How to ruin a hot dog!!

SandwichShortOfAPicnic

SandwichShortOfAPicnic

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I have mixed feelings about Jay Rayner. He knows his onions and he can cook well himself but I'm simply not a fan of critics who stand on the sidelines waiting to pass judgment on others creative endeavours whilst never putting themselves out there.

However this damning write up of the hot dogs at Harrods made me want to cry for good hot dogs.
His description of what a hot dog should be is very good.
I think perhaps he should run the hot dog place at harrods?!

What makes a hot dog perfect to you?

Hot Dogs by Three Darlings, London: ‘Things that no one needs’ – restaurant review
 
He is a first rate writer and as you say his description of what a hot dog should be is excellent. So often, attempts to 'posh up' basic favourites are ruined in the process. For example I've lost count of menus featuring fush, chips and 'posh' mushy peas. Posh mushy peas means they are not mushy peas at all (which have a unique flavour) but are instead fresh (frozen) peas pureed in a blender. Yuck.

I can't better his description of the perfect hot dog so I won't try.
 
Morning Glory said:
He is a first rate writer and as you say his description of what a hot dog should be is excellent. So often, attempts to 'posh up' basic favourites are ruined in the process. For example I've lost count of menus featuring fush, chips and 'posh' mushy peas. Posh mushy peas means they are not mushy peas at all (which have a unique flavour) but are instead fresh (frozen) peas pureed in a blender. Yuck.

I can't better his description of the perfect hot dog so I won't try.
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Agree completely.
You can do things in the way you cook or the quality of the ingredients you use to elevate standard fare but move too far away from the original and you've ruined it.

It removes the familiarity that brings the joy doesn't it.
You're busy looking forward to a particular taste and someone's decided you're not having mushy peas!
 
They remind me of the scrumptious hot dogs in Wellingborough from a trailer business called the Swedish Kitchen - they're massive compared to a normal hotdog and full of flavour, they're so big the last time we had one at work for lunch I split it in half with a colleague and was still full afterwards :)
 
I haven’t read that yet, but I will in a bit, but I have three levels of hot dog perfection:

1. Hot dog and mustard. That’s it. Nothing else. Doesn’t need anything else.

2a. Hot dog and mustard with kraut. That’s a mid-level hot dog.

2b. Hot dog with chili sauce/coney sauce, with mustard and raw onion, may include shredded cheese, depending on the sauce. That’s a mid-level hot dog as well.

3. Chicago-style hot dog with everything (“dragged through the garden”). It’s a masterpiece, everything working together to become more than its ingredients.

I do have a couple of one-off dogs I like - the baseball park here sells a dog topped with baked beans and Fritos that’s really good, but I leave it for there. I wouldn’t try and duplicate at home.
 
Genuine hot dogs are exactly how Jay Rayner describes them. They' re street food, like tacos, empanadas, samosas, pakoras. a sausage, a roll, sauce, mustard, onions - that's it, basically.Elevating them into something " gourmet" is like trying to turn Katie Price into the Princess Royal. Plus, at 19 - 22 quid a shot, I think Harrod's is pulling someone's chain; or waiting for another gullible idiot to cough up!
Here's a photo from a few years back (at the Cincinnati Reds stadium) of me devouring a Cinci ball park hotdog. Another thing off my bucket list! This particular one had onions and grilled bell peppers, I seem to recall.
1728221335408.png
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
I have mixed feelings about Jay Rayner. He knows his onions and he can cook well himself but I'm simply not a fan of critics who stand on the sidelines waiting to pass judgment on others creative endeavours whilst never putting themselves out there.

However this damning write up of the hot dogs at Harrods made me want to cry for good hot dogs.
His description of what a hot dog should be is very good.
I think perhaps he should run the hot dog place at harrods?!

What makes a hot dog perfect to you?

Hot Dogs by Three Darlings, London: ‘Things that no one needs’ – restaurant review
Click to expand...

All I can say is don't knock it until you've tried it. We saw

Recipe - Unicorn dog

On a travel/food show. Won't go into the story as it's in the thread, but it was a darn good dog!
 
I read the article - more power to ‘em…but I don’t want those dogs.

I remember branching out in Vancouver and buying a hot dog from a food truck, but all the variations (and there were many), had something to do with Japanese cuisine, and the dog I got had daikon and some kind of nasty-ass brown sauce on it - you know how I say I don’t like to chance tasting something bad? Blame it on that hot dog, because it was foul, and so much so that I couldn’t toss it and order something else - it threw me off for the rest of the day and I couldn’t eat anything.
 
I always try different brands of hot dogs and I can never keep them straight. I know that I do NOT like the ones where the casing is super "snappy" because it's always impossible to chew through that in each bite. I love onions, lots of finely diced onions (spanish/yellow/Vidalia, NOT white onions), and some mustard. I've never been a fan of the brown mustard, I'm not sure what's in it that makes it different, but I don't care for whatever that ingredient is. I like, plain, good ol' fashioned yellow mustard.

I gently shape my buns beforehand to get as much "real estate" out of them as possible. You can steam them or microwave them for about 15 seconds to soften them up. For some reason, the hotdogs at the ballgame always taste amazing. I'm not sure why, maybe it's because your brain is telling you that you like them because each one costs $43? or maybe those are the super special ones that are made with bird lips, stolen dreams, and bald eagle tears?
 
Puggles said:
or maybe those are the super special ones that are made with bird lips, stolen dreams, and bald eagle tears?
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People will damn near fight me over it, but I do think those dogs are the better ones - all-beef? Too one-dimensional. However, at some point, someone decided that all-beef was the way to go, and here we are.

For home use, I divide my dogs into two types: skinless and cased. Both types, I buy from local makers. I’ll sometimes buy national brands for either, but I like the local ones more.
 
I haven’t been down there regularly since before Covid, but Cincy used to (still does?) have old-style hot dog carts all over the city - the ones on wheels with the dogs hanging out it stinky hot dog water, the buns on a rack over that, getting steamed.

Used to be a great cheap lunch, there was one about four blocks from my office - dog with mustard and kraut, bag of chips/crisps, and a can of pop for just a few bucks, and most of the workers were people who needed a hand up, so to speak (recovering addicts, ex-cons, battered women, all three in one go), so it was nice helping them out.
 
TastyReuben said:
People will damn near fight me over it, but I do think those dogs are the better ones - all-beef? Too one-dimensional. However, at some point, someone decided that all-beef was the way to go, and here we are.

For home use, I divide my dogs into two types: skinless and cased. Both types, I buy from local makers. I’ll sometimes buy national brands for either, but I like the local ones more.
Click to expand...
Skinless frankfurters?
Do tell.
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
Skinless frankfurters?
Do tell.
Click to expand...
Skinless hot dogs are what your usual supermarket dogs are, and it’s not to be taken as some cheap thing - premium dogs like Nathan’s come in skinless, and while I don’t have the numbers to back it up, I’m confident that skinless dogs outsell cased ones by a large margin.

Oscar-Meyer, Kahn’s, Ball Park…they’re all skinless. It’s basically like eating a tube of bologna.
 
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