The Dog Father Hot Dogs

A lot of the best times I've had in recent years have been in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny... While some places can tolerate the carry on of me and my comrades, the people of Thomastown actively encourage it. It's not first time a Thomastown musician has featured on this blog (see Nathan Conway's Sandwich) and I doubt it will be the last.



Joe Glynn, drummer with one of my favourite bands Neon Wolf, has set up a business that brought a tear to my eye, I caught up with him for a slightly drunken (me, not him) chat when I spotted him set up side stage at a recent John Martyn tribute concert in Carroll's of Thomastown. The reasons a simple hot dog stand has brought a tear to my are two-fold; Firstly this is not a simple hot dog stand... It's the Rolls Royce Phantom of hot dog stands, it's the size of an average Manhattan appartment, and secondly is his passion for a great product; he refuses to use cheap or inferior ingredients, he simply believes there is no point selling hot dogs if they're not gonna be the best... I'll be the judge of that!

Now given that my primary purpose for being in the venue was music and beer, and being bound to the rule of "Eating Is Cheating" I restricted myself to 2 hot dogs (most would only manage one of these bad boys), any more and I would have been having an early Saturday night instead of the early Sunday morning it transpired to be.



First off I had a traditional and delicious hot dog topped with ketchup, mustard and onions. Top marks on that one. I went back to the gig very happy, had a few more beers, listened to a few more tunes and decided there was room for one more. This time I left it up to Joe as to how to top it off, and top it off he did! Ketchup, mustard and sauerkraut, it was like being back in New York...



Hands down the best hot dog I've ever had in Ireland.

Simple as that.

Listen to and download Neon Wolf's brilliant tunes here

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The BLT Hot Dog

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions... To have a hot dog or a BLT sandwich?... A question surely posed somewhere at sometime... I present the solution to the problem you didn't know existed:
The BLT Hotdog.
I won't for a second claim that I came up with the idea, all kinds of weird and wonderful hot dogs exist in the U.S.A if you're willing to seek them out; I came across this in New York earlier in the year, I just want to show that you don't have to be restricted to the standard hot dog toppings.

What you'll need:
Lettuce
Tomato
Hot dog Rolls
Mayo
Streaky Rashers
Hot dogs; I used jumbo size ones for this, regular are just as good

I haven't figured out a decent way of doing this better or easier other than using a George Foreman Grill, I wouldn't advise trying this without one or something similar. You're gonna need some of those wooden cocktail/tooth picks to hold the rashers onto the hot dog, I suppose you could staple the rashers on but I would seriously advise against that.

Break the sticks up, start at one end and roll the rasher around the hot dog using the sticks to hold that precious bacon in place, it takes about one and a half rashers for a jumbo hot dog, one will do for a regular size dog.

Now it's time to get it on the George Foreman, heat it up to the hottest temperature and fire the dog on.

Close the lid down so it applies pressure which will bond the 2 pig products together, about every 2 to 3 minutes rotate the dog a quarter, after 4 of these turns it should be ready. After this check that all parts of the rasher are well cooked and crispy, give it an extra few minutes if you're not sure, it's much better to overcook this than undercook it because the rasher should almost be brittle and break away easily with each bite, it should look something like this when done.

While this is cooking you'll wanna get the rest of the shite ready, lightly toast the bun or warm it in the oven, I threw it under the grill for a couple of minutes, and chop up the lettuce and tomato into small pieces.



Mayonnaise up your roll and add some of the lettuce and tomato.

Put on that double dose of meat and top off with more lettuce and tomato.

Enjoy... It's obviously delicious, the rasher and the hot dog are fused together into a kind of a super meat, the toppings are a cool and refreshing contrast to the dog. Mess around and add more ingredients to your taste if you like.

Boozey x

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