Brazilian-Style Loaded Hot Dogs! Holy Wieners, Hot Dog MADNESS
I mean, look at THAT nonsense. I've seen overloaded hot dogs before, but this is madness. Madness, I say! The other day, I was alerted to a new way to serve hot dogs, by alert listener Tom Deluca, who holds the distinction of being my former roommate, and also a frequent contributor of topics. He apparently has a couple of Brazilian friends, and I don't know how they ended up on this topic, but they were discussing hot dogs, and his friend Ricardo (I think I got that right, Tom mentioned him in passing), also a podcast listener, told us about the particularly insane way of doing hot dogs local to his home state of Rio Grande do Sul, and they are simply nuts.
I mean, when it comes to hot dogs, I am a classicist, but I'm not dogmatic about it. I enjoy the elemental perfection of a simple mustard and onion dog, the classic chili dog (no cheese, you goddamn barbarian), or a Carolina slaw dog (provided the slaw isn't as sweet as they always make it). I'm a fan of the Berlin-style curry wurst, with its raw onion, ketchup, and curry powder (don't knock it till you've tried it). And I have a few insane hot dog variants of my own design, such as the kimchee dog (cabbage and kimchee), ot the Thai green papaya salad-dog. I respect, if not necessarily enjoy, the Chicago-style hot dog, 'dragged through the garden,' so to speak, with its relish, celery salt, tomato slices, pickle spear, sport peppers, yellow mustard, and onion.
Those are all well and good. But every once in a while, there is a variant that takes it too far over-the-top. I'm not talking about the Rochester Garbage Plate, as discussed in the first episode of the podcast. That's not a hot dog, that's a dish involving hot dogs. Nor is a big dish of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, no matter whether the dogs are cut up to resemble octopi, as discussed in the fourth episode. Similarly, I'm not talking about the insane buchido, which is a burrito with a hot dog in it, which may or may not be an invention of the central North Carolina public school lunch ladies from my elementary school. No, to be a true hot dog, it has to be on a bun. That's a point of nomenclature I'm going to stand firm on.
But what the Brazilians do it a hot dog is simply mental. I was kind of surprised they stayed in the bun. In Rio Grande do Sul, the hot dog is simmered in a tomato sauce (simply made with tomato, onion, and butter), before being put on a toasted, slightly sweet hot dog bun that has been spread with mayo. On top of this, green peas and sweet corn kernels are scattered, and then the whole thing is covered with a layer of shredded mozzarella cheese. Then, it's broiled till the cheese melts, and topped off with shoestring potatoes. How bananas is that?
It doesn't have to stop there, either. Chopped boiled egg is a frequent add-on. In Sao Paolo, the state neighboring Rio Grande do Sul a few states to the north, they replace the mayo with mashed potato! As if it wasn't nuts enough already! Naturally, I was going to need to give that a try.
I looked it up online, just to corroborate, and I found many, many different recipes for this style of loaded street dog. In Rio de Janeiro, they call them 'podrao,' which roughly translates to 'big rotten'. Which sort of reminds me of the 'Big Nasty' from Hominy Grill back in the day, or the Garbage Plate. Like sort of acknowledging that yes, this is too big, and too extravagant, with too much stuff on it. However, remember what Mae West said: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful."
So anyway, I gathered ingredients, cleared my evening schedule, and set out to try my hand at some authentic-ish 'big rotten' dogs.
Ingredient/Component Notes:
The Dogs: I didn't want dog-quality to be my limiting factor here, so I went with the best dog I could find at the store, Snake River Farms. Now, I am not a believer in wagyu or Kobe beef for dogs or burgers. Or anything ground, really. Totally silly, totally pointless. The whole point of Japanese-style beef is that it has intramuscular fat. Once you're grinding something, you can make it as fatty or as lean as you want. It's a total bullshit marketing term, and it's silly. To all the bar-and-grills, fake-fancy-restaurants, and smart casual gastropubs out there: stop marketing your dogs and burgers as 'wagyu.' It paints you as disingenuous or stupid. Do you want to be either of those things? No you do not!
