Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen, and guess what? I'm gonna take y'all out to the ballpark today

You know, here in Savannah, our local baseball team, the Sand Nats, have asked me to throw out the first pitch, if you can believe that

Now, I'm not sure I can even make it past home plate, but one thing's a safe bet

All of today's recipes are gonna hit a home run. So after the seventh inning stretch, I'm gonna head back to the kitchen and whip up some of my all-time favorite baseball recipes

First up, you'll never strike out serving up these starters. It's my macho nachos that are loaded up with chili and cheese

and a beer-battered Cajun blooming onion. That's a sure winner. And then you're going to be safe serving up some softball pretzels

They're salty and delicious. And no baseball game would be complete without a good old-fashioned hot dog

that will have all your players walking home for them. So batter up, y'all, and grab your oven mitts

It's time to play ball. Guess where I been, y'all

I just threw out the first pitch of Savannah Sand Nats game

What y'all been doing? And I brought some footage to show y'all I got it over the home plate

It actually made it to the catcher. I was so proud. So, I got some home movies I want to show y'all

and I'm gonna be chopping and prepping to make some macho nachos for y'all

And in the meantime, while I'm chopping, y'all watch the video. What is that? What is that thing right there

I think that I'm gonna choose the finger. Let's go check out the food

Y'all want to? All right, Bill, what you cooking? Holy sausage, bratwurst

Those look delicious. I just had a bite of somebody's burger. If it was a good burger, it had to come from me

Who do you think's going in? Yo, awesome! Here we go

Thank you. Good luck. Safe

Okay. So how'd y'all like the home movies? I had a fabulous time

And I told y'all we're having macho nachos. All right, so I got some spring onions chopped

I've got tomatoes. I got jalapenos. I got two different kinds of cheeses

I got diced onions. I got chili. And I got refried beans

So we're gonna start putting these together. And I don't know about y'all

but when you go to a Mexican restaurant and get Mexican food, They like pile all the chips up and just put the goodie on the top

Well, we're not going to do it that way. We are going to make sure we got bunches of goodie all the way through it

I'm just going to kind of dollop the refried beans around. I love these

And now these are just canned refried beans. I mean, you could go to the trouble of cooking pinto beans, but these are so delicious

Alright, now I'm going to sprinkle it with a little onions and a little Monterey Jack

This way we're going to have some goody on every chip. Alright, now let's see, I'm going to throw a couple of jalapenos and y'all can see I'm

leaving the seeds. I've cut these into rings. And speaking of rings, I've done it again y'all, I'm sorry

I bet people are saying she's just doing that on purpose so she can show her rings

And I'm really not. I just forget. I worked hard to get that ring, y'all

Waited a long, long time. Now y'all notice that I've got all these things warmed because we want them to be hot when

we put them on our chips because we're going to stick this in the oven but only long enough

for our cheese to melt. And you can put this as heavy or as light as you want them In fact you wouldn even have to use chili on this if you didn want to You could just actually scramble you up some ground beef you know and just sprinkle big old chunks

Now we're going to put a little cheddar cheese. I think I hear my stomach growling

All right, now here we're going to go with another layer. You could actually put some salsa on this

just whatever your family likes. I can't tell y'all how exciting it was

to throw out the first pitch. My family's always been real big baseball fans. In fact

my brother Bubba, when he was 19 years old, went to Atlanta, Georgia and tried out for

the Atlanta Braves. Bubba could hit that ball out of the park every time. In fact, when

he was growing up, he was the home run king. He was one heck of a pitcher and a hitter

So here we go, back to the nachos. I'm gonna continue to layer this till everything is gone

And y'all wanna make sure that your dish is ovenproof. So we're gonna put this in the oven for a few minutes

I've got my oven preheated to 350 degrees. Now I'm fixing to show y'all how to make a onion bloom at home

It's a very simple batter. I'm gonna use equal parts all-purpose flour to beer

And you want to be careful while you're measuring your beer, because you don't want to measure the foam

And I'm going to tilt it so I don't get a big head on it

And I'm going to actually do a little under two cups, because you'll want your batter more on the thicker side than the thinner side

