Illinois · Main
Chicago-Style Hot Dog
- Easy
- 20 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, char used as punctuation.
Ingredients
- 4 all-beef natural-casing hot dogs
- 4 poppy seed buns
- Yellow mustard
- Sweet green pickle relish (neon, ideally)
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 tomatoes, in wedges
- 4 dill pickle spears
- 8 sport peppers
- Celery salt
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid
Allergen screen
Found: celery · mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Steam or simmer the hot dogs until plump and hot, never grilled, by tradition.
- Steam the poppy seed buns until soft.
- Lay the dog in the bun and add, in order: mustard, relish, onion, tomato wedges along one side.
- Tuck in a pickle spear and two sport peppers.
- Finish with a dash of celery salt. And never, under any circumstances, ketchup.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.