Having said that, Snake River makes a damn good dog. They are a little more expensive, but they have that collagen-casing snap that gives that fantastic mouthfeel. Their flavor is deep and complex, and their texture is flawless. They are a little more expensive, but a particularly expensive hot dog is still, in the grand scheme of things, pretty affordable.
I don't actually know what's traditional. Some recipes called for frankfurters, others called for long, thin pork sausages, so I think it may vary regionally (or even be down to consumer choice, the same way you can get a dog or a brat at a lot of midwestern hot dog stands). But barring access to a perfectly accurate traditional dog, I just thought I'd buy something awesome.
The Buns: My source said use a bun that's a little sweeter than a standard hot dog bun. We agreed that King's Hawaiian was probably the best bet, but I couldn't find them. Then, I happened across 'brioche' buns at the regular grocery store. Were they brioche? Hell, no. However, in common American grocery parlance, 'brioche' seems to mean 'sweetened slightly so our customers will think it's fancy.' So they fit the bill nicely.
The Spread: For the Rio Grande do Sul version, I went with Duke's mayo, because I had it on hand. For the Sao Paolo variant, I peeled, diced, and boiled a couple of russet potatoes, and then crushed them with some butter, cream, and salt, with a fork. (A 2-potato batch didn't seem worth involving the food mill.)
The Sauce: My source said it was super simple, just onions, butter, and tomato. I melted some butter, sweated some onions in that butter, cooked it into kind of a rudimentary soffrito, and then added POM diced tomatoes and simmered them till they broke down. Some of the online recipes had other things in the sauce, like aromatics or chiles, but I decided to keep it simple and go with my source's recommendation.
The Vegetables: Since it's not the 13-day period where English peas are in season around here, I went with a packet of Harris Teeter store-brand organic peas, and just blanched them and shocked them. The corn, I just stripped from the cobs with a bread knife, and sauteed it with a little butter and salt.
The Cheese: Bagged shredded mozzarella. I guarantee hot dog carts in Brazil are not shredding their own cheese, plus ever since embarking on the Deep Dish Pizza Quest, I always seem to have some in my freezer.
The Shoestring Potatoes: I went with this low-brow nonsense:
I was NOT about to spend an hour trying to make shoestring crisps when I could just buy a tub. At first, I was concerned that my somewhat chichi local Teeter was going to have something so low brow, something so 'topper on the church potluck tuna casserole' as this, but I needn't have worried. Mt. Pleasant can pretend it's a posh suburb all it wants, but it's just another coastal Carolina fishing village, just with more breast implants and facelifts. And you know what? These little things are delicious.
The Build: A photo series.
The Verdict: Nuts. Not bad, but definitely over-the-top. It was a terrific blend of flavors and textures. Just the interplay between the crisp potato, the firm snap of the dog, the melted cheese, and the sweet pop of corn and peas, was fantastic and fascinating. In retrospect, I might have gone with a Boar's Head dog (also excellent) instead of the SRF, simply because of size. There is so much going on with this dog, it was hard to close the bun.
Most interestingly were the differences between the two styles. I expected to like the mayo version more. It was just kind of a more reasonable sandwich. And it was good, too. The mayo and the tomato sauce came together to make a creamy tomato gravy, in a way vaguely reminiscent of the way the mayo and the beef gravy come together to make a creamy beef sauce on a New Orleans style beef debris po'boy. It tasted great, but it did blow the bottom seam of the bun out in places.
But the mashed potatoes, man, they took it to a whole different place. First, they were much more watertight than the mayo, so the bun maintained structural integrity (well, better, anyway). But beyond that, it was a flavor and texture improvement, too. It sort of reminded me of thanksgiving leftover sandwiches I'd make as a teenager, where there were elements of every dish on a Thanksgiving table, crammed into one absurdly overstuffed bun. I mean, think about it: you've got a complete meal, with potatoes, sausage, vegetables, sauce, and bread, crammed together into one ridiculous package... Ridiculously awesome, that is.
I don't know when I'll have occasion to make these again. It was kind of a chore to bring all the components together, and I didn't like them more (or even as much) as the much simpler kraut dog, or Coney Island, or any of the other variants mentioned above. But I can't fade the compositional genius of these two closely related, yet totally different, hot-dog-strosities.
-JS
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