So I'm going to make this, and we're going to let it sit for about three or four hours

so that the yeast from that beer can activate with that flour

So all we're gonna do is just dump that in there. And I think I'm just gonna put some plain old Cajun seasoning

All right, we're gonna let this batter sit. And let's talk about our onions

You wanna make sure that you do not disturb the root end of your onion

because this root is what's gonna hold all of our petals together

All right, now I'm going to even off this top just like that

and I'm going to pull all this skin off. This is a very, very important step

We're not going to bring our knife up next to that root, because it would actually make our onion collapse too, too wide

So I'm going to drop that down, and then I'm going to go all the way in

I want to make sure the blade of that knife goes through the center of that onion

And then we're going to do the same thing there. I love using our big Vidalia onions

But our Texas sweet onion is real good. But you want to make sure that he's nice and round

And we're just going to take our onion and go around until the whole onion is cut

All right, now look. I'm going to turn this onion upside down. And I'm just going to kind of wiggle him

So when we come back, we're going to fry off this bad boy. and we're going to taste those delicious macho nachos

so y'all don't go anywhere. I smell those wonderful nachos in the oven

so I think they're telling me they're ready to come out. So let's see what we've got

Oh, my goodness, we've got a plate full of nachos. They smell so good

I think I'm just going to put just a little dollop of sour cream

or maybe four little dollops, and I'm going to sprinkle them with some tomatoes

and some green onion tops. and just for Michael, jalapenos. But let's see what we've got here now

Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. So good and so messy and so spicy

Mm, I love that spicy. Well, I'm gonna sit those right over here

All right, that takes care of our macho nachos. And next, I wanna show y'all how I make those blooming onions

And this is my batter that I've had sitting up for about three hours

I'm going to give it a little stir and see if I like the consistency of it

I've got a little flour right here, and I think I'm going to just dust it

If your batter is too thin, it'll come off, and your batter will be all in your grease and not on your onion

We've got our Dutch oven filled with peanut oil. So I'm gonna take our onion, and I'm gonna lay it down in our batter

and I just gonna spoon that batter all in there because I want it on every petal And we want to make sure that our temperature is where it should be because if we put it in too cold to grease

our onion's just going to go soggy on us. So I'm going to check this with a thermometer, and we're at 350

So here we go. I'm going to pick him up by his side

But you just want to be careful, because when I put this onion in, I run the risk of this boiling over

So you want to be real careful and not fill it too full. Now I've got to let him stay down in there

because I want that batter to kind of adhere before I disturb him

But you can see how he's totally submerged in grease, and that's what you need to make a successful blooming onion

All right, let's see. I'm going to ease him up. Now I'm going to let him drain over the pot for a minute

to get that grease out of him. And I'm gonna let it drain there just for a second

And I'm gonna put him on our platter. Now, I have chosen ranch dressing as a dipping sauce

Ooh, this onion looks T-totally perfect. And have y'all ever noticed how Gertie shows up

just as I'm ready to taste? I don't know if y'all like onions, though, girl

Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. The onion was a huge success. So I want to move on to the pretzels

All right, we're going to start with a packet of yeast, and we've got a cup of warm water

And the water temperature should be 98 degrees. I'm going to come over here, and I'm going to take our flour

and I'm going to sift it into this bowl. Now, I'm getting this pot of water ready to boil

because this is what we're going to cook our pretzels in. And I'm going to add some bacon soda

And they say it brings out the flavor. Now, to our dissolved yeast

I'm going to add two tablespoons of softened butter. You didn't think we was going to make a pretzel without butter, did you

And I'm going to add a little salt. And I'm going to add half of our flour to this

Now I'm gonna sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of sugar over that

And we're gonna proceed to mix this for three minutes. I love the smell of yeast

It kinda reminds me of those fabulously divine yeast rolls that the school made when I was

in grammar school and high school. I just loved them. Okay, I'm gonna come in here now and add the rest of our flour

