How to Make Ballpark Classics: Sausage and Peppers & Pretzels

[Music] today on Cook's Country we're heading to the ballpark Bridget and Julia grill up sausage and peppers Jack challenges Julia to a tasting of whole wheat bread Adam reviews disposable plates and Christy makes Julia the best ball park pretzels that's all right here on Cook's Country the next time you grab a hot dog at a ball park thank an Englishman named Harry Mosely Stephens in the 1880s Stephens attended a baseball game in Columbus Ohio now he loved the game but he was bothered by the lack of names on the uniforms so he printed and sold detailed scorecards and soon after started selling snacks like peanuts and popcorn then in 1893 Stephens became the official concessionaire of the New York Polo Grounds where teams like the Mets Yankees and Giants played from there his business expanded from coast to coast and until 1994 you could buy a Harry Stephens hotdog in nearly every major ballpark well today's show is all about ballpark classics and we're starting with grilled sausages and peppers [Music] Julian I recently enjoyed a game at Fenway and a few $10 beers too but right outside of the park is a cart that sells sausages and peppers that it's a famous cart people line up down the street and you can smell the great food a mile away right they call them the sausage guy they do call them the sausage today I'm the sausage guy we are gonna start with sausage right and you can either use sweet or hot sausage or you can mix them up and it can be a grab bag but today I'm just gonna use sweet sausage and I've got two pounds here and they're just Italian they're right just to tell you now we've seen a lot of recipes that poke the sausages it just lets all the juices and flavor leak out and cause flare-ups so don't poke the sausage love it now moving on to the peppers and onions we're gonna use a red bell pepper and just a regular yellow onion so to cut the onion up into nice slivers cut off both ends cut it in half right through the center and I like to peel that outside layer Plus that first layer of onion which can also have a few bruises and be a little slimy we're gonna slice it pole to pole because of course you have a rainbow shape here so we're gonna angle the knife as we go we're looking for a quarter of an inch thick slices so that is two onions okay on to the peppers first you want to take a pepper and you want to lop off the top on the bottom now we're gonna cut through just one side of the pepper and we're gonna open it up and this is when you can take all the seeds and ribs out slice away any of those ribs being sure to keep your fingers well out of the way we're gonna cut it into quarter-inch thick slices alright so again 3 peppers 2 onions we're gonna combine them in a bowl and this is where our recipe is different from other recipes sausages and onions and peppers do not all cook at the same rate I really want these to cook down and be soft so we're gonna Park cook these in the microwave we're gonna give them a jump start and we're also gonna flavor them at the same time ok so we're gonna add just a little bit of vinegar this is three tablespoons of distilled white vinegar a little bit of sugar just two tablespoons of sugar sweet and sour well sweet little sour this is a tablespoon of vegetable oil half a teaspoon of salt half a teaspoon of pepper you can see so far it's very easy we're just gonna stir this up to make sure everything's nicely combined now as I mentioned we're gonna give them a head start in the microwave on goes in the microwave six minutes on high sounds good mmm you can start to smell them can't you it's starting to smell like that ballgame a little bit of vinegar and that little bit of sugar really does brighten up their flavor Oh we're gonna use a disposable aluminum pan we're ready to fire it up sounds good [Music] all right so it's time to get grilling and I've been heating this grill up for about 15 minutes with all the burners on high now I'm gonna take my trusty grill brush and just get off any schmutz that's stuck on the grill grates from the last time we cooked now I'm gonna give them a quick rubdown with some oil this will help keep them nice and seasoned every time you cook we're gonna start with the peppers and onions they've already had a little bit of a head start microwave right there gonna get more of a head start on the grill so I'm just gonna put them right on the hot side and I'm gonna turn off the burners on the other two sides so you have a cool side and a warm side all right now these need about 20 minutes ahead of the sausages all right so it's been 20 minutes that our vegetables have been on the grill and it's time for the star ingredient we're gonna cook them on the cool side okay because we found that a lot of recipes tell you to throw them right on the hot grill but that really shrinks the casing and then they burst open and they lose all their juices all right put it last little guy on there I'm gonna give these vegetables a nice stir I've left the lid down I'm gonna let these sausages cook like that for about eight minutes okay all right so it's been about eight minutes there's no busted open sauce such as nothing all that juice is inside the casing where we want it so I'm just gonna give these a quick flip I'm also just gonna give this quick stir close the lid and go another eight minutes okay so it's been about eight minutes you can see all sausages are nicely cooked on both sides but not very Brown yet and that's what we're gonna tackle Matt okay but the sausage is in the pan with the vegetable we're just gonna talk them a little bit with some of that vegetable juice pan on the cool side of sausages now on the hot side just for a couple minutes turn them and make