Hallowieners!

What is it, another meme? OK let’s have a look.

This is Hallowiener

Hoboy.

So look, memes are silly, but they can also reveal who we are. Now I personally think black licorice is delicious, but I don’t have anything against people who disagree. Black licorice flavored hot dogs though? If memes reveal who we are, then we are clearly a people who don’t think that licorice and tubesteaks belong together. 

And before we get too far into this video, let me assure you, I will not be making licorice-flavored hot dogs.

Black hot dogs for Halloween though? It’s spooky, it’s fun, let’s do it. As a Chicago guy, I like my hot dogs all-beef, with natural casing, so I’m starting with a beef chuck roast and dicing it into cubes before seasoning it with salt, curing salt, dextrose, garlic powder, onion powder, white pepper, nutmeg, mustard powder, coriander. 

I promised you I would not add licorice, and I didn’t. But fennel seed is a classic ingredient in Italian sausages. So is anise seed. Tarragon is used frequently in French terrines and in poultry and fish dishes. Each of these, to some degree, tastes like black licorice to most people. 

After putting the seasoned beef through the small die of my grinder, I also pulsed it with ice chips in my food processor to get a finer texture and help emulsify it. Then I added some liquid smoke, because hot dogs should have a bit of smoky flavor and I didn’t want to smoke these, and cuttlefish ink to give it that jet black color a true Hallowiener should have.

I stuffed them into sheep casings, then poached the sausages in 180 degree Fahrenheit water for 25 minutes or so to cook them. 

HALLOWIENER

Hallowienies

Meme food

Ingredients

  • 2.5 lbs fatty beef chuck diced
  • 3 grams pink curing salt
  • 20 grams kosher salt
  • 5 grams garlic powder
  • 4 grams onion powder
  • 4 grams white pepper
  • 3 grams coriander
  • 2 grams powdered mustard
  • 2 grams nutmeg
  • 6 grams ground fennel seed
  • 6 grams ground anise seed
  • 3 grams dried tarragon
  • 40 grams dextrose
  • 2 tbsp cuttlefish ink
  • 1/3 cup ice-cold water
  • 1/2 tsp Liquid Smoke
  • ice chips
  • 5 feet sheep casings

Instructions

  • Mix the meat with the salt and spices and dextrose and chill in freezer until firm.
  • Run the meat mixture through the fine die of a meat grinder
  • Pulse meat in small batches with ice chips in food process to emulsify and create a finer texture
  • Put the meat mixture into a non-porous container such as glass or stainless steel for the next step so it won't be stained by the cuttlefish ink
  • Mix together cuttlefish ink, liquid smoke, and ice cold water. Wearing gloves, work into the meat to achieve even coloring. Add more ink if required to get the black color.
  • stuff into sheep casings, tie in 6 inch lengths. Parboil in barely simmering water for 20 minutes

The colors of Halloween are orange and black. Black, for better or worse, has traditionally been associated with night, darkness, death, decay, mystery. Whether you subscribe to those associations or not, it seems like a natural color for the spoopiest of holidays. But why orange, which doesn’t seem particularly scary? Orange is also the color of the pumpkins that people carve into jack-o-lanterns. Orange is the color of the bonfires of Samhain, the ancient Gaelic festival considered a precursor of Halloween Orange is an autumn color, the color of the autumn leaves falling from trees, signaling the harsher season to come. 

So if the sausage portion of a Halloween hot dog is black, it stands to reason that the bun should be orange. Riding the high of using a natural colorant, the cuttlefish ink, to dye my sausages black, I thought I’d do the same here by using carrot powder to color the buns orange.  Let me tell you something about using carrot powder in a hot dog buns recipe: it’s a nightmare.  

Carrot powder absorbs a lot of moisture, throwing off your hydration ratios and forcing you to ad lib to adjust. Those adjustments throw off your dough mass, which has been calculated to exactly fill a New England style bun pan. Instead, bloblike, the dough expands until it breaks free from the makeshift lid, pushing up on one side to create these uneven, chaotic, lumpen and misshaped buns. Next time I would simply add food coloring instead. 

These buns did taste pretty good though, and the weird shape just adds to the Halloween character. I just wish they were oranger.

The bun didn’t get as orange as I’d hoped

Hallowienie buns

Equipment

  • 1 New England hot dog bun pan

Ingredients

  • 360 grams all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp instant yeast
  • 25 grams sugar
  • 8 grams salt
  • 1/4 cup carrot powder
  • 350 ml water
  • 30 g butter
  • 1 egg

Instructions

  • Combine all ingredients in mixer bowl and knead for 8-10 minutes
  • Let rise in oiled container for a couple hours until doubled in size
  • Punch down and shape into rectangle 15"x6", the dimensions of the bun pan
  • Grease bun pan, place dough in pan, and cover with plastic wrap. Rest 15 minutes
  • After resting, stretch dough to fill the bottom of the pan and recover. Let proof in the pan until dough nearly reaches the top of the pan
  • While the dough is proofing, preheat oven to 375
  • Grease bottom of cookie sheet, cover the bun pan with it, and place in oven, weighing down the cookie sheet to keep the dough from escaping the bun pan
  • Bake 18 minute then remove the cookie sheet and weight. Bake a few more minutes
  • Cool pan on rack for 5 minutes, then invert onto rack to remove buns. Cool completely

But how do I make these black Frankenfurters extra spooky once they’re in their orange buns? What are the spookiest hot dog condiments?

You may be thinking ketchup, given its similarity in color and texture to blood. You know what though? Honestly I’m not a fan. Let people enjoy what they want, I say, and I have long since given up taunting people for putting ketchup on their hot dogs. Still, I just don’t see myself adopting the practice any time soon.

A dragged-through-the-garden Chicago dog comes with a dayglo green sweet pickle relish that honestly looks like radioactive waste, a perfect Halloween condiment. We can use that, sure. 

But a hot dog is not a hot dog without mustard and onion, at least to me, and so I invented the mustard and onion skull gummy. This is Dijon mustard, onion juice, fresh microplaned onion, and unflavored gelatin, allowed to gel in tiny skull molds. 

These little skulls taste just as intense as they look.

I want your skulls, I NEED YOUR SKULLS

Mustard Onion skull gummies

Equipment

  • silicon skull gummy mold

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup Dijon mustard
  • 1/4 cup onion juice
  • 1/4 cup onion grated
  • 3 tbsp powdered gelatin

Instructions

  • mix mustard, onion juice, and gelatin in a pan and heat gently, stirring constantly, until gelatin dissolves.
  • Mix in the grated onion
  • Using droppers, fill the skull molds
  • Cover with wax paper and chill for a few hours or overnight
  • Peel skulls from the wax paper. Keep chilled until serving.

Put it all together and it’s a pretty good bite.

A tasty void

The sausage comes across as a weird but good hybrid, somewhere between a hot dog and an Italian sausage, as long as you don’t look at it too close.

In Chicago we put this stuff on all our hot dogs

There’s a bit of sweetness to the carrot-flavored bun and the dayglo green relish that offsets the sharpness of the mustard and onion skull.

Mustard onion skull gummies

Those skulls are the biggest surprise of all—I was worried that the texture would be strange but the heat of the cooked sausage and warm bun starts to melt them almost immediately, resulting in a mustard and onion sauce that just works on a hot dog.

THIS IS HALLOWIENER

So Happy Halloween! Making these was a bit of a trick, but they turned out to be a treat. 

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches. I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great

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1 Response

  1. This is brilliant and terrifying and I love it!

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