Hot Dog Recipes
No matter if you call them hot dogs, wieners, or frankfurters, these hot dog recipes have all been developed to make them suitable for home sausage making.
They're meant to be made with quality meats, not the nasty things you hear are sometimes put into commercial hot dogs.
Great wieners can be made from just about any combination of meat, but the most common are beef or pork (or a combination of the two.
Hot Dogs are a cured and cooked sausage. They can be cooked (and smoked) in the smoke house or you can add liquid smoke to the recipe mix and finish them in simmering water on the stove.
Either way, it's important to remember to use a cure.
Emulsifying Meat
Almost all commercially produced hot dogs are made with emulsified meat.
You can produce a good frankfurter at home by grinding your meat multiple times through the finest plate on your meat grinder but...
...If you want to go the extra step (and you own a food processor) you can emulsify your frankfurter meat and make something very close to a commercial product (only better).
By the way, this process works nicely for bratwurst, knockwurst, and bologna style sausages also.
- Grind your meat twice through the smallest plate of your meat grinder.
- Add all of the spices and cure to the meat and mix very well.
- Refrigerate the meat mixture for about 30 minutes to make sure it is good and cold.
- In small batches, process the chilled meat mixture in your food processor until it is the consistency of a fine mousse (almost like baby food). Continue until all the meat has been emulsified.
I find it is easier to get a good emulsification if I add small amounts of ice water to mixture while it is being processed.
You can add as much as 1 1/2 cups of water to 5 lbs of meat without it having any adverse effects on your finished sausage.
Hot Dog Recipes