sure they get nice and browned on all sides that takes about three minutes or so we're looking for an internal temperature or about 160 degrees that's how you know your sausages are done so I've been turning these sausages for about 2 or 3 minutes now so they get nice and evenly Brown well done now I'm not above tamping a sausage we're looking for a hundred and sixty degrees alright so time to put these back into the pan because really we want all the sausage juices to mingle with the vegetables before we eat it so now we're gonna take this whole pan right off the grill and we're gonna bring it inside alright alright so these have been resting for five minutes you haven't gone too far oh yeah smells like a ballgame I'm ready to serve it up and a nice pretty serve role here put some sausage and peppers along the side but I have something for you I saw that over there a little my home brew here cream ales look at that color ooh that's gonna taste good - ten dollars all right well let the foam settle a bite mm-hmm you know what I noticed at first is that sweet and sour taste yes from the vinegar and that sugar mm-hmm and that sausage still has a lot of juice because we have that two-level cooking method let's bring him back memories Bridge up Cheers and thank you for the beer cheers to here thanks for the sausages and peppers well believe me if you make this recipe they will come you just want to get the onions and peppers a little head start in the microwave put in the foil pan and head out to the grill cook the vegetables over the hotter side and start the Italian sausages on the cooler side then it's the old switcheroo finish cooking the vegetables on the cool side and brown the sausages over direct fire let them rest together pile into buns and serve so from Cook's Country a wicked awesome recipe for grilled sausages with bell peppers and onions and $10 beers [Music] not long ago a decent loaf of whole wheat bread was hard to find unless you went to a bakery or a health food store but today supermarket bread aisles are filled with options so Jack's here to tell us which brand is best yeah we tasted 700 percent whole wheat all right so whole wheat just means it could have one percent whole wheat and 99 percent white flour 100% whole wheat actually means 100% whole wheat gotcha so you can start sampling here wait a second what about this slice I mean what kind of slice is that that would make a very odd sandwich that's not nice are you gonna at least taste it I'll taste it all right so a couple things I want you to pay attention to whole wheat has some Pleasant bitter notes but they can get unpleasant some of the brands seemed like the wheat was maybe past its prime it was really kind of in-your-face whole wheat some of the brands were a little bit more mellow adding a moderate amount of sweetener of some sort kind of balances out those bitter notes is actually a good thing second thing that I want you to be paying attention to is texture some of them seem very fluffy and light almost like white bread even though they were 100% whole wheat and others seem really dense and so we said let's come up with a way of mathematically quantifying density so we cut the crust off of each slice we then took the calipers and we use the calipers to gauge three different measurements lengthwise with rise and height so that gave us a volume measurement we then weighed each slice and that weight divided by volume and we found that our top-rated brands were up to 45% denser than the bottom ones now so tighter crumb more wheat flavor more bread in each bite they do a better job with ham and cheese and tomatoes and mustard and mayonnaise and everything else you're gonna put on them they're sturdier they perform better in real world sandwich tests a real word sandwiches and I have a definite favorite this one which I liked the look of off the bat because I like the top that has some cracked wheat it was harder it was chewy and the wheat flavor was much more pronounced so this one was my absolute favorite my least favorite was this poor slice that was making fun of him the beginning it was very fluffy it was very wimpy and it had sort of a bitter aftertaste this one was middle-of-the-road it was fairly sweet it might have had a slight bitter aftertaste but not in a way that bothered me and its texture was right in the middle of these two so absolute favorite not bad in a pinch and would never buy this okay you want start with your favourite sure start with my favourite and the expert panel picked the Arnold as our top rated Wow now the studio audience went for the runner-up here this was very close between first and second so you want to know this was my runner-up this is pepperidge farm we actually felt that the Arnold and pepper charm were very similar to each other by comparison to the slice in the middle that slice of know that I did not like yeah this is necessarily really shows you how even a hundred percent whole wheat bread can seem very insubstantial you're gonna buy hundred percent whole wheat presumably that's cuz you want a nice hearty slice of bread so there you have it when you're buying whole wheat sandwich bread reach for one that has a wheaty flavor and that's Arnold Whole Grains 100% whole wheat bread at four dollars and 49 cents [Applause] [Music] in the late 19th century Martin Keyes spotted workers at a New York veneer plant eating their lunches off of thin pieces of maple well by 1904 he had invented a machine that pressed wood pulp into a plate form and the paper plate was born so Adams gonna tell us exactly why I'm wearing this fetching outfit and talk a little bit about disposable plates you are gonna be so prepared when the storm rolls through the kitchen I can feel it in my bones