Well, I had the family and neighbors over last night and fired up the cart to see how the dogs worked out. Everyone seemed to give me the thumbs up on the dog choices and I was REALLY pleased with how my big dogs worked out.
I'm going to use the Pearls medium size dogs (5:1s), keep steamed first, then added some slices in the casing and grilled to order. They brown up REALLY nice and all that extra juice inside makes for some great aromatic lure to the cart!! I added some Sabrett's onion sauce and hot mustard on a steak roll for those, and my big boys (hubby and neighbor) would eat nothing else after that :)
My small dogs I still had to test run. I have Old Neighborhood's 8:1s available in large packages at Restaurant Depot, but I had never tried them (not available in any other stores around... including BJ's and Sam's.... but Sam's doesn't have much here anyway). So Restaurant Depot had small packages available yesterday (8/pk), so I took them home and compared them to my favorite Boar's Heads (same size).
The rest of the group tried one of each... at first without any toppings and just in a bun... and they said that the Old Neighborhood's were just as good as the Boar's Head. I personally think the Boar's Heads are better, but for the price difference, the Old Neighborhoods are a strong contender for the cart. They had a good consistency in the steam pans, they held their color, and the taste was comparable to the Boar's Head... most people wouldn't know the difference.
So, I'm pretty excited about my choices now... but I've also learned that I can't pull off the extensive menu I had originally planned... there's just not enough room to carry everything I need all the time. So, I'll run a "special of the day" for the chili dogs and the cheese dogs and other fun stuff.
I will need more practice with the gloves/tongs combos. I found if I tried to open my buns just with the tongs that the bread sometimes didn't cooperate and I accidentally touched the bun with my hand. So, I gloved my left hand and used tongs in my right hand, and that worked out better actually.
Do any of you use a dog rack to prep more than one dog at a time. I found only one place where I can find one (www.precisioncarts.com/accessories) for $39.00!!!!! I looked on Ebay and didn't see any :( Please let me know if you know of where else I can find this or something similar for less money.
I also found that I'll probably put on raw onions, Sabrett onion sauce, and relish for my customers... leave out the mustards, the ketchup (for those who don't know any better), the celery salt, and the hot sauce out on my table for self-serving. Any feedback on how that works out for any of you when you are working would be helpful :)
For those of you who use the self-serve mustards/ketchup etc, do you find that your customers have an easier time with the large pump containers or the smaller squirt bottles??
Thanks for reading all this, and any feedback is welcomed
