During the summer Tricia normally goes to Corpus Christi for a week to visit her Mom. Tricia grew up in the city and if you had asked her back in high school, she would have never in a million years thought that she'd be living on a working farm, milking cows & goats, butchering chickens and growing her own food. Never. But never say never. Tricia's dad had a ranch and some cows and although he is deceased, Tricia often remarks that she knows he'd be proud of her.
While she's gone, Russ and I are handling the chores. This weekend after doing the daily chores, the bachelors (that's Russ & I) decided to fire up the grill. Just a simple guy's meal - Hot Dogs with maybe some grilled okra on the side. So I used the "BBQ Chimney Starter" to start the real wood charcoal. What an invention! It's one of those things that makes you say, "Why didn't I think of that?" All you do is fill it with charcoal, crumple a sheet of newspaper in the little chamber underneath it, and light it. You walk away and in a few minutes, your charcoal is glowing and can be poured into the pit as the chimney starter has a handle. No more lighter fluid. No more waiting for the doggone charcoal to light. So I lit the 'chimney' and walked inside to prep the dogs.
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| Oh yeah! |
Prep the dogs, you say? Yeah, we're gonna do hot dogs with a different twist today. I'm always looking for new ideas and ran across this one on a food website that I peruse and was looking for an opportunity to try it. Sunday afternoon was the perfect opportunity. Here's how you do it:
Get a wooden skewer (we're going to re-use these for the okra later) and skewer the wiener right down the middle. Then take a knife and cut until you hit the skewer, spinning it so that you spirally cut down the length of the dog. This takes a little practice. On the first one I cut, I didn't cut close enough. After doing enough of them, I got better at it.
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| Spiral cuts |
Hold the dog in place and pull the skewer out and repeat on another wiener.
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| Wow! |
What does this remind you of? Sort of reminds me of 'Slinky Dog' from Toy Story.
Well anyway, here are a few completed spirally-cut dogs ready for the grill.
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| Ready to grill |
Then Russ skewered the okra. We have both Clemson Spineless Okra and a few Burgundy Okra for variety. We learned early on in grilling okra (one of our favorite ways to eat it), to put two skewers through the okra so that you can flip them, otherwise they turn. We drizzle olive oil on the okra as well as a sprinkling of kosher salt. One thing I might mention is that the spiral dogs require a little extra care in that you have to be careful in turning them - two tongs work better than one. You lift and spin, otherwise they get stuck in the grates of the grill and you risk breaking them and having them fall into the fire.
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| Grilled okra and Slinky Dogs |
So why waste time cutting them like this? There are a few reasons I can think of right off. First, they look odd. I like things that are different. Secondly, cutting them like this make the smoky flavor permeate the casing and they make the dogs a little more crispy and flavorful.
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| Who's ready to eat? |
Finally, the spirals allow for more square footage of meat to come into contact with condiments and other assorted flavor enhancements that you might add to your hot dog. You've increased the M-m-m-m factor exponentially. It's simple math. Who would've ever thought there was math involved in hot dog grilling.
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| Extra repositories for condiments |
I added mustard, ketchup and some homegrown pickled jalapenos to the dog on the left and for variety, I added mustard, ketchup, and some homemade sauerkraut made from our cabbage to the one on the right. Russ and I inhaled these hot dogs and went back for seconds.
We almost forgot the side dish! We went back out and pulled them off the grill, put them on a plate in the middle of us and devoured them as well.
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| Grilled okra |
We'll have to do this again when Benjamin is home. I bet he'll dig the spiral dogs!
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