Brace Yourself! as Brent goes solo on this episode to cook some amazing party appetizers for you! He’s making Pretzel-Wrapped Lil Smokies with a homemade Beer Cheese Sauce!
Want to win NYE? Bring these to your party ASAP!
All right guys I’m back here in the kitchen getting ready to cook some things for you tonight Grace is not here so if this is a little more of a boring episode than normal it’s because she’s the exciting one and not me we’re filming this video the day before New
Year’s Eve so I’m getting ready to make a dish that I’ve made before um for Super Bowl parties for Christmas for New Year’s it’s a crowd favorite for sure and I think that you’ll be surprised at just how easy it is to make your very own pretzel wrapped pigs in a blanket
And beer cheese Sauce Okay so the first step that we’re going to do in making these pretzel rat pigs in a blanket is the step that I always seem to forget when I’m filming these videos and it is to turn on the oven so we’re going to set the oven to
400° get it going just so that we’re ready hey I did it so now when we’re ready it’ll be time okay so next thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to use a packet of these little smokies um I get the EIT brand that’s my favorite
They have Hillshire Farm they have some other ones you can try them out this is just my favorite flavor so these are the ones that I buy I’ve made this dish before like doubled and tripled in size so you can also get like the party size
Ones there’s there’s like 72 or 100 or something in them this one uh has 42 so we’re just going to make a single see how it goes okay so the first thing we’re going to do is just cut this package open and we’re going to drain out this hot dog water that’s inside
Here because we just don’t want that all over us and I’m going to go ahead and dump these into a bowl just to make it easier to get out without having to dip my fingers back into this package over and over again so there you see what we’re
Looking like this is how many of these Smokies is in one package so once you’ve got the sausages out laid out ready to go you’ve got the oven preheating next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to open a package of refrigerated pizza crust okay this is
The Pillsbury brand I’ve tried it with the Walmart brand things like that I to me I think it’s a little bit better um I I don’t know maybe I’m just a I don’t know some sort of weird brandist or something but uh I I think that it makes
A better product we’re going to just lay this out on a cutting board or on some sort of surface that you’re working with we’re going to grab this rolling pin and we’re just going to try and roll this out till we get it to be just a regular even
Square rectangle I mean it doesn’t have to be fancy or anything we’re going to be cutting this up here in just a second but we’re just trying to get it kind of even so that uh we can make even Cuts if it starts a stick you can throw down a
Little bit of flour but I wouldn’t put too much on there um we kind of want it to be pliable and sticky to be able to stick to these sausages so you don’t want to flower it too much so as you can see here we’ve got this in a rectangle it’s wavy kind
Of looks like the American flag here okay so now that we’ve got this all laid out to me the easiest way to do this is with a pizza cutter you can do it with a knife I mean it’s perfectly fine to do with a knife the pizza cutter just kind
Of rolls and to me makes it easier um so what we’re going to do is we’re going to cut this into four sections here so so we’re just going to kind of eyeball one two three and four Okay so we’ve got the four sheets here got them all cut out and now we
Will cut them in half I mean we could have done that the in the first place but uh I don’t know sometimes I kind of skip SK steps and uh get confused and this is how we’re going to do it we’re cut this in half okay so next thing that we’re going to
Do is we’re going to lay these out and we’re going to cut each one of these into let’s see three let’s try to do three strips one two three they’re a little bit uneven but you mainly just want them to be somewhere around an inch thick
We’ll try this one more time see if I can get them nope that one was even worse than the first one how about we try this one more time let’s see if my eyeball skills can do any better here okay uh one that’s about as close as you’re
Going to get okay so as you can see we got three different pieces here we’re going to fast forward a little bit I’m going to cut the rest of these up and then I’m going to show you what the next thing to do is but before I do that the
Next step that we’re going to be doing after we get all these wrapped is that we’re going to be boiling these um pre-boiling them before we put them in the oven I’m going to show you the step that turns these from just your Basic pizza dogs into pretzel dogs um and
That’s going to involve boiling so we’re going to go ahead and fill up a pot with some hot water get it on the stove and get it going so now you can see we’ve got all of those pieces of pizza dough cut up into the strips all we’re going to do