there's a storm brewing we have all been there a subpar disposable plate is gonna put a big crimp in your picnic style that's why we did this testing we have eight different paper plates here they were all about 10 inches or as close to that size as and manufacturer offered the price range was 11 cents per plate at the low 254 cents per plate at the high and they were made of different materials including paper board with various grease and liquid resistant coatings post-consumer recycled paper polystyrene plastic polymer mineral blends and dried sugarcane pulp called bagasse bless you thank you okay now to test these disposable plates the testers loaded them up with two pounds of food there was fried chicken there was typing hot baked beans coleslaw and potato salad and then they went for a little walk around the Test Kitchen they had silverware so they were sort of poking and prodding at the food every now and then to simulate cutting and they were evaluating the plates based on their food containment their strength their durability and their resistance to liquid to Greece for the Greece resistance they actually took cold pizza with a reheated in a microwave on the paper plates to see how stained they got that's the dorm test that's the dorm test exactly now they measured the thickness of these paper plates it ranged from a low of about 0.3 3 millimeters to a high of 2.1 4 millimeters but you know some of the thicker plates were the polystyrene ones that are that plastic that can be either flexible or hard and those didn't do a great job either in cut resistance or the dorm test with reheating the pizzas so really what matters more than the thickness of the plate is the Tyrael of the plate so Bridget if you would pick up that plate on the end with all the food on it all right yeah no it's very sturdy a little bit of bending but really nothing to be alarmed about that one was the bagasse that's the dried sugarcane pulp it did very well now why don't you pick up that other one that is coated clipper board and I'm gonna step back yeah got a problem brewing no how are you doing today uh-huh whoops that one didn't do nearly let it fell that way you know about half of these had that kind of sagging problem food went tumbling down to the floor so in the end it was that dried sugarcane pulp the but gossip was the winning plate that's this guy right here the hefty super-strong paper plates it was $2.99 for a package of 16 that works out to about 19 cents Oh plates not the most expensive them yep nice wide area for your food strong sturdy cut resistant grease resistant it's the paper plate of choice well there you go if you don't want to pass out Poncho's to your guests at the next cookout well then pick up a pack of our winning plates it's the hefty super-strong paper plates the price is 299 for 16 plates you lucked out I didn't get messy [Music] for most of us making a ballpark pretzel at home means plying a box out of the freezer and those pre-made supermarket pretzels how they taste okay especially after midnight but they can't hold a candle to homemade so today christy is gonna show us just how easy they are to make from scratch well they're easy to make from scratch but that's because we took a very long path to figure out how to do it we wanted that chewy but still kind of soft interior we needed a complex but kind of sweet flavor and we also want to make sure we got that deep mahogany crispy exterior yes we ate a lot of pretzels developing though it wasn't all bad but if we couldn't hit all of those boxes then it really wasn't worth the trouble it takes to make them so I have one and a half cups of warm water this is 110 degrees okay I'll add that to my mixer I also have two tablespoons of vegetable oil and two teaspoons of instant yeast now this was the first place we really had a chance to develop some flavor we're using two tablespoons of packed dark brown sugar and we found the dark brown sugar really gave us that kind of malty flavor that ballpark pretzels haven't been molasses II yes so we'll mix that in there and we're gonna let this foam up a little bit it's gonna take about three minutes you don't usually have to activate instant yeast this is gonna cut about 20 minutes off our rising done it now we can move on to our dry ingredients a lot of recipes used all-purpose flour but we ended up with pretzels that tasted a little bit more like dinner rolls and that's not what we wanted we wanted that nice chew and we wanted more structure and we got that by using bread flour so I have three or three quarter cups and I'm going to add four teaspoons of kosher salt to that and we'll just give that a little whisk to get it all distributed okay so it's been three minutes look at that nice and foamy that's some yeast it's hungry for this flour that's so I'm gonna add this whole mixture to the stand mixer and my dough hook attachment now we're gonna let this go on the lowest speed for five minutes and what we're looking for is to see the whole mixture comes together and pull away from the sides of the bowl my dough has been going for about five minutes looks really nice and mixed so I'm gonna put a little flour down on my board and we'll scoop this out so I'm just gonna knead this for about a minute well that's looking good it's so nice it looks like an easy to work dough it really is very pretty so I think we're good to go all right so I've sprayed this bowl with some vegetable oil spray cuz we don't want it to stick and now I'm gonna cover it with some plastic wrap because if it starts to dry out it'll inhibit the rise mm-hmm and we're gonna let this rise at room temperature for about an hour okay we want to watch for it to double in size it's been an hour look at that dough it's definitely