The Best Hush Puppies Recipe: Crispy, Fluffy, Cheddar-Tasso Hush Puppies With Apple “Honey”

Light, delicate, and crispy — hush puppies are a perfect fried snack. Chef Eric Huang of New York’s Pecking House shows us how to make his sweet-savory Cheddar-Tasso Hush Puppies, fried cornbread nuggets packed with tasso ham, cheddar, and scallions. It’s the perfect bite, especially when drizzled with vegan apple “honey” made from apple cider, sugar, and lemon juice. Pair Cheddar-Tasso Hush Puppies with Pecking House’s famous Chili Fried Chicken and Dirty Fried Rice, for the ultimate comfort food feast. #hushpuppies #veganhoney #southernfood #peckinghouse #cornbread

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Recipes:
Cheddar-Tasso Hush Puppies With Apple Honey: https://chfstps.co/3Hpzvz3
Chili Fried Chicken: https://chfstps.co/47CxTO9
Dirty Fried Rice: https://chfstps.co/3S7MQRs

Equipment:
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Buy a 5-quart Dutch oven: https://www.amazon.com/Creuset-Enameled-Signature-Braiser-Cerise/dp/B089H1MF9L?tag=chefsteps02-20

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We’re here with Chef Eric Wong of pecking house in New York and today we’re busting out the cornballer and we’re making his cheddar tat Hush Puppies yes starting with your Apple honey no Bees involved no bees bees that live on an apple orchard it’s made from apple cider light delicate crispy

Cornbread nuggets with a touch of sweetness smokiness and saber from the ham those are all the indicators of quality there what’s not to love it sounds great what’s get into It okay so we’re making apple honey a lot of people think this is honey that comes from bees that live in apple orchards that is incorrect this is honey made from unpasturized apple cider and that is a key detail uh it has to be fresh pressed unpasturized apple cider

You want as much pectin in there as possible we’re combining fresh press apple cider unpasteurized with sugar and we reduce it by about 50 to 60% and then it will have the consistency and texture of honey so it’s a vegan honey and it’s quite lovely and very delicious a very

Simple technique to do at home so give it a try okay going to mix up our beautifully fresh pressed apple cider here put it in our pot and then combine it with sugar and then we’re going to bring it to a simmer and then we need to be constantly

Stirring just until it brings to a simmer just so you don’t get any sticking or burning any sugar on the sides and then once this come with simmer you keep it to about a medium so that it’s slowly simmering away and then we reduce it down and you’re going to

See that the sugar is going to clarify everything it’s going to add a lot of viscosity along with the pectin and it’s going to behave just like honey we simmering you know this is where you want to keep it at you want to be constantly cleaning up the edges here

With a lovely rubber spatula a low simmer can’t bring you can’t boil it too hard it will bubble over on you because of all the pectins and good stuff in there but reducing it slowly via simmering is going to get you the right Clarity the right consistency and it’s

Going to have better control so we’re just about there going to turn this down let the bubbles to theide and then we’re going to season it with lemon juice uh adding a little bit of acidity will prevent it from just being one-dimensionally sweet and then you’re looking for something that eventually

Will be the consistency of Honey at room temperature uh obviously now that it’s hot it flows quite readily it’s quite thin but I assure you once it cools down it will have the consistency that you would normally find in a good old bear-shaped squeeze bottle of honey

We’ll give it a little taste but just so you’ll see it almost has the consistency of maple syrup it’s tasty all right so we’re at the mixing stage we’re going to keep our dry ingredients together and our wet ingredients together so all our dry ingredients here we have cornmeal AP

Flour sugar salt baking powder and black pepper the black pepper is a really nice addition and it will go very well with all the ham and all other alium aromatics later going to mix it together Boop and Boop we’re going to mix everything together make sure uh it’s mixed now so we can

Minimize the handling later then we’re going to put the dry into the wet ingredients all right so now we’re going to mix our wet ingredients together for our purposes ham cheese scallions all these aromatics that we’re adding in uh they are wet ingredients if you will but the obviously main wet phase is

Buttermilk and eggs those are going to serve as the binder and then when we mix them with the dry ingredients we’re going to try to minimize the handling it needs to be purposefully a little lumpy uh you don’t want to develop too much gluten make it too uh resilient and

Bouncy there’s a fine balance to be struck uh but first we just need to mix these all together whis that up together first all right then we’ll add our tasso ham works really well with the hush puppies and sliced Scallon greens and then uh just some really nicely shredded cheddar

Cheese just kind of mix that in see everything’s even then we’re going to add our dry ingredients you don’t want to over mix this you can just add it in batches and then fold things as we go again you don’t want to develop too much gluten anything you just want all the

Starches and the flour to hydrate once basically everything’s Incorporated you don’t see any more dry cornmeal or dry flour you are good to go all right so we are going to fry our Hush Puppies our batter is ready our oil is up to Temp 350 and then we’re just

Going to use handy dandy ice cream scooper what can help is giving it a little dip in the hot oil this will help keep your scooper clean and allow your hush puppies to be more spherical it’s pretty straightforward we’re just going to scoop this is a 2 O

Scoop dry into the oil don’t do too many at a time but you can probably do some routine five and six and we’re going to let them dry up tease them off the bottom a little bit all right so the O puppies might take a minute to start

Floating but once they do float uh you’ll notice that some of the surface like half of them will be out of the oil like a little bobber so just keep turning them spinning them as you go so you get nice even Browning and cooking all the way around okay we’re looking

Golden brown and delicious here okay uh if you want to make extra sure we can use a little instant the read thermometer here anything over 195f is going to mean we are cooked on the inside and then uh as with all fried foods you want to season them while they

Are hot uh that way the salt will dissolve readily and season all your beautiful fried food with Crispy salty goodness we’re here we got we got the hush puppies Hush Puppies fried cornbread nuggets is that what I mean who fried cornbread nuggets I think that’s the best way to describe it

Everything has to be fried all things fried at our restaurant but yes they’re fried cornbread nuggets tasso ham scallion cheese and we’re going to drizzle the Apple honey over it with what we learned is called it a honey wand honey wand this is a honey wand

It’s a honey wand I want to like rip One open look at that look at that moist cornbread nugget would you like some honey from my honey W do I want some honey honey wand drizzle me oh yes that looks so good there we go cheers cheers to cornbread

Nuggets pretty crispy it’s still light though it’s not it’s not dense or anything the little morsels of taso give you that like nice salty pop love the scallion in there m Cheddar’s there but it’s not you know your face or anything and uh really ties the rim together this is great man yeah

I think you know everything works there you can add as much honey as you want but I think a light drizzle kind of brings the party together without being too dominant but yeah I mean mainly forward it is Savory but with hints of sweetness there I mean I feel like that

Apple honey too for the you know Thanksgiving time if you’re making just regular cornbread and you’re not doing cornbread nuggets with some some butter and that Apple honey that would be pretty oh yeah is that what you do at the restaurant yes we serve it on cornbread that sounds yeah not cornbread

Nuggets we’re we haven’t cornbread nuggets is a special that will never appear or maybe someday maybe we’ll see you one day Eric thank you so much I can’t wait to eat all 15 of these hush puppies by myself off to the side here go to chefsteps.com

To get Eric’s full recipe plus his Fried Chicken his dirty fried rice so much good stuff to check out and yeah let’s eat some Hush Puppy let’s do it all right I think it’s a very nice visual subscribe to our Channel and visit chefsteps.com for more tips

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