Don't try this at home: Electrocuted hot dogs

by Joe DiStefano, Posted Jul 8th 2007 @ 10:00AM

Summertime always sparks a craving for hot dogs. No doubt it's largely due to fond memories of childhood barbecues. I've little or no time for whining about whether wieners make for unhealthful eating. Debates about how to cook 'em hold infinitely more interest. As a New Yorker, I'm no stranger to so-called dirty water dogs. I've been known to eat one now and again, but I much prefer the grilled dogs of my childhood. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that deep-fried dogs are a relatively new indulgence for me.

Tastiness aside, I realize deep-fried dogs are probably about as good for you as pork cracklins, though no less tasty. Lately I've been reading about hot dog cooking methods that are down right life-threatening. I'm not talking about holding your dog over an open flame with your bare hands, but zapping it with the current that comes out of your wall. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories gives step-by-step instructions for this novel way to fry your frank along with the warning, "Do not, under any circumstances, cook hot dogs this way." To their credit EMSL repeatedly points out the danger of being electrocuted by cooking a wiener via wall current, and notes that the taste of the final product leaves something to be desired.

The second bizarre method of hot dog cooking I came across is not so much life-threatening in terms of process, but yields a product, that deserves to be called palate deadening. For some reason Jaime J. Weinman decided to microwave a hot dog until all the fat had been rendered out. After 10 minutes of zapping the poor frankfurter, it was reduced to a dry tasteless stick. I'd be hard-pressed to find any cured sausage that didn't taste downright awful after being nuked for five minutes, much less 10.
[via BoingBoing, Serious Eats]

Filed Under: Hacking Food, Pop Food, Food Oddities, Spirit of Summer, On the Blogs, Ingredients
Tags: america, beef, deep-fried hot dogs, Deep-friedHotDogs, dirty water dogs, DirtyWaterDogs, frankfurters, hacking food, hot dogs, HotDogs, oddities, pop food, wieners

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-08-2007 @10:19AM Andi said... I wonder if you nuked a polish sausage like that....would it come out tasting like a Slim Jim?
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7-08-2007 @1:57PM LeRoy Bidlo said... Nearly five decades ago I built a "house current" hot dog cooker in highschool electricity class. It was a required project for all students in a require d class for all males. (Females were taking more home ec classes instead.) It was a simple box with nails as the electrodes for the wienies. You put the dog into the machine as a bridge between live nails on either side, closed the box and then flipped on the current. Not too much longer and the dogs were "cooked" ... simple, effective, and probably very dangerous. I have no idea what happened to the thing ... my parents probably threw it out, along with the misformed ash trays I also made in school.

So the live current hot dog cooker is nothing new ... but still as stupid.
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7-08-2007 @2:01PM h0mi said... There used to be a product by presto called the Hot Dogger. They apparently revised it in the late 70s because the original one was mostly metal but the one I had as a kid was plastic. It fit ~6 hot dogs (until they plumped) and electrocuted them until it was done.
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7-09-2007 @5:01PM glowpickle said... Mmm, I have such fond childhood memories of my Hot Dogger. In college I built an extra-dangerous version -- just an old electric cord with nails through each wire and plugged into the wall -- and stuck the nails into either end of a pickle. Turn the lights out, plug it in, and voila! Glowing pickle lightbulb! It stinks to high heaven and the point is more to light the pickle up than to cook it for eating. I can't remember what possessed me to do it....
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7-08-2007 @4:37PM mpauletteb said... Mr. Wizard did this on tv. My mom wouldn't let me try it. I almost did without her permission, but, really, i'm glad i didn't.
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