I'm gonna mix that up real good. Okay, so here we go

Alright, just put a little flour in that pretty, pretty dough

See what a pretty dough that batter made. It's just beautiful. And now we're gonna just put our dough here

and we're just gonna cover this, and I'm gonna set it aside in a warm place

Now, you can cover it with saran wrap, but I just like the idea of that damp rag

until it doubles in size. And I think right back here is a good spot

And when we come back, I'm gonna show you how to shape and cook these pretzels

and show you some more home movies. Go Sand Nights! Okay, our dough should have doubled in size by now

and yes it has. Punch it down. See all the air coming out of it

and that's gonna redistribute the yeast back through our pretzels. All right

Let our dough fall out onto our floured surface. All right, we're gonna knead this some more

So now this batch of dough that we have is gonna make a dozen pretzels

so I'm gonna cut it in half. Okay. Roll it around in the flour, and we're going to roll this piece of dough out to about 18 inches

That looks like 18 inches. So all we're going to do is pick up each end, crisscross it, and crisscross it again

and we've got our pretzel. We're going to put him right over there because we are going to let these rise one more time

on our tray before we throw them into our boiling water. So we going to pick it up twist it and twist it and bring it down And we got our pretzel Now we going to stick these over to the side in a warm place

and we're going to let them re-rise. But in the meantime, I've got another batch over here ready

And I'm going to take our spatula and I'm going to give it a spray

And we've got our water here boiling. And you can see how that slipped right off

And I'm going to boil these for about one minute. Their process is much like cooking a bagel

in the fact that they go in water before they go into the oven

All right, we're going to take our last three out and cut off that hot stove

I about worked up a sweat here like I did at the ballpark

Ooh, that was the hottest ballpark. So now I'm going to take my butter

and I'm going to butter these up real, real good because I'm going to sprinkle them with a lot of kosher salt

The salt is what gives it its punch or the sesame seed

or whatever you're using. Plus, it can't hurt the taste of them. Surely not

All right, now I'm going to take my kosher salt. And I think in your frozen food section, where you can buy the frozen pretzels

I think they may have actually a pretzel salt in them. But this kosher salt works just as good as far as I'm concerned

So we're going to run these in a 500-degree preheated oven for about 10 to 12 minutes

and then we're going to have a nice, fat, hot homemade pretzel

All right, my first batch is ready over here. It should be ready, and it is

Now, I don't know about y'all, but I love my pretzels with mustard

So I'm going to check it out. It's still kind of warm

This is so good. It's real savory. But y'all come right back

because I want to show you how to turn a pretzel not into a savory, but a sweet one

And I'm going to show you how to dress that hot dog where he's going to be so pretty

So let's share some tips on great baseball food. Now if you don't want to make those homemade

pretzels, it's alright. They've got them in the frozen food department. In fact, these are frozen

pretzels and you can dress them up. I think I'm gonna brush this one with butter. That makes it

good already. And I think I'm gonna sprinkle it with a little kosher salt and then I'm gonna

sprinkle it with sesame seeds. Ooh, that one's gonna be so good. I think for this one, let's put a little

cinnamon sugar on it. I love a sweet pretzel once in a while. Oh, yeah. Mm. I'm gonna drizzle him some

chocolate. Now let's talk hot dogs. Everybody eats hot dogs. The best ways to eat a hot dog

is to take your raw dogs and spiral bacon around them. And I love grilled onions. So I'm going to

put a little bit of that. Michael loves the jalapeno and I love cheese on my hot dog

And I love coleslaw. Just a little slaw. Oh, gosh, this looks like a Dagwood hot dog

Mmm. Mmm, mmm, mmm. It takes it from ordinary to extraordinary. I just love ballpark food

the macho nachos and the blooming onion and this array of pretzels are so good whether you're

sitting at the stands at the ball game or whether you're sitting on your sofa in front of the tv

so i hope that you'll try some of these and like them and i also hope that y'all will get out and

support your local teams in fact if you're ever in savannah we would love to have you come to one

of the Sand Nats games. Because did I forget to tell you girls

these guys are so cute. So until next time America, I send y'all love

and best dishes from my home plate to yours