Ronald's Saturday Off: Bacon Burger Dogs, and Quick Cobbler.

Ronald’s Saturday Off: Bacon Burger Dogs.

Remember back in the early days of growing up watching The Cosby Show, and we would often hear the term “Bacon Burger Dog”? Well, I often heard about them as well, but I had never quite put my head around what they truly were.  Before I started college, a video surfaced on YouTube from The BBQ Pit Boys. What it appeared to be is the “Bacon Burger Dog”. Long recipe short, you’re taking the ground beef, wrapping it around a hotdog, and then wrapping bacon around it.

I find that these are perfect for tailgating, and I’m sure many people have been making these. What I usually see is people would often take regular hotdogs, and wrap them in bacon. However, here’s my step by step method to creating these.

First, when you buy your ingredients, you may want to “theme” your flavors. For instance, if you go to a party, and someone cannot eat red meat, you can alter them by using turkey bacon, turkey hotdogs, and ground turkey. You can also use ground chicken, ground bison, chicken hotdogs, beef hotdogs, or anything that is suitable for someone’s needs. But with me, I’m just going to keep it simple.

LIGHT UP THE GRILL!!

First, I find regular hotdogs. The hotdogs I usually use are made with pork and chicken. I also use 80/20 ground beef, and then I make sure to get some good, quality bacon. Natural casing hotdogs also work!! I picked up Center Cut Bacon just because it has less fat content. My mistake, I would suggest regular size.

Season your ground beef with seasoned salt, black pepper, and a hint of red pepper. You can use any season of your choice, if you want. No need to add onions but if you want to, go ahead.

With your hands, grind your meat so that it’s well mixed.

Take a baseball sized handful of ground meat, and flatten it out as if you’re making a hamburger patty. Be sure to see that your meat is in between super thin, and not too thick.

Next, take a hotdog, and place them on the end of your ground meat. Roll it as the ground meat wraps around the hotdog. When you start to see a bit much, just cut off some of the ground meat, and then start to mold it around your hotdog.

Take a strip of bacon, and then wrap it around the ground meat. Try not to coat the entire hotdog, but at least to where both the ground meat, and hotdog is visible. It may take you at least two strips of bacon, to coat. It doesn’t have to be fully wrapped.

Now that your grill is hot enough to about 350-400 degrees of heat, place your bacon burger dogs opposite of the coals. You want to make sure that they are indirect of the heat. Let them cook, and about 20 minutes in the cooking, take your bacon burger dogs and rotate them so that they have an even process of cooking.

Noticed how the coals are? This was for picture purpose of what NOT to do.

In total, the time is at least 45 minutes into cooking these. However, take one to see if it’s fully done all the way through.  If you’re making these at home, I would suggest that you cook them on your grill, and then transfer them to an oven. Or, you can grill these ahead of time, and let them cook in a electric roaster or a crock pot.

Toppings:

Place some cheese on top of these while they are cooking. As you place them on your bun, put some chopped onions on them, and serve them with some BBQ sauce.

This batch went right into the oven. You can do the same for a crock pot

The Mahogany Quilters and Student Residents
Super Soul Food Sunday

Quick Cobbler

Back when I was a sophomore in college, my RA, Caitlyn, and I, thought about putting together a Super Soul Food Sunday in the dorm. Basically it consisted of a African-American history discussion on quilts by “The Mahogany Thread-Quilters”, and a taste of Soul Food. Since peach cobbler takes a long time to make, we decided to keep it simple. So here’s the recipe that we used…

You can use any pie filling that you want. I’m just going to use peach.

1 stick of Butter

1 cup of Sugar

¾ cup of Self-rising flour

¾ cup of WHOLE Milk

2 cans of Pie [Fruit] filling

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Before doing anything, place your stick of butter in a 9x13 baking pan. Don’t grease it. Just place it in the pan. When your oven is finished of being preheated, place your baking dish in the oven to let the butter melt.

While your butter is melting, in a large bowl, combine your sugar and flour. Mix it together while pouring in your milk SLOWLY, as you’re stirring your mix. Be careful to not have your batter “lumpy”. It should be a smooth batter.

Next, take your butter out of the oven, and with the batter, pour it in the butter. DO NOT STIR WITH THE BUTTER. Make sure that it is poured out evenly.

Caitlyn's Baking Away!!

Take your pie filling, and pour it out evenly on top of the buttered batter. Again, DO NOT STIR!!

Place your pan back in the oven for about 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, check your cobbler. If you want, you can place it back in the oven for an extra five minutes, depending on your crust.

Finished Product

Once it’s done, take it out.

Let it cool, and serve it with homemade vanilla ice cream.

This is the cobbler Caitlyn made, without my help

. I thought it was DELICIOUS!!











Happy Tailgating!!

Ronald Atkinson