Now is just take one of these sausages we’re going to roll it around in here wrap it roll it drop it down get ready for the next step this is super easy to do you’re just going to take the dough stick it on here give
It a roll roll it up like a little ball looks like a kind of like a little bobber on a fishing pole so let’s fast forward a little bit here get these done and then we’ll show you what the next step’s going to be all right so we’ve
Got all of these wrapped up truth be told if you’re going to cut the fourths and then the thirds you’re not going to have quite enough pizza dough to do all of the smokies that are in the package I should have done them in fourths instead
Of in thirds because I ended up with 25 wrapped wieners here um there’s still 14 more of them left in the package I’m not a good mathematician but if you you know make some of these a little smaller as you can see my skills are not the
Greatest we’ve got some of these that are a little fatter some are a little skinnier they’re all going to taste great that’s the only thing that really matters but um we can use these for for gripe jelly and chili sauce delicious or just eat them on your own I don’t care
The oven is ready we’re just waiting on the pot to finish boiling soon as the pot gets finished boiling we’re going to move you over there and we’re going to show you what it looks like the next step let’s get it hey like this video you know you do make sure to uh
Subscribe if you don’t already give us a little comment we love the feedback bur reads them all you responds to them all but give it a like so we’ve got the water boiling as you can see the next step is the step that’s going to turn these from regular old ordinary pigs in
A blanket into the pretzel pigs in a blanket so we’re going to use some baking soda here um we’re going to need a 1/3 cup of baking soda this is going to Bubble Up on you as soon as you put it in the pan so don’t be scared it’s
Not going to go anywhere you just want to get that about third cup there roughly doesn’t have to be exact just going to sprinkle that guy in it’s a little scary the first time it’s just going to puff up but then it’s going to go right back down
Again he says as it goes everywhere and makes a mess stir this up a little bit just to get that baking soda just kind of melted around in there I don’t know the science behind this I just know it’s you know changing the chemical compound and blah blah blah blah blah whatever so
We’re going to once we’ve got that ready we’re going to grab ourselves a cookie sheet I love these Reynolds parchment squares they’re my favorite thing in the entire world they’re already they come in this triangle or this rectangle that fits in here fold them out you don’t
Have to spray you don’t have to do anything set that bad boy down we’re going to grab about um let’s see these are in groups of five let’s just grab five at a time we’re going to drop them down here into this water and we’re going to just let them float for roughly
30 seconds like I said we’re going about 30 seconds these are going to puff up a little bit they’re going to some of the ones that aren’t wrapped as tightly as they should be are going to try and come apart just let them do their cooking and
Once you take them out then we can fix the wrapping on them okay so once you take them out of the water use a uh spoon a slotted spoon so you can drip off all that water just get them onto the the baking sheet here four
This guy tried to get away from me but we’re going to fix him here just drop that guy back down in there for a second next time around maybe the best thing to do is grab these by the seam side and just give them a little pinch before you
Drop them in there hope that that just kind of locks them a little better while those are going I’m just going to wrap this guy back up I’ve got 25 of them I’m going to put them in five rows of five put them however you want they’re not
Going to Puff a ton um so it’s not like they need to have a ton of room but they also don’t want to be sitting on top of each other or they won’t get brown so next round’s going to come out these did a little bit better but they still had a
Little bit of blowout hot hot pocket Alexa set a timer for 30 seconds 30 seconds starting now okay so now that we’ve got all of the pigs in a blanket on the sheet pan The Next Step we’re going to do is we’re just going to
Make a quick egg wash here not even an actual egg wash just we’re going to beat this egg up um just one scrambled egg we’re not going to put any water or anything in it we’re just going to whisk it up so that we can brush it on the top of these bad
Boys we’re just going to get out the brush and we’re just going to give these a light brushing on each of them one two one two you just want to make sure that you can see egg on all of them but you don’t want them you know completely swimming
In egg or anything this is what is along with the boiling along with the baking soda is what’s going to cause these things to turn brown and have that crispy crust on the outside of them like a pretzel does instead of just a kind of like a pizza crust or a crescent roll
