How do you do it ????

How do you hot doggers hold your dogs after you grill them?
 
We run a trailer and grill hamburgers on a grill set up outside.  In the past we have fixed the 4/1 Nathan dogs inside in a star electric steamer and it has worked well.  However, I want to start fixing the dogs outside on the grill so I can eliminate the inside steamer.  By doing so I will have enough power to run another slushee machine and slushee's are our high profit item.
 
Here is how I hold the burgers and it works very well.  They will hold fine for up to an hour and still taste as fresh as right off the grill.  I take a 3lb tub of chopped onions and grill them almost done.  I then put 2 cups of chicken broth in a 1/2 pan and add the onions.  I keep the 1/2 pan on the rack above the grill with a cover on it and it keeps the  burgers real hot.  I normally cook them to almost done and put them back on the grill to add the cheese when they are ordered.  Normally by the time I have added the slice of cheese and it has melted in they are ready to serve.  My question is for those of you who specialize in dogs.  Will it work the same for the Nathans or should I just keep them in water.  I keep a metal rack in the 1/2 pans so they won't sit on the bottom and burn.
 
I will be grilling about 20 or so at a time and wondered the best way to hold them.  I have to grill them ahead or I have a line backed up to the parking lot.  The onion/chicken broth mix gives a great taste to the burgers but I wondered, because of the casing, what it will do to the taste of the dog.  We've got a large country music festival coming up Thur/Fri/Sat so I'm looking for opinions.  Thanks a lot.
 
Mike S.

Grilled dogs don't really hold well. I cook off hundreds for large feeding and hold in dry heat. If I was doing a hotdog cart I would keep on the grill until needed. I feel grilled dogs should come right off the grill. I wouldn't tell the health dept how you do the burgers. When cooking from raw you always cook to done. they will still hold fine when holidng in a fully cooked state. when you bring the burger back on the grill use a large pot lid to cover the burger and use a water squirt btl to sqiirt water under the lid to steam the burger  and melt the cheese. Its an  easy way to get burgers fast.............Bill

Now that my flat top trailer is 99% done and I have used it at the Springfield Ary Fair and a wedding catering job, I can comment on this. I cooked several kinds of sausages on both a charcoal grill and my flat top for both events and found they all held very well right on the flat top but on the cooler side. I also put a 6 inch 1/3rd size steam table pan on the flat top and stored the different sausages and dogs in beer. They all were great and the system worked very well.
Jack

I hold up real well when stored in beer......

is your festival this weekend Country Stampede?  If so, do you mind me asking how much it cost to get in?  I'm a KSU student looking to start up a concession/mobile concept possibly in that area.

Thanks

I hold it firmly in one hand and a napkin under it with the other hand as not to spill the chili on my shirt.
 
Turn one side off the grill off and use this side as a holding area the dogs will stay warm there and not cook and further.
That's how they do it at Coney Island.

T_Money


is your festival this weekend Country Stampede?  If so, do you mind me asking how much it cost to get in?  I'm a KSU student looking to start up a concession/mobile concept possibly in that area.

Thanks

No problem.  The vendor fee was $500 plus a $50 refundable clean up fee for all 3 days.  There is no percentage, just the flat $500.  That is the most we have ever paid to get into an event so I will see if it pays off.  The sponsor says 25 to 30k people in the 3 days but since when can you believe a sponsor.  They have Charlie Daniels, Ronnie Milsap and quite a few big names so hope the crowd will be big and the weather good.  I'll let you know Sunday how it went.
 
Mike S. 

Hot_dog


I hold it firmly in one hand and a napkin under it with the other hand as not to spill the chili on my shirt.

Turn one side off the grill off and use this side as a holding area the dogs will stay warm there and not cook and further.
That's how they do it at Coney Island.

Thanks, unfortunately I have a large grill with 8 burners but can't turn one end off because our main food item is Buffalo Burgers and Hamburgers and it takes the full grill running constantly on high to keep up on the burgers.  We will normally sell 10 burgers to 1 dog so I hoped I could grill a few and keep them in a pan for those who wanted one.
 
