Stuffed with melted, gooey Gouda and spicy chorizo, these soft, pillowy pretzel bombs are topped with melted butter and a sprinkling of salt to make the most irresistible party snack. Serve these pretzel bombs on their own or with a side of bourbon honey-mustard sauce. Either way, these Gouda and chorizo pretzel bombs will be your new party favorite.

Sprinkling salt onto a tray of Gouda and chorizo pretzel bombs.

If you've never made your own pretzel dough, creating stuffed pretzel bombs may sound intimidating, but I'm here to tell you this recipe is easier than you'd think. Unlike some finicky breads, pretzel dough is forgiving and easy to handle. With a little mixing and kneading, you can make your very own pretzel dough from just a handful of ingredients.

That said, this recipe does take some time to prepare. Our pretzel dough needs time to rise, and we fill each individual pretzel bomb with shredded Gouda and diced chorizo. So put on some Netflix, pour yourself a beer, and take the time to enjoy the process. Isn't that the fun in cooking anyway?

Besides, when you hear your guests gush over these savory bites and revere you as the world's ultimate kitchen master, you'll be glad you took the time to craft each little cheesy pretzel bomb. Worth it.

A tray of Gouda and chorizo pretzel bombs with bourbon in the background.

Ingredients

Let's get organized and chat ingredients. Here's everything we need to make these stuffed pretzel bombs.

Gouda
Dried chorizo
Beer
Water
Sugar
Salt
Active dry yeast
Flour
Melted butter
Oil
Baking soda

For the beer, I recommend using something with a malt-forward profile. The malt gives the beer a sweet, bread-like flavor that's perfect for the pretzel dough. An amber ale is a good call here.

However, if you don't want to use beer, you can simply substitute additional water.

How to Make Pretzel Dough

For these Gouda and chorizo pretzel bombs, I used my soft beer pretzel dough recipe, which gives us the most delicious pretzels. To start, we warm together some beer and water, sprinkle yeast on top and let the mixture sit until it foams. Once it's foamy, we add it to a mixing bowl with a touch of sugar and salt.

Now we add our flour and melted butter to the mixing bowl and kneed until the dough is smooth and elastic. We cover it up and let the dough double in size for about an hour. And just like that, our pretzel dough is ready to become pretzel bombs. Easy, huh?

How to Stuff Pretzel Bombs

To make our stuffed pretzel bombs, we divide our pretzel dough into 20 small balls. I recommend taking care of this step all at once rather than grabbing some dough, filling and then grabbing the next dough ball. Otherwise, you could get stuck with too many or too few pretzel bombs in relation to our filling.

Balls of pretzel dough on a tray to make Gouda and chorizo pretzel bombs.

We now flatten each dough ball into a disk and top with our Gouda and chorizo.

A piece of pretzel dough flattened with the Gouda and chorizo filling.

To seal, we fold the dough like a present and then roll in the palms of our hands to tightly seal the seams.

Folding the pretzel bomb like a present to seal.

Making the last fold on the pretzel bomb to seal.

From here, we drop our pretzel bombs into a mixture of boiling water and baking soda, which is why it's so important we have a nice seal. However, we don't want to skip this step because it gives the pretzel bomb that brown crust.

After a quick boil, we're ready to bake our pretzel bites, brush them with butter for good measure and sprinkle with pretzel or coarse kosher salt. Now we dunk our little Gouda and chorizo pretzel bombs into our boozy bourbon honey-mustard sauce and enjoy every cheesy bite.

Dunking a Gouda and chorizo pretzel bomb into the bourbon honey-mustard sauce on a marble tray.

Perfect Pairing

If you plan on washing these Gouda and chorizo pretzel bombs down with a beer, that amber ale you used to make the pretzel dough is also great here. The malt is a perfect counter to the spicy chorizo while also complementing the Gouda's nutty notes.

Feeling a glass of wine instead? Go for a shiraz. With a shiraz, you get a full body that stands up well to our bold Gouda, and it's always a lovely match with spicy chorizo.

If your next gathering could use soft, cheesy, snackable little bites, I hope you try these Gouda and chorizo pretzel bombs.

Cheers!

A Gouda and chorizo pretzel bomb torn in half to show off the cheesy filling.

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