Like how you would normally have with these okay so for this whole 25 of them we only used about a half half an egg’s worth so um if you get in here and you use a whole egg or you use two or three eggs you’re making an omelette instead
Of making delicious treats at after we’ve got the egg yolk on there we’re just going to take some this is kosher salt um just going to give it a little sprinkle on each of them you can just use table salt if you want you can use sea salt you can use
Himalayan salt you can use whatever kind of salt you want I don’t care I like the kosher salt just because it’s kind of a little bigger flakes they show a little more you can see them when you look at them just a light little dusting on each
Of them and then we’re going to take these guys and we’re going to stick them in the oven we’re going to bake these things at 400 for 12 to 15 minutes probably closer to 15 would be my guess and while those are cooking I’m going to
Show you how to make a amazing beer cheese sauce all right so while the pigs and the blanket are cooking the next thing that we’re going to do we’re going to shred some cheese you can obviously use a bag of cheese um the pre-shredded kind it’s not going to melt the same way
Um if you have time and you have the ability I would always recommend shredding your own cheese you can throw it in the food processor if you want I just use the Box Shredder we’re going to grab some vegetable oil spray some Pam if you’re going to do it this way make
Sure that you spray this down so the cheese comes off a lot easier it’s also easier if the cheese is colder it doesn’t kind of it doesn’t really gum up and cause as many problems we are going to use extra sharp cheddar here I need about three cups of that this will be
About four cups worth so we have a little bit left over put in a zip Lo we’ll use it another time so we are going to take this guy and just get him shredded so here’s the reveal time yep look at all that cheese beautiful get that stuff out from the
Inside as you can see since we sprayed it down not a whole lot got stuck on there set this stuff aside for a minute and we’ll move on to creating a rue and a cheese sauce and it’s going to be amazing so now that we’ve got our cheese
Shredded the first thing we’re going to do now in the pan is we’re going to make a rue now I’m guessing most people know what a rue is that’s equal parts fat and flour which we’re going to use butter unsalted you get that mixed into a paste
Let it cook a little bit Cook Out the rawness of the flour and then we’re going to put some milk you can also use chicken stock um any real any liquid you can put into there really and once it heats up it’s going to thicken okay so I
Guess technically you make the Rue you put the milk in it and cheese we’re making a mouret sauce um you put chicken broth I think it’s a Volute maybe or something like that I took a bunch of culinary classes in college I can’t remember I mean nobody’s testing me on
This stuff anymore so next thing we’re going to do we are going to use three tablespoons of unsalted butter we’re going to just put him at about a three for now now we’ll start it at a four so there are four tablespoons left in this stick that I’ve got here so I’m just
Going to separate that out toss those guys in here we’ll use this last one another time this butter is melting in here we’re going to just let it get hot we’re going to kind of swish it around till it gets melted and once it’s melted we’re going
To put the flour in then we get moving we’re going to use like I said before equal parts flour and fat so we’ve got 3 tablespoons of fat in the pan so once this gets completely melted or at least a little bit closer than it is right now I don’t know if you
Can see this or not it’s melting down we definitely don’t want to cook it too long that it boils or that it um Browns we don’t want brown butter in this brown butter is delicious but it’s a very slippery slope to burn and once the butter is burned
Then you’re kind of just out of luck so that’s almost done we’re going to measure Out 3 tablespoons of flour and we’re going to whisk this stuff together I’m going kind of show you what it’s looking like here you going whisk it creamy get all the lumps
Out just trying to get it all together if you the longer you cook a rue the darker it gets and the Richer in flavor it gets we’re just going for a basic blonde Rue right now which all that is is is you’re just cooking it long enough
To cook out the rawness of the flour but you’re not really looking to get any real color um like if you’re making a gumbo or something like that you’re going to go all the way to like a sand r a brick r a red R whatever they call it
Um those take a long time they have way deeper flavor but they’re also kind of burny tasting so we’ve got that stuff done it’s ready to roll we are going to measure out a cup of milk normal recipe for this calls for whole milk we only
Have 1% right now and I’m not going to the store just for whole milk so we’re going to do it like this it may just not quite have the same fatty creaminess that the whole milk would but it’s not going to be like you we using skim milk
