Help a vegetarian cook hot dogs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm 9:52. To the vegetarians, think of the difference between boiling and roasting potatoes - boiled potatoes are fine but soft and bland, whereas roasted potatoes are crisy and flavorful. That's the same distinction between boiled hot dogs, on one hand, and broiled/grilled/baked hot dogs, on the other. No fat drips off of hot dogs when you bake or broil them, btw, so I get it if you don't like the smell of cooked meat but they are not dripping with fat or anything. And yes op, you can bake them with crescent rolls - I cut each uncooked hot dog in half, wrap in crescent rolls dough, and bake at 375 for 10-12 min. My kids love them that way.

This is a silly analogy. Potatoes are soft and bland when boiled both because they are absorbent and because they need to be cooked thoroughly to dissolve starch.

Hot dogs have a relatively impervious outside layer and, more importantly, are pre-cooked meat that merely need to be warmed through. If you put a hot dog in boiling water, it will take less than a minute to warm through. In that time, it absorbs virtually no water, leaches only a tiny amount of flavor, and the interior texture doesn’t change at all. Boiling also does nothing at all to the healthiness of the hot dog in that time.

Grilling a hot dog can be a nice option if you like the taste of grill marks and if you don’t like the minutely slimy texture the outside of a hot dog naturally has until it comes in contact with high heat. If you overgrill a hot dog, it will also temporarily seem more “crispy” because you have temporarily caused the proteins in the hot dog to size. The first bite will be crispy, it will then ooze more juice than it should, and the remaining bits will be dry.

But the idea that the inside of a boiled hot dog tastes different or has a different texture than the inside of a grilled or baked or broiled or sautéed hot dog just isn’t true, unless you’re cooking it way too long by any of these methods.

[Anonymous]

Chicago style hot dogs are always boiled! The best.

[Anonymous]

Boiled hotdogs are the best... gets rid of all the fat

[Anonymous]

The potato analogy was the best I could think of to describe the taste difference to a vegetarian! And I stand by the improved crispy texture and taste of a grilled/broiled hot dog - the meat sizzles inside so it definitely affects more than just the skin.