hello this is chef john from food wishes calm with knishes that's right i got a
food wish for a knish which was actually submitted a long time ago but if you've
read the fine print on our Terms of Service food wishes have no expiration
date and I'm finally getting around to showing you one of my all-time favorite
snacks which I used to enjoy with my father
every time we go to Coney Island so not only am i taking care of a viewers
request I'm also attempting to recapture my
youth which is kind of nice and to get started we're gonna make a very very
simple dough that we'll begin by adding some salt and baking powder to some
all-purpose flour and then we'll take a whisk and give that a thorough mix and
once that's been accomplished we will make a well in the center and proceed to
add our wet ingredients which will include one large beaten egg a little
touch of vinegar or lemon juice a whole bunch of vegetable oil and then last but
not least some warm water all right basically the same temperature we'd use
for a yeast dough even though this recipe does not include yeast and then
what we'll do is get right in there with our hand and we'll mix this until it
comes together into a very very soft ball of dough and even though this dough
is very wet and soft because it has so much oil in it it's really not that
sticky so I find this to be an extremely enjoyable dough to work with and then
what we'll do once that's all pulled together is transferred onto a floured
surface and we will need that for about three or four minutes until we have a
very smooth very soft fairly elastic dough oh by the way this dough recipe
will make sixteen knishes although for the video I'm only gonna make eight
today and if you were to do the same you can freeze the dough for future use but
anyway like I said we'll go ahead knead the dough until we have something as
smooth soft and elastic at which point we're gonna wrap that in plastic and
we'll go ahead and let that rest in the fridge for an hour or two while we move
on to make our filling which in the classic version at least is made up
mostly of potatoes so I went ahead and peeled and quartered three russets that
we're gonna boil in salted water until just tender as tested with a knife oh by
the way you see that little brown spot where I made
one of the eyes for your information that is not toxic or poisonous which
some people believe but it's not so relaxed and then what we'll do what's
our potatoes are cooked is drain those very well and we'll transfer those into
a mixing bowl and proceeded to mash them or I guess rice them if you have a ricer
which I think we've already established I don't but anyway we'll go ahead and
smash those up and those are not ready to finish with what traditionally would
be a lot of onions fried in chicken fat although we're going to be doing a
little bit of a twist on that today so we'll go ahead and set those aside and
move on to the aforementioned twist which is going to be to chop up some
leftover corned beef and cabbage so yes we're doing a very special post st.
Patrick's Day leftover edition and we'll chop up a few would are hopefully fairly
fatty pieces of corned beef as well as a little bit of that leftover braised
cabbage and if you do plan on adding extra meats and vegetables to your
potato onion mixture I think we want to make sure we chop it up pretty fine and
you'll see why when we actually form our knishes so we'll go ahead and chop that
stuff up fairly fine in which point we'll head to the stove
where we're gonna add one diced onion to a whole bunch of melted butter set over
medium heat along with of course a nice big pinch of salt and we will also add
in our corned beef and cabbage and then we would usually just saute this until
the onions turn translucent but not this time all right we're gonna cook this for
about ten minutes or so until several things happen okay our
onions are gonna soften and sweet and in turn of golden brown as well as our
little pieces of cabbage are gonna caramelize which is one of the most
underrated delicious flavors ever and it may be most importantly that fat is
going to render out of our corned beef and add a beautiful richness to this
mixture all right as I mentioned Trucial a this would have a ton of chicken fat
in it also known as schmaltz which is amazing but I didn't have any around so
to make up for that we're going to use butter infused with corn beef fat which
ended up working very nicely so we're gonna take our time here and we're going
to cook our mixture until it looks a little something like this in which
point we'll go ahead and transfer that into our mashed potatoes and we'll
season that up very simply with some kosher salt
some freshly ground black pepper and a little touch of cayenne and we'll take
our spatula and mix all that together and believe it or not that's it we will
simply give that a taste for seasoning and assuming it has enough salt and or
whatever else your flavouring this with we'll just let that cool down to room
temp before moving on to final production which means pulling out our
now well-rested dough and we'll place that on a nice floured surface and we'll
just a little more flour over the top and then we'll go ahead and press this
out with our hands into a rectangular shape oh and just a quick reminder that
we're only using half the dough we made but anyway we'll go ahead and press that
out and then we'll switch to a rolling pin and we will roll that out into a
nice big rectangle about an eighth of an inch thick and as usual just getting it
close with the rolling pin and then we could do a little fine-tuning by
stretching and pulling the corners and then once that's been accomplished we
can go ahead and place down about three cups or so of our filling which by now
