Hot Diggidy Dog!with q-view

[lownslow]

very well done dogs.

And much praise for your stance on eating fat

. I think that Americans get it wrong when we look at food like medicine. It's art, it's the richness of life, its what brings us together, its fun, its so much more than any one ingredient or lack thereof. For all of our focusing on the fad of the month (oat bran, no carbs, glycemic index, low fat, omega-3.....) we are one of the fattest countries on earth. I don't know, are we the fattest?

I think if you are making real food from real ingredients you are doing fine. Thanks for the excuse to rant!

just a note that my rant isn't directed at aardvark or anyone else, it's just a rant.

 

[cowgirl]

Chef, those look excellent!

 

[big game cook]

i made venison dogs last season. and they to were soft and fat rendered out. i too used about 35-40% fat. that may be the cause. i did like them and ate them. but this season i am gonna add pork to them and less far less fat. and see if it helps. pionts for the thread.

 

[curious aardvark]

lol I applaud your stance on reproducing foods as they were first made.

Commercial hotdogs have ingredients called binding agents that keep all the fat and water together and add a little texture.

Now I don't know if you can get this stuff in the states or not - I couldn't see any last time I was over there, but that could just mean I was looking in the wrong shop.

I use dried egg white as a texture and binding agent. It's the 'secret' ingredient in my vegetarian Vege-meat. But it can also be used to firm up soft textured ground mixtures. If I make a fishcake mix that's a little too soft - in goes the dried egg white till it cooks to the texture I want.
Like wise with a soft burger mix.

Throw some into your sausage mix and it'd firm them up no end.

I'm not against fat when necessary. I love salami. And the fat there serves a particular purpose. It stops voids being formed when the meat dries - voids equal moist spaces, moist spaces equal bacterial heaven. Bacteria in salami is a bad thing. I have made low fat salami as an experiment - don't particularly recommend it :-)

BUT even the whitest looking salami is only 35% - 40% fat.

The reason there is so much fat in hot dogs is that hot dogs are the cheapest sausage on the market and fat is the cheapest ingredient they could use.
Was there much rusk in your hotdog recipe ? Rusk is also added to commercial sausage to absorb liquids and help texture.

Now there are 2 approaches to epicurianism (is that a word ? is now :-)
1) simply reproducing original recipes.
2) throwing in some creativity and improving/modifying existing recipes.

Both have merits. For me the challenge is to make something at least as good as the original but with different ingredients/processes.
Looking at the starting ingredients I'd have to say that you probably didn't have enough rusk for a commercial hotdog - and obviously binding agents are a must.

But keep up the good work :-) It's fascinating whether or not I'd personally eat it :-)

Actually at the last count I believe it was australia - britains fairly close to the states - in some regions way past. To be honest, I was in america last year and people looked thinner than they are over here.
I'm no lightweight. I do some serious weight shifting in the gym 3 times a week, walk several miles a day, do tai chi twice a week. I'm both the fittest and strongest person I know - but it doesn't matter how much exercise I take I don't lost weight. I've stopped worrying about it. My blood chemistry is great (checked by a true pro recently) I never get out of breath and I can press 300lbs over head. So health doesn't = weight.
Technically on the stupid BMI I count as clinically obese. But I know different and that's what counts :-)

 

[pantherfan83]

Chefboy,

I just wanted to let you know that Michael Ruhlman updated his recipe for the All Beef Hot Dogs. He wasn't happy with the texture of the hot dogs either. He wanted to change the recipe in a revision of the book, but his editor wouldn't let him because it would change the page numbering of the recipes following it and the editor wanted to keep the revisions simple. All the details are here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?...=79195&st=1845 starting on post # 1846. Then also look at post #'s 1849, 1857 and 1859.

I made some from the revised recipe and I was very satisfied with the results. I got my short ribs from Sam's and they were sliced into 1/2-inch slabs, so I had to remove 3 small slivers of bones from each slice which was very monotonous. I'm sure they would be much easier to de-bone if they weren't already sliced. Knowing what I know now, I would have asked the butcher if I could get a whole cut and/or if he could de-bone them. I started with about 20 lbs of meat and I think I ended up with about 12-13 lbs of hot dogs. As you know re-grinding the meat is a pain in the butt. I did later learn that if you freeze the ground meat until it is nearly frozen and crunchy that it will go back through the grinder much more easily than if it is not frozen. I have a dedicated stuffer, so I didn't have the problem stuffing the sausages that you did. I can't imagine trying to get that meat paste to go down a grinder and into a stuffing tube.

 

[shellbellc]

Great looking dogs!! I'll be honest and say that I am not a hot dog fan at all. I golf probably twice a year and always have one at the turn, other than that, probably only a couple more a year. I do like them after they have been cooking in sauerkraut with a good german mustard and the occasional grilled dog...but you sir, have created a bit of a demon in that I think I need to try this process some day!

 

[walking dude]

excellant link pantherfan...........bookmarked it immediatly (sp)..........thankx

 

[chef_boy812]

Awesome, Thanks.
You figure the guy writing the book has a say in what goes in his book. Go figure!

I will be trying again as soon as I get a stuffer, with or with my wife permission. LOL