Happy Day Before Labor Day Weekend everybody (offer good in US only. In Canada it’s Labour Day.)
I made these chili-cheese dogs either last Labor Day or Labor Day 2020, who can remember, like a lot of people I suffer from “pandemic mind blur.” Oh wait, it must have been Labor Day 2020, because I had not yet entered my tingling leg decline.
But enough about me. This doesn’t require an outdoor grill, like so many Labor Day recipes do, so that’s a big plus. We have a countertop grill, which is fine for the two of us, but it’s just not the same, and it throws off a lot of smoke and is kind of a pain in the neck to clean.
So, Rache, whaddaya got for us? (Recipe shamelessly stolen off the Food Network website, as you’ll see.)
Ingredients
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 turn of the pan
1 pound ground sirloin [this was definitely before the Great Inflation set in]
Salt and pepper
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce — eyeball it [that’s what I like about Rachael Ray, the way she hearkens back to recipes of old, when they’d say things like “enough flour,” rather than “three cups, sifted.”]
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon chili powder, a palmful [a small palmful, not a Mattie palmful]
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
8 fat or footlong beef franks [plus at least one for the Ravenous Hound]
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon hot sauce [I’m surprised Rache didn’t mention this. This is pretty much the equivalent of one packet of leftover hot sauce from the last time you ordered in. I used two, I remember that.]
8 hot dog buns, toasted
2 cups shredded Cheddar, 1 (10-ounce sack) [This is if you buy a supermarket bag of it. I grated my own and only needed an 8-oz block. You can’t go wrong by using more, obviously.]
How To
Heat a skillet over medium high heat. Add extra-virgin olive oil and meat and season with salt and pepper. Brown and crumble beef. Add Worcestershire, onion, garlic, chili powder and cook together 5 minutes. Add tomato sauce and reduce heat to low.
Meanwhile, boil franks in shallow pan to warm through, 5 minutes. Drain water and return pan to medium heat. Score casings on dogs. Melt butter in skillet and hot sauce. Add dogs [all but one, that’s for the Ravenous Hound] to pan, browning and crisping the casings in hot sauce and butter.
Heat broiler.
Place dogs in buns and top with chili and lots of cheese. Place dogs under broiler and melt cheese. Serve immediately.
I got no issue with chili-cheese dogs, Rachel Ray or otherwise.
I really like them too. Wasn’t there a NOT about guilty foods you don’t really like talking about how much you like them? I should have entered the chili cheese dog. Have you ever had an “Italian” cheeseburger? It’s similar. Make the cheeseburger using a slice of mozzarella cheese and then top with sauce, either marina or with more meat. These are on diner menus all over he city (if you can find any diners left) and the first time I had one I was in heaven.
As sorry as that photo is, I’ll give F-hizzoner credit for not using a fork and knife.
We’re rid of him now. He’s up at the Kennedy School at Harvard, which is the last refuge of the damned/failing Democratic candidate for anything. Even more astonishingly he also got another no-heavy-lifting appointment to the Chan School of Public Health, also at Harvard, natch, where he will lecture on how to respond to a pandemic. I could write the syllabus myself: make any decision you want, even really bad ones like I did, because you’re at the mercy of a Governor who hates you and he’s calling all the shots anyway.
We hope he brought his grifting wife with him ($1 billion for a non-existent mental health initiative: breathtaking) and he will consider selling his two houses (not apartments, houses) in Park Slope to signal that he has returned for good to the home of his youth.
The K School also had spots for hacks like Sean Spicer and Elise Stefanik. They seem determined to embed more and more mushy mediocrities and outright monsters into the government instead of using them as lessons of what not to do. It would be like a business school hiring Elizabeth Holmes and the WeWork guy just because they have name recognition.
Oh, right, I had forgotten about Spicey. I didn’t know Elise Stefanik did a rotation. I wonder why anyone goes there. I know it has a reputation for being “open admissions” as long as you can pay the fees, so I guess even the dimmest among us can put Harvard on their resume. Maybe that’s the lure.
Oy vey, good recipe, nasty image!
There are worse ones of He Who Cannot Be Named eating hot dogs. I thought the guy from “The Music Man” (he’s not really; this was some ill-conceived photo-op that had nothing to do with “The Music Man”) redeemed this one. That twinkle in his eye, that expectational smile, that hawthorn imagined by me…
Love chilli cheese dogs but… not the mess they create.
Definitely feel the same way.
I’m a sucker for a chili dog, no matter how good or bad, and certainly no matter how messy. When I was a kid, there was this midway concession at the county fair called Rosie’s Circus Diner that made the most awesome foot long chili cheese dogs. They poured so much chili on it that you really should eat it with a knife and fork, but I was a kid so I gleefully got that shit all over my hands and face.