Penn Allan - Wieners Gone Wild!: Out-of-the-Ballpark Recipes for Extraordinary Hot Dogs

2014 by Holly Schmidt and Allan Penn

Photography 2014 by Hollan Publishing, Inc.

A Hollan Publishing, Inc. Concept

Published by Running Press,

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013945766

E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5177-7

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Cover and interior design by Jason Kayser

Edited by Jordana Tusman

Typography: Museo and House Script

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CONTENTS

EVERYONE LOVES HOT DOGS. EVERYONE. When we told people we were writing a hot dog cookbook, without exception we heard, I love hot dogs! This book is a collection of over-the-top recipes for Americas favorite food. Some are easy and quick to put together, others are more labor-intensive (but worth it!)and were pretty sure most of them havent been done before. We hope you dazzle your friends with your wiener creations and have as much fun making them as we have.

THE MIRACLE THAT IS THE TUBE STEAK

As we were developing the recipes, we learned something that surprised us: Hot dogs, while delicious on their own, are the perfect foil for a wide variety of foods, from fried clams to Caesar salad to quesadillas. Turns out, the smoky, salty flavor and juicy, greasy snap of a hot dog serves to enhance almost anything it touches, in much the same way bacon improves dishes from Brussels sprouts to braised chicken. Rather than competing with the sophisticated flavors we threw at them, hot dogs rose to the occasion and made them better, whether it was the peppercorns and brandy cream sauce of Wiener au Poivre ().

THE HISTORY OF THE HOT DOG

The hot dog was born in Frankfurt, Germany, sometime around the 13th century, where they were served at imperial coronations. (See, we knew hot dogs were the food of kings!) Nobody is sure how or when they made their way to America, but it appears to have been sometime in the late 1800s. They quickly became a popular staple at baseball games and fairs, because they were easy to eat, inexpensive, and totally delicious. The positive association most people have with hot dogs and baseball games, carnivals, and backyard barbecues only serves to solidify and heighten their exalted place in our culinary culture. Everybody has a happy hot dog memory.

WHAT IS A HOT DOG?

Hot dogs are traditionally made from pork and/or beef, spices like garlic and paprika, salt, and preservatives like sodium nitrite. The meat mixture is put into casings (natural casings, which are sheep intestinesyesor synthetic casings that are removed after cooking to make skinless dogs) and cooked. When you buy them at the grocery store, they are actually ready to eat, but most people prefer to cook them again before eating, to heat them up and caramelize the exterior. Hot dogs taste good no matter how you cook them, and we leave that up to you in our recipes. Want to grill the dog? Awesome. Prefer to throw it in a pan on the stove? Fantastic. Whatever makes your skirt fly up is fine by us.

TYPES OF HOT DOGS

Today, there are many different kinds of hot dogs on the market, and much regional variation. A lot of hot dogs are made by local, often family-owned businesses, and flavors and styles can vary widely from state to state. Here in New England, Kayem Foods, Inc. (maker of Fenway Franks) dogs reign supreme, and in New York, many of the most-loved hot dogs are made by Marathon Enterprises, Inc., owner of Sabrett. In Chicago, the famous Chicago dog is an all-beef, natural casing hot dog. Your local grocery store probably sells a few different local brands of natural-casing and skinless franks, as well as the big national brands like Oscar Mayer, Ball Park, and Boars Head.

Hot dog preference is truly subjective; if you dont already have a favorite, we recommend you try a few different kinds until you find one that you really love. Our recipes will work with any kind of dog, so use your own judgment about skinless versus natural casing. Sometimes you want the snap of the natural casing, and sometimes you dont.

Any of the recipes in this cookbook can be made with a turkey dog or a veggie dog, toowe dont roll that way, but you can if you want to!

The recipes in Wieners Gone Wild! are all our own creations, cooked up in our studio in Gloucester, Massachusetts, over many months of experimentation. We intentionally excluded classic regional specialties like the Chicago dog, because recipes for those are readily available in a lot of other places. We wanted this book to be a collection of unique hot dog wonders, or at least new twists on old favorites, and we hope weve succeeded.

But to satisfy your curiosity, the following is a quick rundown of how America likes its famous dogs:

CHICAGO DOG: An all-beef hot dog served in a steamed poppy seed bun and blanketed with chopped raw onions, sweet pickle relish, sport peppers (small, green, medium-hot pickled peppers), a pickle spear, tomatoes, yellow mustard, and a sprinkle of celery salt. These are religion in Chicago, but you can sometimes find them outside the Windy City as well.

SLAW DOG: Popular in the South, a slaw dog is topped with a creamy coleslaw that may or may not include chili or barbecue sauce.

RED DOG: As far as we know, you can only find these neon-red dogs in Maine, where they are also known as red snappers, due to their natural casings that snap when you bite into them. The color doesnt affect the taste, and kids love it.

KOSHER DOG: Popular in New York and New Jersey, kosher dogs are all-beef and usually topped with sauerkraut and smeared with mustard.

CHILI DOG: Out West, people like their all-beef hot dogs topped with meat chili, chopped onions, and usually shredded cheddar.

HOT BUNS!

Here at WGW world headquarters, we love a homemade bunwhether its a standard yeast roll, a fresh, buttery biscuit, a slab of cornbread, a crisp popover, or a twist of homemade pretzelyou just cant beat bread you make yourself. That said, more often than not, were throwing our wieners onto store-bought rolls, what with the demands of work and family. So were giving you our recipes for homemade buns for those times when you really want to crank up the mojo on your wiener-making, but our recipes all have store-bought bun options, too.