PRETZEL SOUP
Serves 6
It’s game day. You make some pretzels, make a little bratwurst, add some cheddar cheese, shallots, and chives—what more could you want?
In our version, we bake pretzel sticks and turn them into a clarified soup. We pair the soup with a high-quality aged cheddar, the kind that has a complex flavor and those crunchy little flavor crystals scattered throughout the cheese. Then we make bratwurst—and it’s important to make your own here, to control the flavors—roast them, and dice them up. The soup garnish is a mixture of diced cheddar, fresh chives, freeze-dried shallots, and the bratwurst. The hot soup is poured into the bowl from a beer bottle and has a wonderful yeasty aroma. Everything melds in the bowl, making this a delicious comfort food, perfect for wintry days spent watching the game.
PRETZEL STICKS:
375 grams water, heated to 110°F
20 grams sugar
5 grams kosher salt
7 grams active dry yeast
576 grams all-purpose flour
Canola oil for greasing the bowl and sheet pans
20 grams (about 1 large) egg yolk
2 grams water
PRETZEL SOUP:
3000 grams water
Pretzel Sticks
5 grams salt
BRATWURST:
350 grams pork butt, fat trimmed and discarded
200 grams veal shoulder, fat trimmed and discarded
100 grams pork fatback
10 grams ground white pepper
3.5 grams kosher salt
5 grams dried marjoram
3 grams caraway seeds
3 grams ground allspice
2 grams grated nutmeg
1 gram ground ginger
3 feet natural sausage casing
TO FINISH:
60 grams 4-year aged cheddar, diced
18 grams freeze-dried shallots (see Sources, here)
6 grams chives, minced
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:
Centrifuge (optional)
Meat grinder
Sausage stuffer and casings
6 clean beer bottles
PRETZEL STICKS:
Combine the warm water, sugar, and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Let it sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam. Add the flour and use the dough hook attachment to mix on low speed until it is well combined and forms a rough dough. Increase the speed to medium and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, 4 to 5 minutes.
Rub a clean bowl with canola oil and put the dough in it, turning the dough so that it is lightly coated with the oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let it stand on the counter for about an hour, until it has doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Line four 18-by-13-inch sheet pans with parchment paper and brush lightly with canola oil. Pour enough water into a large roasting pan to come one-third of the way up the sides of the pan and bring to a boil over high heat. While the water heats, turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled work surface and divide into 28-gram portions; it will yield approximately 36 pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 14-inch log and place on the prepared sheet pans, ¼ inch apart. Cover the dough with a slightly damp towel to prevent it from drying out while you work. Gently place 6 to 8 pretzel sticks at a time into the boiling water for 30 seconds. Transfer the boiled pretzel sticks back to the sheet pan.
Whisk the egg yolk and water together and brush over the pretzel sticks. Sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake the pretzel sticks until golden brown in color and hard, 55 to 60 minutes. Allow them to cool completely at room temperature. Once cool, break the pretzel sticks into pieces and reserve for pretzel soup.
PRETZEL SOUP:
Put the water in a large stockpot, set over high heat, and bring to a boil. Drop the pretzel pieces into the boiling water and turn off the heat. Cover and steep the pretzels in the water for 1 hour.
Transfer the pretzel mixture to centrifuge cups, putting 500-gram batches in each cup. Run a cycle in a centrifuge for 30 minutes at 4500 rpm. Strain the clarified pretzel soup into a container. Repeat the process until all the pretzel soup is clarified. Transfer to a saucepot and keep warm until ready to serve. Alternatively, line a fine-mesh sieve with damp cheesecloth and ladle the pretzel soup into the strainer. Let it drip into a clean pot, and do not squeeze—let the liquid pass through on its own. Once the soup has been strained, keep warm until ready to serve.
BRATWURST:
Cut the pork butt, veal shoulder, and pork fatback into ½- to ¾-inch cubes and chill thoroughly. The meat can even be partially frozen to prevent the fat from smearing. Grind the meat into a chilled bowl in small batches using a meat grinder fitted with a „-inch plate. Once all of the meat has been ground, add the white pepper, dried marjoram, kosher salt, caraway seeds, allspice, nutmeg, and ginger. Mix thoroughly to combine. Refrigerate for at least an hour so the meat has time to chill and absorb the seasonings.
Slide a casing onto your sausage stuffer’s tube. Put the veal-pork mixture into the stuffer and run the motor (or press the mixture, if using a manual stuffer), pushing the mixture until it begins to emerge from the sausage stuffer. You want to start pushing the meat into the casing before tying off the end to make sure no air is trapped in the casing. Tie the casing into a knot and start extruding the meat into the casing, slipping more casing off as necessary. The casing should be tightly packed with the sausage mixture, but not so full that it bursts. Gently twist it into 4-inch lengths.
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Line a sheet pan with parchment paper and lay 200 grams of sausages on the pan. Reserve the rest for another use. Bake the sausages for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let them rest until they are cool enough to handle, about 15 minutes. Dice the Bratwurst into ¼-inch cubes and keep warm until ready to serve.
TO FINISH:
Put 20 grams of the diced Bratwurst, 10 grams of cheddar cheese, 3 grams of freeze-dried shallots, and 1 gram of chives in each soup bowl. Heat 1200 grams of Pretzel Soup in a medium saucepot over medium-low heat. Place a funnel on top of a clean, empty beer bottle. Pour 200 grams of warm Pretzel Soup in the bottle and cap it. Repeat with 5 more bottles. Serve the bowls and then use a bottle opener to pop open the hot soup and carefully pour into the bowls at the table.