Or anything it’s not going to be too far off put that milk in there we’re going to give this guy a stir get the milk and the Rue all mixed together so that you can’t see any separation between the two of them it’s going to start to thicken up on us
A little bit we want to make sure that we’re really continuously stirring it um actually almost forgot how silly I me I was thinking that it was looking a little bit uh a little bit thick so we’re going to pour the recipe says a half cup of beer
In here I’m going to put a little bit more than that I’m using this Founders All Day IPA I hate IP to drink but I feel like when you put it into a sauce like this um if you I mean you could use Bud Light or you know something like
That but it’s just not going to really give it a whole ton of beer Flavor now granted if you didn’t want to make this into a beer sauce you don’t have to you can just uh make a cheese sauce without the beer um once you cook it in here it
Cooks out the alcohol so you don’t have to worry about that it Cooks out a lot of the flavor you really you know it’s not like you sitting down and drinking an IPA when you make this cheese sauce it just kind of gives it an interesting
Floraly taste I guess um like I said I hate ipas to drink but I like them in this sauce so give it a try so I’m not sure if you can really tell anything by looking at this but we’re getting thicker we’re getting creamier you don’t
Really want this to boil you just kind of want it to get to a simmer to all mix together the original recipe says to do this for 5 to 7 minutes I may have the heat up a little bit higher than I should because it’s going to be
Definitely stiff enough before we get to that Mark but let’s say we just bring it just to the smallest little boil once you start seeing some bubbles non the beer bubbles not the beer bubbles but actual heat bubbles then we know that we’re good to
Go you can tell by just feeling it by looking at it by looking at the consistency of it when you do this sort of thing that we’re we’re good and thick if you put a spoon in in there the back of the spoon it doesn’t run all off that means that
We’re good to go so we’re just barely getting some bubbles in there it’s just starting to go it kind of looks like frothy yeast dough right now um so we’re going to turn the heat all the way down to low next thing we’re going to do is
We’re going to add some wor thiser let’s see I got to look at my thing here CU like I said I normally don’t measure anything I just do it the receipt says the receipt the recipe says one tablespoon of whisher I’m guessing that we’re going to probably put a little bit
More than one and that’s mainly just because I’m dumping it all I’m left-handed so shaking this with my right hand is not gling so well for me so get that in there and then we are going to do two teaspoons of Dijon mustard this one I’m not going to
Measure because it’s kind of a pain to get back out of the measuring spoons and also I like more than they ask for we’ll call that it was probably more like a tablespoon and a quarter but hey mess with it see what you like see if it
Tastes good give this a stir we’re going to do a couple of twists of salt we’re going to do a couple of twists of pepper a lot of people say that in a light sauce a white sauce like this you would want to use like a a
White pepper so that the pepper doesn’t show uh I don’t know to me I think that the pepper showing in the sauce is kind of all right I don’t have a problem with it I think it makes it so that people can see that it’s been seasoned already so I know plenty of
People that will get their food at a restaurant they’ll put it down they will salt and pepper it to death I don’t understand putting all that extra stuff on there before youve tasted it but you know whatever all right so while we’re working this the pigs in a blanket are done in the
Oven correction while we’re working this the pigs and a blanket are almost done in the oven let’s set this for two more minutes I just turned the pan around so they could get a little bit of color on the other side couple more steps and we
Are done zo I’m going to throw some granulated onion onion powder just shake that off maybe a half teaspoon of that granulated garlic maybe a half teaspoon of that if you want to measure it measure it I’m not going to waste the time and we’re going to throw just a couple of
Little shakes of smoked paprika in here just to give it a little bit of color stir this guy up this is essentially without the beer the same as the starter for my cheese sauce if I’m making macaroni and cheese um it’s all pretty much exactly the same except there’s
Just more milk and no beer so we got this all stirred in you see it’s thick it’s your thick boy next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to take that cheese that we grated earlier and we’re just going to drop that bad boy in there if you’re better than me you’ll
Put in a little bit of this you’ll stir it you’ll put in a little bit more you’ll stir it I don’t have time for that I’m doing this all by myself right now get all that cheesiness in there now we’re just going to start smooshing this around a little
