Encore – Hot Dog!

It’s that time of year.  If you are a baseball fan there are playoff games and the excitement is growing to see who will ultimately be this years National Champions.  And for football fans there are both college and professional games  on every sports channel all weekend long.  So it begs the question…what do we eat while enjoying these games and rooting our teams on?  Why HOT DOGS of course.  And not just any hot dog either….

What could possibly be better than an all American hot dog?…a hot dog with a side of bacon!If you are a vegetarian, or you keep Kosher, you are probably cringing right about now. But for the rest of us, this is a delight to be experienced. After all, doesn’t bacon really make EVERYTHING taste better?!!

A couple of weeks ago our wonderful housekeeper, Maria, (who can do just about anything and also makes the best tortillas ever) sent me a text from home with a photo of the Mexican hot dogs she had just made for her family for dinner.

It is a hot dog wrapped in bacon and grilled, then served on a bun with onions, tomatoes, and a grilled jalapeno pepper. And of course there was guacamole on the side for those who wanted that with it.

For years now on every street in the fabric, garment and floral districts of downtown Los Angeles, I have seen food carts with Mexican ladies that sell hot dogs. I visit downtown often because I love fabric and flowers and always have some project or party that requires a trip there to acquire more of each. You can smell that wonderful aroma of grilled hot dogs and bacon on every street. Those hot dogs sold from the carts look and smell amazing. But as often as I have seen (and smelled) them, I have never bought one. I am always laden down with packages and can’t manage to hold and eat one, and keep up with all my parcels. But the last time I was there a couple of weeks ago, I made myself a promise that I was going to try one soon. Then only a couple of days later, Maria texted me the photo of her dinner and I thought to myself, I really MUST try one.

Fast forward about 10 days, and completely out of the blue, my grandson, Jeremy turned to me and said “Lolli, do you think you could make hotdogs stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon for dinner one night?” Well that did it…there was just no getting away from the fact that hotdogs and bacon were destined to be on our table.

So this past Monday night when we were having our weekly family dinner, I was off to the market and bought Hebrew National dogs (the VERY best in my opinion), some white cheddar cheese, buns and thick sliced bacon. At first my plan was to slice the hot dogs lengthwise and stuff them with cheese then wrap the the dogs in the bacon like a barber pole. But as I thought about it, I was afraid, since it was thick cut bacon, by the time it was really good and done and crisp, the cheese would be disintigrated and the hot dog might resemble something more akin to jerky. So for this particular meal I settled on partially cooking the bacon and then laying it on top of the cheese stuffed hotdogs and then placing them all in a 375 degree oven to finish cooking….

the results were PERFECT!

We ended up with a nicely roasted hot dog with gooey melted cheese and bacon that was crisp and completely done. Jeremy preferred his hotdog “naked”…no mustard, ketchup or relish….

but you can add any sort of condiment that sounds good to you. The only thing I might do differently next time would be to use smoked mozzarella in place of the cheddar cheese. And by next time I mean Monday…Memorial Day…because these will no doubt be on our menu! How about you?