There’s almost no more perfect meal than a hot dog – at least a good one. A soft steamed bun, your choice of toppings, even better if it’s wrapped in foil – melding it all together into a … well, a delicious mess.
When I was planning menus for the next/last few weeks, I’d originally looked at putting together another barbecue - what with national holidays coming up in both the United States and Canada. Looking through past menus I realize I pretty much do that every time. Also, I did a Hamburger edition. Why not a hot dog edition?
So … this is the hot dog edition. It’s hot dogs. That’s it. Because they’re almost perfect, and because like pretty much all good simple foods, they tell a story.
A little housekeeping before the dogs. First: I’ll be taking the week off next week for the 4th of July holiday. By which I mean I’ll be cooking and eating things, just not writing about them. At least not that week. Second: The Weekly Menu is moving to Wednesday. Scheduling etc. means that the last few have been delayed until Wednesday anyway. So I’m just going to make that a thing.
Thanks for reading, and please share with friends and family.
Polish Boy
This might not technically be a hot dog in that the meat in question isn’t really technically one that’s sold as a hot dog – but I’m just going to shove that little technicality aside and charge ahead. Like pizza and American style Chinese food, hot dogs and sausage sandwiches have their own regional variety. In DC, one of the most popular options is a Half-Smoke – which falls somewhere between a hot dog and a smoked sausage. In New York, and almost only in New York, you can get onion sauce on your dirty water dog.
I’m from Ohio. In Cincinnati, you can get tiny little hot dogs topped with the city’s signature chili – but In Cleveland, the king of the sausage sandwiches is the Polish Boy. It’s a polish sausage on a roll, topped with French fries, barbecue sauce, and coleslaw. It’s the city on the lake’s ode to its own diversity and its own absurdity and it’s amazing.
My mother grew up on the west side of Cleveland. When I once mentioned the Polish Boy to her, she said “I’ve never heard of it. It must be an East Side thing”. Maybe it is, but I’m pretty sure that I first encountered this amazing ode to culinary architecture in bars on the west side while working there in the mid 2000’s.
I’ve included a recipe for a simple barbecue sauce that mimics the tangy sweet, but not cloying sauces I remember on those first Polish Boys, and a simple slaw recipe that I’ll use several times this week. Your own your own for the French fries, or you can consult one of the recipes/techniques I’ve shared in past newsletters.
4 bun length pieces of smoked sausage or kielbasa
4 large sausage rolls
4 handfuls of French fries
BBQ Sauce (below)
Simple Slaw (Below – see The Slaw Dog recipe)
Grill or broil the sausages until crisp on the outside and fully warmed through.
Place the sausages in the buns.
Top with French fries, then BBQ sauce, then coleslaw.
Simple BBQ Sauce
1 cup ketchup
¼ cup dark brown sugar
2 tbsp Franks Red Hot sauce
2 tbsp cider vinegar
2 tbsp yellow mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 drops liquid smoke
Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan.
Bring to a low simmer.
Cook until the sugar is dissolved, and the sauce thickened slightly.
Allow to cool before using.
Slaw Dog
Like the Polish Boy, slaw dogs are a regional thing. Sometimes called a West Virginia dog or some such variation, they’re prevalent all over states bordering the Appalachians – but the first time I ever saw one, and the first time I ever ordered one was at Sutton’s Drug Store in Chapel Hill, NC.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably figured out that I really love coleslaw and that despite the word meaning Cabbage Salad, I treat it more as a condiment than as a side. When I saw “slaw dog” on the menu board, I didn’t feel I had a choice. A hot dog topped with chili and coleslaw doesn’t seem like it should work – but it really, really, really does. My version adds a scattering of fried onions, mostly because like coleslaw, there’s not much that fried onions won’t improve. I’ve included recipes for a hot dog chili that’s spicy (spices) instead of spicy (hot), and a simple slaw that works well for both this dog, and the polish boy above.
4 ¼-lb all beef hot dogs
4 top sliced soft white hotdog buns
1 recipe hot dog chili (below)
1 recipe simple slaw (below)
Yellow Mustard
Crispy Fried Onions (below)
Boil, grill, or deep fry the hot dogs.
Place the hot dogs in the buns.
Top with a thin stripe of yellow mustard.
Add hot dog chili.
Top with slaw and crispy onions (if using).
Hot Dog Chili
½ lb 80/20 ground beef
1 tbsp American chili powder
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp onion powder
8 oz tomato juice
8 oz cold water
½ tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground allspice
Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.
