The Hell Kitchen

At this point, the heat of the Hell Kitchen is enough to cause greens to wilt in minutes. You're dying. And you're going to have to turn the oven on soon.

The pretzels you're about to see are a pretty faithful replica of this fucking amazing pretzel recipe that I use constantly because it is so good. I fucking adore this pretzel recipe. If you make one thing from this, let it be these pretzels.

So, anyway: Mix a teaspoonish of instant yeast with 3 cups of flour and a teaspoon of salt. Because you're using all your bowls and containers, mix a cup of lukewarm water, 1 1/2 tbs butter, a tbsp of honey into a Red Cup. Anyone who has been 18-21 knows what a Red Cup is.

Mix the shit together for a while, then you want to sort of knead the dough in your mixing bowl, folding in any loose flour. Now knead, for real. Not too long, especially if you've got high-gluten flour. Throw your dough back into your oiled bowl, cover with Saran Wrap and keep in a warm place (one of the cooler parts of the kitchen) for about an hour, until it doubles-ish in size.

Roll your dough into a long tube:

Now you want to take a fifth of your tube, pull it out until it's a little more than an inch thick. Then take your dough, and tie a knot with it. Then tie a knot with the other side. In the end, you should end up with something nest-shaped, as opposed to pretzel-shaped. Do this with all 5 fifths, then set them on an oiled sheet to rise for 20 minutes or so, until they look like this:

Now, take 1.5 quarts of water in a pan (pretty much the only pan) and add around 1/8 cup baking soda. Bring to a high simmer/low boil. Gently dip each pretzel into water and let it almost boil for 15 seconds per side. Fish pretzels out with combination of spoon and spatula, because you don't own a slotted spoon. After the soak, run each pretzel through an egg wash and sprinkle liberally with kosher salt and cracked pepper.

Now bake your pretzels in a 400 degree oven for 12-15 minutes.

Now eat a pretzel. Taste that perfect fucking pretzel.