Mike S.

You can keep them in a pan no big deal if you sell them within 3 or 4 hours. Just add some liquid of some sort, apple juice, beer, anything that you use in your normal cooking process. Just once they are grilled don't float them in water. Just put a little in the bottom of the pan. Throw a little spice in your liquid, like a dry rub or something. They will be fine.
Jack

Oh man Dr. of BBQ I have to disagree. Gives me no pleasure to do so but it all depends on the sausage.

Our standard Hoffy franks by the Hoffman Co of LA are a really great kosher style dog. They will stand up to an hour in the steam pan, they retain their flavor beyond that but they don't look so great. Boil them for over 35 minutes and you have an inferior product. But that's your basic skinless fine-grind sausage. A Sabretts is literally designed to remain in water until it's sold.

Not many people know this, but the Sabretts is known as "the dirty water dog" for this reason. Not because NYC water is dirty, historically it's some of the best water quality in the nation. Dirty water comes from the 150 degree baths the vendors used to keep unsold product in overnight. As long as it's held to temp, there's no sanitary compromise.

Now here's where Dr. of BBQ can clarify a couple of things because I'm not calling him out, I'm just saying he's the Dr. of BBQ. We're dog men.

One you put a dog on a grill, which not all dogs should be, particularly a Sabretts which is NEVER GRILLED OR STEAMED, ONLY BOILED, the second it goes into a steam pan you are making soup. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was Dr. of BBQ who pounded into my head that YOU NEVER BOIL MEAT UNLESS YOU ARE MAKING SOUP.

With a grill, those high temperatures will render the fat inside the dog and result in a spappy texture and slightly charred flavor people want from a grilled dog. Steam it after that and you have crap product IMHO.

So how does this all fit together? How does a vendor know how to judge the crowd and know how much product to keep hot? ESP that's how. And I don't have ESP yet. I just know it's better to throw some product away than to tell somebody "we're out".

Then you will never have to make excuses. If you are in doubt, taste your product. Evaluate your product quality constantly. Get to know how your product tastes and looks and feels in your mouth. I can tell my Hoffy's are at temp just by looking at them.

ANOTHER THING!

If your cook water has lots of chlorine in it and other chemicals such as fluoride, stop using it to boil and steam. Over 20 minutes of that crap and your sausages are picking up that acrid smell and flavor. I probably shouldn't tell you this but only distilled water goes into my pans. But Old Pete told me and I'm telling you. There's a bunch of chemicals in the water and if you don't think it doesn't make a difference in taste, wells, you gotta eat your product. I swear to the Gods. Blind taste-test them.

Lemme see here, there was just one other thing I wanted to tell you....OH YEAH! OK.

The Dr. of BBQ is basically (to my understanding) telling you to hold product in "au jus" which is a pretty good way to hold burgers. But a pre-cooked, frozen and steamed hamburger patty is one poor approximation of anything the Dr. would suffer in his steam tray. Because I would hazard a buess that Doc's bastes improve and add to his product quality because AFTER-COOKING is a big deal there.

To get tecnical, sausages are encased in a semi-permeable membrane and above a certain temp, we're LOOSING FLAVOR NOT ADDING. Fat is rendering out, only chemicals make it in. Most of the flavors and spices we might use are oil and water soluble but the chemicals actually gas out. Recall that Chlorine in it's natural state is a gas. A somewhat unstable gas. It doesn't like to hang around with water all that long.

If you get into a situation where you only have chlorinated or chemicalized water, if you can let is stand in a bucket for 6 hours, most of the pollutants (which modern day soceity and governmental wisdom calls "purificaiton", a lot of that stuff gasses out.

But not the fluoride. I never knew how bad that stuff was until it rotted out the teeth on about $1.5M in horses a buddy of mine had. And I say had becuase it just....man, it just ruined 'em. Poor horses, we didn't figure out what was wrong until way too late. The county had changed from an agricultural water managemend system to an unrban one which meant somebody had to get paid to dump poisons in the water.