doubled in size hmm we're just gonna gently push this down to D gas it and now I'm gonna turn it out onto the board and I'm just going to divide this so we can shape our pretzels so I'm going to cut it into quarters first and I'll take each of these quarters and divide it into thirds that's six for me and six for you now don't throw away that piece of plastic wrap because we're gonna want to keep all of the pieces that were not working on covered and moist or they won't stick to themselves we go to shape them why don't you take one all right and I'll take one we didn't want to add any more flour to it so we just sprayed these with a little bit of vegetable oil spray part and I'm going to roll it out into a rope just starting at the center and letting it stretch out to the sides we went over all these into 22 interrupts so now I'm going to take this and shape it into a you with an open ends away from me and I want the curve of my you to be about two inches across now I'm gonna take the ends and I'll crisscross them right at the middle okay so crisscross or Chris for the cry Kristen then across and then we'll take the ends and bring them down to the bottom and press them base and they should be about an inch apart little tails okay little tails are fine sometimes it takes a little reshaping once you do that yep but then oh you know it does come around oh yeah it's a pretzel it is a pretzel transfer this to your flower lined baking sheet alright keep going until we've formed all twelve of them cover them with plastic wrap and then we'll let them sit here at room temperature for about 20 minutes to proof and rise again okay in just 20 minutes these guys really puffed up all those little inconsistencies all those wrinkles they disappeared you don't see it at all now we have to go for the outside yeah that mahogany exterior I have four cups of water I have a quarter cup of baking soda so I'll mix this in well so what it bubbles right out it does it's like a high school science experiment and now we'll dip these in they're not gonna be submerged all the way because we're gonna flip them and we only want them in there for about 30 seconds total that's not long at all no so pretty much by the time you've dropped your fourth one you're gonna be just about ready to flip them so I'm using my two spatulas another 15 seconds on this side and I think we're about ready to fish them out now notice I'm putting these on a wire rack and that was really important because while the baking soda helps us get that really mahogany dark sheen it also made sure that the pretzels completely stuck yeah baking shake some sticky like concrete if we just let them drain for about five minutes we had much better luck with him in the oven ah so we've been letting these dry for about five minutes now these are the same sheet pans I was using earlier I wiped the flour out and added some oil so I have half a TSP of pretzel salt Oh now if you don't have pretzel salt on hand you could substitute kosher salt which we used in the dough right same amount will work fine it's worth it to get some pretzel salt though oh it's just a nice crunch now I'm gonna transfer the pretzels I have a teaspoon of pretzel salt left and I'm just gonna sprinkle these over the tops and they're still pretty tacky so the salt will stick so now it's time to bake them the ovens are ready to go for 25 upper middle and lower middle racks we're gonna bake these for about 15 to 20 minutes we're looking for that deep mahogany color and I'm gonna make sure to go in and switch and rotate you know the drill I know the damn halfway through baking alright okay so this is what twenty minutes gets yeah those are impressive but like any baked good we've got to wait and let these cool little yeah and you want to get them off the hot pans because of course anything that's been in the oven will continue to cook how long do it to wait for just ten minutes oh that's not mommy can handle it I can handle it alright so they're cool they are cool I'm waiting for the green light from you I give you permission oh you can pull it apart you can tell it's got some good chew it's giving me a little resistance mmm it's great I feel Isha's it has real flavor I feel like the ones you get at the markets they don't taste like anything but these actually you can taste a little bit of the brown sugar even after you've dipped it in mustard hmm I just love to chew yeah I'm gonna have much higher expectations when I go to a baseball game now totally to make the ultimate ballpark pretzels jump start the process by blooming the yeast in a warm water sugar mixture for the dough used bread flour and knead it in a stand mixer with a hook until it's smooth and cohesive then let it rise after dividing and shaping the pretzels treat them to a hot baking soda bath to give them that iconic glassy brown surface before heading into the oven don't forget to sprinkle with pretzel salt from Cook's Country a homerun recipe for ballpark pretzels you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes on our website cookscountry.com thanks for watching cooks country from America's Test Kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say I now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later alligator [Laughter]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 118,959

Rating: 4.929862 out of 5

Keywords: baseball, ballpark, sausage and peppers, grilled sausage and peppers, sausage and peppers recipe, homemade pretzels, pretzel recipe, soft pretzel recipe, how to make pretzels, cooks country, cook's country, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen, cooking, cooking videos

Id: UtBTDxX5jj8

Length: 23min 4sec (1384 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019