While researching commercial hotdogs, I came across a regional type called “red dogs” or “red hotdogs”, or just hotdogs but a real red color. Mostly it is just red dye, but some folks love the look, so I went for that. I thought it would be a fun thing to make, and
I wanted to make a hotdog bursting with flavor, but without any spice-heat. A special hotdog that you want to eat plain it’s so flavorful.
I thought the redder color could be used to set these more robust flavored hotdogs apart from my normal hotdog recipe. These are normal hotdogs or “hot dogs”, but with the flavor ingredients boosted 2x to 3x most weiner/hotdog/frankfurter recipes, including Marianski and Kutas.
TRIGGER WARNING FOR SAUSAGE PURISTS! These have a wee bit of red dye for fun and to match a regional hotdog! Just skip the color if my drink-mix fun, or food coloring, gets your undergarments in a bunch.
Here are some pictures of these commercial products for reference:
Additionally, some ingredients are traditional in franks or weiners, but not US hotdogs, but I used them for more flavor. So they are very similar to a flavorful Ring Bologna. These are onion powder in weiners, dry mustard in hot links, coriander in frankfurters, garlic and celery seed in hotdogs.
A common method to boost flavor is to add a bit of cayenne or red pepper, 1g per kg meat would work. But I have family who can’t have cayenne, so I went with boosted white pepper and mustard powder. But this dog is not too spicy or hot, as so many folks won’t eat Hot Links or Red Hots or Hot Guts due to the cayenne.
RECIPE FORMULATION, 1000g:
FLAVOR
For that quality hotdog flavor and darker color, I went mostly beef. But added pork butt for the bacon flavor.
Beef: 625g or 62.5%, 73/27
Pork butt 375g, 20% fat.
Total fat thus about 25%.
salt: 1.8% added, plus cure1 for 2.0% total. More flavor perceived.
Sweetness: Bacon is usually 1.5% to 2.5% sugar, and 2-2.5% salt. To get that bacon flavor, you need some sugar, and a LOT of commercial hotdogs use more than 2% of dextrose/sugar/corn syrup. HOWEVER, I decided to make these KETO. Plus I wanted some Red dye…
SECRET INGREDIENT! Crystal Light Cherry Pomegranite drink mix was used as the sweetener! Okay, I know all the purists like myself are rolling their eyes right now, I was too! BUT, BUT…pretend it’s 2 drops red food coloring, you gots to expect some non-kosher ingredients in something called “Red Dogs” lol! And as pointed out below, let’s just ignore the whole pomegranite thing…
After weighing and comparing their sugar vs no-sugar products and calculating, I came up with 0.8g of sugar free drink mix being equivalent to 1.5% sugar. This gave me the KETO, sweetness without sugar/carbs, as well as a hint of extra red color, AND a hint of cherry flavor in background. Obviously you can just use sugar for 1.5% instead, or any sweetener, or none at all here. But it’s a pretty awesome taste!
Color: I added sodium erythorbate and ascorbic acid below USFDA allowed amounts, as cure accelerators. This also gives strong cure color and good color fixing, as well as strong antioxidant for good flavor retention when freezing. Plus the wee bit of red dye in the drink mix. You could get as much red from 1 or 2 drops of red food color if desired. Also, high amounts of sweet paprika were used.
Here is the meat mixed with all ingredients, showing just a tiny bit more red than usual, it’s a pretty subtle red, not gross red .
This is normal hotdog meat for comparison:
Recipe, 1kg or 1000g, or 2.2 lbs
1250g ground beef, 73/27. Probably 5mm grind about.
750g pork shoulder, about 20% fat
(Total fat about 25%)
3mm grind mostly frozen pork and ground beef. Hard protein extraction via Kitchenaid mixer 4 min.
Salt 18g, 1.8%
Cure1 2.5g, 0.25%, 156 ppm NaNO2
– USDA FSIS ground meat max, std.
Sugar 15g, 1.5%. Replaced here with 0.8g of Crystal Light Cherry Pomegranate sugar-free drink mix.
Paprika 5.0g, 0.5%
White pepper 4.0g, 0.4%
Note: strong wh pepper flavor, bit of heat, reduce to 2.0g if normal hotdog amount desired
Coriander 2g, 0.2%
Mace 0.5g, 0.05%
Onion powder 1g, 0.1%
Garlic, granulated, 4g, 0.4%
Celery seed, ground, 1g, 0.1%
Black pepper 0.5g, 0.05%
Dry Mustard, Colmans, 4g, 0.4%
Binder, Walton’s suregel 10g, 1%
Water, 120g, 12%
Optional Accelerators, to mix/stuff/smoke in 1 day without overnight curing
Sodium Erythorbate 0.5g
Ascorbic acid, vitaminC, 0.4g
Casings:
For these Red Dogs, optimally the red cellulose 30mm casing would rock! You can leave on of you only smoke, it will have a good bite and snap. Or if you sous vide, you can peel off. I didn’t have any when I stuffed today, but look what showed up 2 hours later while smoking! I think these were courtesy of Jonathon, when I forgot to add them to my order, what a great company Walton’s is! I actually ordered some more of these just yesterday too, so expect some red ones and Hot Links soon!
So I used the fantastic 28mm cellulose with black stripe, probably the very best big skinless hotdog casing. Non-edible, smoke permeable, strong, strip off easy after smoke. Can be sous vide if desired. These casings will not hold a twist, so you MUST tie individually OR better, use a double-link or triple-link technique, which will hold the twists. Here I used a double link to allow maximum smoke access. Triple link is good for 21mm to 26mm sausages, but blocks too much smoke if larger. I hung from my grate, could have just tied in 2 places but did 4 to keep all sausages at same level. I also had a bit left, so stuffed into 34mm hog casing for a bologna ring.
Smoke schedule: 140f for 1 hr, 150f 1 hr, 165f until IT > 145f, about 3 hrs.
Cherrywood smoke while time.
Optional: pull when enough color, toss in sous vide at 165f for 30-45 min to speed up cook.
After 4 hours, IT 139 (needs 15 min at 139 for pathogen lethality):
Pulled at 4hrs 30min, IT 145f:
I am starting to feel that a good bit of salt and flavor is lost when sous-vide finishing sausages, if not bagged, so didn’t SV these, for MAXIMUM flavor .
TASTE: Fantastic! I like the pure-smoked hotdogs much better than the sous-vide with smoke flavor. Those are great, but these are just bursting with flavor and cherrywood smoke. Maybe best hotdog I’ve eaten. Probably mostly due to the real smoke, and I like cherry better than hickory. The 1.8% salt (2.0% when accounting for salt in cure1), is spot on for commercial dogs too.
TEXTURE: The 3mm grind, single grind, using regular ground beef and pork chunks, plus 4 min Kitchenaid mix, gave a very emulsified texture, seems perfect to me. I would never take the effort to food process more than this. Exactly what you expect from a hotdog, and quite easy compared to bowl chopper or full emulsifying in processor.
I was able to serve these next day when my daughter had friends over!
Hope folks find this recipe helpful!
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