Bit just let it move around in the heat you want to make sure that you’re not any higher than low on the heat wise cuz you don’t want to burn this if you get the cheese too hot then it it has a tendency to want to separate
On you which means that the fat and the oil in the cheese will separate and then it’ll just have kind of a grainy texture it won’t get creamy you’ll be able to tell that there’s something wrong with it it’s getting hot it’s starting to melt we’re going to take these Piggies
Out oh yeah take a look at those guys you can see you got the brown color on the top of there you’re looking a lot more like pretzels than we were before what I am seeing from this cheese sauce here is number one it’s too thick I used more cheese than probably
What I needed to in this um so as in order to thin this out a little bit we’re going to just put I don’t know maybe a half 1/4 cup of milk in here you want to be gentle cuz the milk’s not want going to want to mix
Right in immediately it’s going to want to fly out of the pan just don’t be too excited always want to give things a taste when you’re cooking them just so you know what needs to be added I tell you what needs to be added to some heat it’s not nearly not nearly
Hot enough um I am going to add just a let’s add a little bit more beer in there there’s a little bit of there’s a beer flavor to it for sure it could use a little bit more couple more dashes of whisher another Squirtle of
Dijon like I said you taste this you see what you like about it when you’re making these cheese sauces you’re making anything at home it’s all about tasting it if it tastes good to you then it’s good if it doesn’t if you hate it don’t blame me I didn’t make this thing up
In all honesty if you don’t like this there might be something wrong with you okay now we’re getting the creaminess that we’re looking for but it’s not so thick that it’s wall spackle oh yeah oh yeah babe turn this bad boy off next time I see you we’re
Going to be at the front table we’re going to taste this stuff all right guys as promised it’s time to give this stuff a taste this first Bowl here I’ve got the beer cheese sauce that we just made this little Bowl here the Sweet Baby Ray’s honey mustard is one of our
Favorite sauces love it goes perfectly on a pretzel crack open my favorite Bev oh yeah don’t these look amazing so before I keep talking Let Me Take A Taste okay so we’ll take this guy we give him a little dunking here oh yeah that’s what I’m talking about
Somehow don’t ask me why don’t ask me how regular old pizza dough once you boil it in the baking soda put some egg on it cook it in the oven it tastes like a pretzel it gets chewy it gets crispy it gets dark it’s got that layer of
Flavor that you get from a pretzel but you can’t get anywhere else that’s good a couple of these definitely could have stood to stay in the oven a little bit longer um but I I was hungry I was ready to go another one throw it in the honey
Mustard that made the dog bark she doesn’t know what to do with my craziness obviously these weenies are best eaten right out of the oven uh as soon as they’re done eat them number one best way to do it cook them eat them throw them on a plate give
Them to the people make them happy if you need to I honestly don’t know I think probably the best bet would be if you needed to make them ahead of time would be to roll them and then leave them in the refrigerator until the day of that you’re going to cook them um
They do fairly well if you cook them throw them a crock pot just leave the crock pot on keep warm um you can keep those most of the day they will at the end of the day get a little bit of sogginess uh they won’t be as crispy and
As good as they were to start with but they’re perfectly good still give these a try I’m having a good time with this uh even though smiling is not always my number one thing I watch a lot of people on YouTube and they are constantly smiling and that just isn’t that’s not
Me uh so don’t take my of smiling is my lack of enjoying myself I’m having a blast here I hope you guys are too um if you want to keep seeing me do this stuff let me know keep watching the videos keep subscribing we are so close to the
Thousand subscriber Mark we are almost to 900 now so if you would have talked to us six eight months ago about if we were ever going to get to a thousand we would have probably told you no but U now we’re getting close Thousand does isn’t going to change anything it just
Means that we’re a little bit more Legit by that point that’s kind of how YouTube gauges whether something whether people want to watch something or not um when you get enough subscribers then they start thinking that you’re something special I guess I don’t know so um keep watching keep commenting keep liking
Keep telling us what you want to see if you want me to just shut up and close this thing out tell me so Grace will be back in the next video I’m going to keep doing these kind of videos but we’re also making some plans to start doing
Some traveling start doing some videos back at restaurants again like we normally do so check us out