Use a whisk to mix and to break up the beef as finely as possible.
Bring to a low simmer and cook until reduced by 3/4ths.
Simple Slaw
1 cup finely chopped cabbage
1 tbsp cider or malt vinegar
1 tsp granulated sugar
½ tsp kosher salt
2 tbsp mayonnaise
In a non-reactive bowl, sprinkle the salt and sugar over the finely chopped cabbage and toss to ensure the cabbage is coated.
Allow to rest for 30 minutes.
Add the vinegar and mayonnaise.
Transfer to a covered container and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or until ready to use.
Crispy Fried Onions
1 large onion
¼ cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt
Neutral oil for frying
Peel, trim, and remove the ends from the onion.
Make a single cut, from end to end, halfway though the onion. The goal is to turn the rings into long strings.
Thinly slice the onion crosswise.
Place the onion slices in a non-reactive bowl and season with salt.
Allow to rest on the counter for 30 minutes.
Drain any liquid from the onion and toss well to coat each piece with flour.
Heat oil in a thick bottomed pan to 350°F.
Fry the onions until crisp and well browned.
Drain on a paper towel.
Sonoran Hot Dog
This recipe is redux. I lifted it from a past menu because even though I’d used it before, It didn’t feel right to leave it out. My dad grew up in Southern Arizona, and it was on one of our family trips to his hometown or Tucson that I first had on.
Sonoran Hot Dogs, or Danger Dogs as we called them when I was a kid, weren’t really part of Dad’s memories of the desert. They appeared later; around the time I was in high school. I’m about 80% sure the first one I had was purchased from a truck in a gravel parking lot on one of the rare occasions my siblings and I talked my parents and grandparents into letting us borrow my grandfather’s cream colored, green vinyl-topped late 1970s Ford LTD to drive to down Nogales. We were kings of the highway in that thing. Kings.
4 hotdogs
4 pieces smokey bacon (ideally mesquite smoked)
4 bolillo, or large sausage rolls
Refried beans
Pickled jalapenos
Diced tomato
Diced avocado
Diced onion
Cilantro leaves for garnish
Mayonnaise, Sour Cream, or a combination of both
Thin, spicy salsa
Wrap the hotdogs in the bacon and grill, fry, or roast until the bacon begins to crisp up and the dog is cooked through – air fryers are surprisingly perfect for this task.
Slice the roll down the middle.
Add a hefty smear of refried beans.
Add the bacon-wrapped dog.
Top with pickled chilies, diced onion, diced tomatoes, and avocado.
Top that with sour cream, crema, mayo, or some combination thereof.
Add the spicy, thin salsa of your choice.
Garnish with cilantro leaves.
Katsu Dog
Unlike the other concoctions here, I don’t have a story for this one. I made it up. I’m sure I’m not the first to make it up, it’s probably a real thing somewhere, in fact it must be a real thing somewhere because it’s pretty much too much fun not to be a real thing somewhere.
What could make a hot dog better?
Bread it and deep fry it.
What could make a breaded, deep fried hot dog better?
Sauces. All the sauces.
I originally thought about working up a really great corn dog recipe for those very same reasons.
Instead, I went in a completely different direction, and I swear, it wasn’t just because I can’t ever get the con dog batter to stick to the dog.
If you’re unfamiliar, Katsu refers to a Japanese style dish -usual a fried cutlet often topped with a complex sauce that resembles thickened sweetened Worcestershire sauce. During my tine in San Francisco I’d often order Tonkatsu from a nearby Japanese place. Just a simple pork cutlet, fried perfectly, nested in a bed of shaved white cabbage and topped with a drizzle of sauce. It was a perfect symphony of crunchy and rich, and sour and … I ate a lot of that. I still order it a lot if I see it. It’s possible that my blood stream is still some small percentage tonkatsu. In fact, paid subscribers got a recipe for a yuzu katsu sauce in The Addendum earlier this year.
When breading and frying, you can use panko or European style breadcrumbs. I’ve found that panko crumbs, while amazingly crunchy, are a little awkward for this preparation because they’re large and sometimes difficult to fully coat the hotdog.
4 ¼-lb all beef hot dogs
4 top sliced soft white hotdog buns
1 egg
1/2 cup AP flour
1 cup toasted plain breadcrumbs or panko
Neutral oil for deep frying
2 cups finely shredded cabbage
1 green onion, thinly sliced
Japanese mayonnaise
Katsu sauce