should be fully cooled down to room temp and we'll place that down on the dough
as shown about three inches from the edge and this is probably a good time to
remind you you can literally put anything you want in these ok broccoli
mushrooms other kind of meats but anyway we'll go ahead and place on our filling
as evenly as possible and then once that set before we roll this up we'll go
ahead and paint on some egg wash along the opposite edge and in case you're new
around here an egg wash is simply one egg that's beaten with a couple
teaspoons of water and then once that's been applied we will go ahead and
stretch our dough over the top and it's okay if we stretch this really thin in
fact it's probably better and then once our fillings being covered we'll go
ahead and roll that over and we will continue rolling until we have just a
couple inches of dough left and as we're doing this we'll want to try to keep
this as uniform as possible and by the way when you get near the end if you
happen to tear or rip your dough like I just did don't worry about it as you'll
see once these are formed and baked they're gonna look amazing and you'll
never know the difference but anyway like I said we'll go ahead
and roll that until we have just a couple inches of dough left at which
point we'll go ahead and grab that and stretch it over the top and then once
that's happened we'll kind of roll this over so the seams on the bottom and
we'll also want to make sure we give both ends a nice pressing so our filling
is trapped and that's it at this point we can do a
little fine-tuning by giving it a little roll like this to make sure that tube is
as uniform as possible and then you're probably going to have a couple extra
inches of dough on the ends which we will trim off as we see fit and then
what we'll do is take our bench scraper or the back of a knife and we will
divide this into eight equal pieces but do not cut through we are just making
marks for equal portions and maybe possibly trim in a little more dough off
the end and then once we have our dough marked we can move on to the most fun
part of this production and that would be cutting these up with the side of our
hand alright so make sure the side of your hand is floured and then we're
gonna cut these by pressing our hand straight down through it's sort of
rubbing it back and forth until we hit the table although generally I like to
press first and then finish separating these with the final rubbing cuts and
while there are so many ways you can cut and shape these this is definitely my
favorite and there's something about the way that dough is smeared when we make
these cuts which i think helps give them such a unique appearance once they're
baked and then once those are portion here's how we're gonna shape them we're
simply gonna flip it up on its end so that one cut ends on the bottom with the
other one facing up and then we'll simply shape these by squishing them
down sort of tucking everything into the center as we press this down into a puck
shape and I know it looks a little odd and possibly provocative but as you'll
see these are gonna bake up beautifully okay so let's try that one more time
okay once separated we will tip that up so one cuts on the bottom and the other
cuts on the top and then we sort of flatten impress while we're tucking
everything into the center oh by the way if you notice that bubble that is not a
problem all right a few bubbles here and there are actually a good sign and
that's it once we finish our knishes we'll go ahead and transfer those onto a
lined baking sheet but before we do we're gonna brush the bottoms with oil
and very generously and that's going to help us achieve a nice beautifully Brown
bottom and then what we're gonna do once those have been panned up as shown is
finished by brushing these all over with some egg wash which is optional a lot of
people don't use anything or if you want you can actually brush these with oil
which is going to give you a little bit of a different possibly crisper texture
so you decide I mean you are after all the
Commissioner of your knishes conditioner take that MF DOOM but anyway the point
is use what you want or nothing but I do like the texture and color the egg wash
gives it and that's it once those have been brushed those are ready to transfer
into the center of a 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes or so or until lightly
golden brown and looking something like this check it out I think the owners
Chimel would be proud and thanks to that oh we brushed on the bottom should be
nicely browned and then if you want you can eat these hot but I don't recommend
it I think they are significantly more delicious just barely warm or room
temperature so you do what you want but I let mine cool down all the way before
plating up and I went in for a bite and that my friends is some extreme a carbon
car back ssin as in extremely delicious and extremely comforting and extremely
filling all right long before energy bars came around this is the kind of
thing people snacked on to keep him going through a long hard day at work
and as much as I love the classic potato onion chicken fat version for my
childhood this slightly less fattier version with the corned beef and cabbage
was amazing and since they are so delicious at room temp they are perfect
for things like picnics and cookouts or just something to put in your lunch bag
to bring to work to tease your coworkers especially the ones due in quito you are
definitely gonna want to eat this in front of them but no matter where you
plan to eat this or what you plan to put in it I really do hope you give these
delicious knishes a try soon so head over to food wishes comm for all the
ingredient amounts of Martha as usual and as always enjoy
you