Welsh Rarebit Sauce with Soft Pretzels

It was SO hard to take this photo before digging in.

Snow days definitely bring out the "ish" in "healthy-ish." But they taste so good.

I got hooked on rarebit sauce during college. We used to get it at this Welsh pub where they served it with homemade potato chips. Heaven. Since I had a baking bug today, soft pretzels seemed like a good accompaniment. I turned to Alton brown for both recipes: pretzels and rarebit sauce.

The pretzels are outstanding. They're done the REAL way: boiled, then baked. It brought me back to my bagel-shop-managing days. It's a process, but it wasn't difficult and it really didn't take as much time as I thought it would. It's worth it if you can spare a couple of hours. Alton Brown's instructions are great and I followed them exactly, so I won't regurgitate them here. In confidence that his recipe will never disappear from the internet, I say read Alton Brown's original recipe if you want to make the pretzels.

Boiled, egged, and salted. Some closer to pretzel shapes than others.

Baked!

*See second Husband Quote, below.

The rarebit sauce is also directly from the original recipe, but that one is simple enough that I'll list it here for future reference.

My favorite use for beer.

The Recipe:

2 tb butter

2 tb flour

1 tsp mustard

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 c dark beer

3/4 c heavy cream

6 oz sharp cheddar, shredded

2 drops hot sauce

In pan over low heat, melt butter and whisk in flour. Cook, whisking constantly, 2 minutes.
Whisk in mustard, worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and beer.
Whisk in cream.
Add cheese and mix until melted.
Mix in hot sauce.

The Verdict:

Overall grade: A-

Overall reason: Absolutely delicious, and absolutely devoid of nutritional merit.

Time to prepare: Rarebit sauce - 15 minutes. Pretzels - 2 hours.

Husband quote: "You must really love me." *Also, "I want the poop-shaped one!"

Comments

Kitchen renovation!

BEFORE: AFTER: Still to come: a beautiful new induction range and some wood shelving on the left side, above the backsplash. And maybe the shelving unit on the wall facing the cabinets should be green, but we're going to live with a while before making that decision.

Adzuki Beans with Black Rice

I hope I don't turn any readers away by featuring cilantro in my first photo. My current food obsession is black rice. I was first introduced to it at Sushi Pure . It's purple when cooked, and I was completely smitten when purple sushi arrived at our table. I mean, purple sushi! It was like my birthday or something. Actually, it might have been my birthday, because I pretty much always have sushi on my birthday, but anyway. It's kind of sweet and has this great chewy texture. When I learned how healthy it is , my crush evolved to full-out love. Sushi Pure's Spicy Tuna Roll (photo from FoodSpotting.com) In my ongoing research for ingredients that are low in calories but high in nutrition, adzuki (also spelled azuki) beans came up. I learned that these are the sweet red beans used in Japanese desserts, including red bean ice cream, which I've been obsessed with since I was a kid. But since turning them into ice cream probably negates the health benef

Cambodian Lemongrass Stir-Fry

I recommend going heavy on the peanuts I recently finally branched out and tried something new at Angkor Cambodian Restaurant , and now I'll never branch out ever again because my new favorite dish is too good. They call it Cha Krung, though I've seen a lot of other spellings in my attempt to find recipes. It's a lemongrass stir-fry and they do it with green beans, carrot, onion, and jalapeno, with peanuts on top. The peanuts are amazing in this, but I also really love the way they stir-fry the jalapeno as a vegetable, by removing the seeds and veins and slicing it thin. In my version above I used what I had, which was broccoli, eggplant from the garden, thai chilies instead of the jalapeno (but I'm going to grow jalapenos next year for this purpose), and fresh basil since I found a lot of recipes calling for it. And tofu, though it sounds like chicken is most traditional. I was a bit discouraged when researching recipes because I would need to acquire fresh lemongra

Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

Search This Blog