Flat top grills should hold a better than BBQ grills. The rule of thumb is serve it fresh and hot off the grill. I don't consider boiled dogs as a good way of serving dogs so I will not comment..............If I had any sausage I would mark it on the grill and hold a few off to the side. If you want to serve the best product then its right off the grill, I want to seal in the juices, and sausage needs to dry cook for this to happen...I would only cook ahead for 15 minutes. People want fresh grilled food, not a cook ahead fail safe approach ................Bill

Konnie  we hold on the griddle with onions peppers covering the sausages at slow time not many but happens. Keeps the flavor and moisture in, have to turn evey once in a while you will know.Put onions peppers on bottom fat drips in and turn fat leaks down. And turn.
 
OzDog  takes three years to Cert Organic Farming. Most of my off time is working with farmers to get and cert. farms. These people have beeen here since middle 40's and they see a money thrend happening. If they can get more for their produce so be it. No chemicals ever since mid 40's. Granted they are not large production but if they can reap the rewards, so be it. They are the small plot,less than 300acres, don't ask for Gov't help, and will out do anyone anyday. They come to me for help on paperwork.

I don’t have a lot of time this AM so I have to keep this short. First I never mentioned holding burgers so I’m not sure where that came from. 2^nd
 
If I were a betting man and from reading the previous post I’d bet no one involved in this thread said anything about boiling hot dogs, and I have posted several times about anyone that even uses that term doesn’t understand anything about dogs or cooking. Dogs are pre cooked so there is no reason to do anything other than heat them, and or char them to add to the taste and of course to add eye appeal.

Check this link http://www.kentqualityfoods.com/media/pdf/KENT_Catalog.pdf

There is a reason this company makes numerous kinds of dogs, and that is so they taste best depending on how you heat/cook/char/ or otherwise prepare them for service.

All that said and I apologize if my previous post was misleading, with the cost of a dog, I would never hold them in any manner past a point that they look and taste their best, no matter what that time may be and that depends on the dog you choose to sell. Hold them in any manner you choose but when they start to appear degraded in any manner throw them out and heat fresh dogs. For god’s sake they are a hot dog and they are pretty cheap.

Some dogs will hold longer than others, some dogs are manufactured for roller grill use, and others are best heated in water. Don’t judge all dogs by your experience with one type of dog.

As for the chlorinated or chemicals in water, or organic, vs non-organic, I could care less, most of us don’t have a choice in that area and I won’t debate those issues.
Jack
 

Why don't you simply toss a couple of dogs in a 1/3 steam table pan in water, place the pan on the grill to keep warm.  When someone orders a dog, toss it on the grill to "dry off" and char slightly (with those high temps it should be pretty fast) to finish the dog up.  David can hold our all beef dogs in the pan for a few hours.  He rotates the dogs out (remove one, replace one, remove two, replace two) and tosses and that he may miss (actually he saves them to feed to the 4 legged customers for free).

Well,Jack (Doctor of Bbq) is correct-any hot dog you can buy is already fully cooked and attains full flavor by merely being reheated. That said some prefer their dogs grilled which can indeed be done with a "dirty water" dog in under 2 minutes-all that is sought is a surface sear. I prep my dirty water dogs by microwaving to near serving temperature and then putting them in queue and when asked for a grilled dog preheat a single in the microwave, give a 5 second dip in the deep fryer, and then finish on the flat top. I could do this with a water dog but since I will be searing anyhow the extra 20 seconds doesn't hurt and actually the customer perceives the extra time as  my giving his order special attention. The exception is a bacon wrapped dog that is lightly heated by microwave and then wrapped in a piece of bacon with the ends held in place with toothpicks and then deep fried 2-2 1/2 minutes until the bacon is done. When deep frying natural casing dogs will tend to rupture their casings and bend to a point they do not fit well in a bun. It is very important that when wrapping bacon only the extreme ends of the dog are exposed. For admitting to a microwave I may be called a heretic, but no dog is harmed by being warmed before it is finished. That said if limiting current draw is a problem and the grill is too hot you could try either a standard sterno fueled chaffing dish or a smaller pan held slightly off the grill surface by heat resistant spacers by 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch...