difficult clean up, but largely this is pretty straightforward to make and clean up. I hope you try it!

The post Puerto Rican Arepas Part 2 appeared first on Cooking is Messy.

Something you might not know about me is that I have two part time jobs. I’m lucky because both are great. The are fun, intellectually stimulating, and I get to run around and don’t have to sit behind a desk. I also have flexible hours so sometimes I get home really early, and sometimes I sleep in late. But, the downside of this is that I often work on the weekends resulting in a 6-day work week and a 1-day weekend. So, imagine my great surprise and delight when my bosses and lady luck smiled down on me and gave me ALL of Memorial Day weekend off. That’s three days off! IN. A. ROW. It was greatness. And it gave me a lot of time to play in the kitchen. I made a spicy carrot and beef tagine, lemon squares, strawberry sorbet, pizza, cookies, and arepas.

Arepas are fried dough, and Ryan and I liken them to Puerto Rican latkes. Other Latin American places besides Puerto Rico have latkes, but we’re focusing on my family’s recipe today so we’re calling them Puerto Rican. I’ve been researching how to make arepas for almost a month, and the long weekend gave me the chance to final dive in and make them.

Let me say, before we get in too deep, that for me, this is a recipe in progress. Think of it as “Arepas 1.0.” The recipe I’m going to give you is a complete recipe that you can make and enjoy. But my quest isn’t done, because I’m trying to channel the arepas recipe that my grandmother used to make. My grandmother passed away a number of years ago, so while this recipe is delicious and works well, it’s not exactly the way I remember. So I’m going to continue tinkering and testing, and will update accordingly. I’m working on memories and tradition, and so maybe my nostalgia is un-achievable, but I’m having fun trying. Now, before we get into the recipe, let me back up and tell you about why trying this is so important to me.

I started cooking regularly, and with interest, about 2 1/2 years ago when I moved to New York. Before that I “cooked” in that I could make pasta, cook a chicken breast in a skillet, and heat a box of rice. But I didn’t know how to make anything that was a little bit special. When I moved to New York I wanted to try my hand at cooking because it was the first time I was living alone in a non-collegey atmosphere. Also, New York is expensive so cooking at home would be cheaper, and my apartment was only a few blocks from the Union Square Farmer’s Market, which is year round and has a huge variety.

But, also I started cooking, because I’m a little crazy. I was living in a new place, and when I thought about what felt like home, a lot of memories had to do with my favorite meals. And then I had a realization that I didn’t know how to cook anything that my future family might like, ask for, or long for. Now, I was a single girl (to be clear I was dating Ryan, so I was single in the government forms check box sense of the word) in New York, but I was worrying about the needs of my future family. A husband I didn’t yet have, and children that were non-existent. I was twenty-five, and crazily worrying about feeding future people.

So I started to learn how to cook. And in lieu of family, I fed classmates and friends. But all that prep paid off! I’m now happy to say that me and Ryan, my little family of two, has a few go-to recipes. There are meals now that Ryan requests or is happy to see when he gets home. Now that I have some of my own recipes, I’ve become interested in tackling some of my family’s existing recipes. Some recipes I’ve made, like my mom’s apple pie or the arroz con gandules that Titi Lisa (Aunt Lisa) brings to Thanksgiving every year. And some I haven’t gotten to yet, like Papa’s breakfast cornmeal.

But arepas have becomes especially important in part because they come from a potentially a lost recipe. As far as I know, when my Abuela (grandmother) passed away, no one knew her arepa recipe exactly. Her arepas were crispy, airy, and delicious. They were perfect for stuffing with rice and beans or eating solo and dipping them in the bean sauces. We only had arepas if we were visiting her, or if she sent some pre-made dough back home with us. They were somewhat special because we didn’t have them all the time. But mostly, they were so tasty. I would easily wolf down 3 or 4 in a sitting.

Now it’s funny that I covet this recipe so heavily because my abuela wasn’t known for her cooking. Her arepas were amazing, her rice and beans were good, and everything else was… not good. I liked going to her house because she had grape soda, which I had never seen anywhere else. And she bought us fried chicken buckets from KFC, which also wasn’t something I had at home. And for dessert she’d give us those little cups of ice cream, half chocolate and half vanilla, with a little wooden spoon. But she didn’t really cook and even heating things up didn’t always go well. I remember an Eggo waffle that was hot on the outside but rock hard on the inside. Eric, my brother, and I sawed at them until Papa gently suggested that maybe we should eat something else.

My abuela and me. Yes, I was a pudgy baby.

Most importantly though, my abuela was awesome. She was the first person I knew who lived in an apartment, and didn’t have a car, and walked everywhere. I thought that was cool, and scary, and unusual, but amazing. I’m totally convinced to this day that she could have wrestled a bear and won, because she was strong and had such a fierce personality. She liked to crochet and made pretty dolls and covers for tissue boxes. But she was also into WWE wrestling, following the story lines closely. Each time we visited she gave us gift bags full of fun goodies she bought at the dollar store. Things like puzzle books, pens that you can click to change the ink color, and crazy socks. And looking back now, I think she filled her home with things that just made her happy – no matter how silly. She wore sparkly shoelaces in her sneakers, she had a fake bearskin rug – complete with bear head, and she had a sign in her bathroom that said “if you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.” She had a print of Picasso’s Femme, which is basically a few lines that make a picture of a butt. I thought it was hilarious and awesome. She was loving, quirky, and passionate and it was fun to visit her.

So, I feel like by making her arepas it’s a nice way to cherish her warm, quirky, and unique memory. By doing this, I can feel close to her and remember all the lovely things about her.

Also, not only does this recipe make me feel closer to my grandmother, it’s brought me to my parents and my aunt. In preparation for this I reached out to my Titi Mari for advice, and she provided me with the recipe below. I also asked Papa what he remembered about the arepas. Then I made my first batch and sent my mom a picture with no information except, “looks good right?” She called me almost immediately exclaiming, “are those AREPAS?!” And so we had a nice talk about what had worked well and what I could do next.

And my arepas came out pretty darn good. We each ate two the first day. And I’ve been having them for lunch at work, greedily scooping up beans and rice and wishing I had brought more. I find myself budgeting the arepas so I have at least a few bites saved for the end of the meal. They tasted crispy and golden, with some doughy parts, just like I remembered. But they weren’t airy with pockets for beans. So I will push on and try again.

I hope you think of trying this recipe. Or, better yet, what’s a meal you love from your childhood? What gives you a happy memory? Whatever that is, I think that’s a recipe you should try. Hopefully we all have a happy food memory. So why not try and recreate it?

Ingredients:

1/2 lb all purpose flour

2 oz lard

8 oz salted water (salted to your taste, I used 2 tsp and Ryan said it could use more)

Now, when I read this recipe from my aunt I said to myself, “lard?!” Lard can definitely make things delicious but it’s not popular any more. It’s texture’s a bit weird in the tub, it’s high in calories, and the fact that it’s pig fat (yeah, if you didn’t know, lard is pig fat) is a little off putting when you think about making pies or other meals. But I was going to try my damnedest to do it like my abuela, so I went on a quest for lard.

I usually show at Trader Joe’s, and they didn’t have lard. I then walked to Whole Foods thinking that foodies shop there and so might need lard, even though it goes against the healthy vibe. I had read that lard can be hard to find so I searched in the butter section, the baking section, the ethnic food section, and then finally to the meat counter. I went to the meat counter and had this conversation:

Me: Do you have lard?

Lady at the Counter: What?

Me: Lard? (In my head: sigh, if she doesn’t know what lard is I’ll never find it!)

Lady at the Counter gave me a confused face

Second Lady at the Counter jumped in and said she’d help me. She took me to the shortening, which she said I could use as a substitute. It was on the bottom shelf below all the cooking oils. I was feeling a little deflated and I called Papa to confirm that I could use shortening. He said yes, he had seen his mom do that. So that’s what I used. But I’m told lard is the best and can make the arepas more flaky. Next time I’ll do more searching and find lard. If you don’t want to use lard, use shortening or butter.

Instructions:

1. In a small bowl mix the water and salt. Stir to help the salt dissolve.

2. Put the flour in a medium bowl. Cut in the lard/shortening/butter.

3. Pour a little bit of the water (I did 2 tbsp at a time) into the flour. Mix with your hands. You want to add water until you have a dough that does not stick to your hands. You may not need all 8oz of water. If the dough gets too wet, add a little flour to dry it out.

4. Form discs with the dough. I made about 8 discs and they were about 1/2 inch thick. Put them on a plate, not touching each other. Let sit for 30 minutes.

5. Pour a thick layer of vegetable oil in a deep skillet. You’re deep frying, so pour as much oil as you’re comfortable with. Heat on medium to medium-high. Your oil is hot enough when a.) you flick water at it and it pops and bubbles or b.) you put a little of bread in the oil and it floats, not sinks.

6. Fry the arepas in the oil, flipping occasionally, until both sides are golden brown. If you’re nervous about frying oil, I totally get it. Oil can pop and splash up and even one little fleck can hurt a bit. To avoid lots of splatter when you put in the arepas, here’s a tip: use the side of the pan as a slide. Gently nudge the dough disk over the side of the pan and down the edges. It will slide in nicely to the oil.

7. Once cooked, put arepas on a paper towel to drain off excess oil.

8. Serve with rice and beans! Or even, eat it alone. I knew I was on the right track to making my abuela’s recipe when I was ravenously eating the arepas alone and wishing I had more to scarf down.

Messy Level:

At the suggestion of my friend Charlotte, the new feature for Cooking is Messy is the “messy meter,” to help show how messy these recipes are. The scale is measured in dirty spoons, with one dirty spoon being low level messy, and five dirty spoons being high level messy. Hope you enjoy the new messy meter!

I’m going to call this medium. It’s messy first because you have to put your hands in and work the dough. If you over water the dough it gets really soupy, sticky, and sort of nasty on your hands. Also, oil is just a bit messy to clean up. It pops and splatters so you have oil on your stove top and on your apron (yeah I wear an apron). Also, cleaning up oil just takes a bit of work. However, you only need one bowl, one pot, and a spatula to make this recipe so the clean up really is minimal.

The post Puerto Rican Arepas – Part 1 appeared first on Cooking is Messy.