Why hello there! And welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where chaos still reigns. I’m your Verbose Vizier, filling in while Chaos is indisposed, Jon O’Guin. Today’s dishes are easy, though not necessarily quick, and are suited to the season. So if you want to whip up some sufficiently different Hot dogs without a lot of jabberjaw, click this link to skip the chit-chat. For everyone else, let’s dig in.

My Weenie Cup Runneth Over

That line was weirder than I thought it would be in my head. Hello everybody, and welcome back. Today’s recipes are…children of necessity, as it were. It turns out the chaos of July has not fully unfurled: Now that my first show has closed, and my brother’s wedding has been wrapped up, I find myself facing two issues: the SECOND show I was cast in has encountered several shake-ups and difficulties, and the fact that the many tools and dishes gathered for my brother’s wedding haven’t been dissipated. For instance, the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding was determined to be a simple affair of hot dogs and hamburgers, with Beyond burgers with vegan cheese for the non-carnivores in the group. A group we were told to expect could be potentially as large as 40-50 people. But some travel difficulties, and one medical emergency, meant the actual turnout was closer to 25-30. So my house is STUFFED with extra buns, pickles, left-over burgers and hot dogs, chips, bottled waters, etc.

So many buns, so little time.

Combined with things like “I ran out of planned meals mid-July”, “no one in my family wants to talk about potential meals, and “I can’t go grocery shopping on my own anymore because the car is still in the shop” means that the last week saw very little progress in terms of getting anything sorted for the site. Luckily, I did cook ONE thing that is maybe somewhat interesting to talk about…but it’s also really easy, so I doubled down and made two kind of easy things. Specifically, I made a Seattle Dog, and what I’m tentatively calling a “Seoul” Dog, but we’ll talk about why that’s not a super-great name. First, though, let’s tackle the home turf.

Seattle is Well Known for Coffee, Tech, and…Cream Cheese?

Now, you might have already heard of this dish, as it’s been slowly growing in popularity for the past 20 years. The “Seattle Dog” is the Seattle attempt to get its own distinct form of hot dog. Many big cities have them: The Great Lakes region is RIFE with Coney Dogs, named by Greek and Macedonian immigrants for Coney Island, which they passed by while immigrating to places like Detroit and Fort Wayne, Ohio and Minnesota. The Half-Smoke of DC, and the Sonoran of the Southwest. Look, we’ll take some time to talk about all of this on Thursday, but for now, the relevant point is “many parts of the US have distinctive hot dogs, and this is the widely accepted “Seattle” version.” Which is interesting, because, from the history of the dish, you’d kind of expect New York to have come up with it first.

Specifically, the Seattle Dog is a hot dog (sometimes a polish sausage) in a bun, with cream cheese and grilled/caramelized onions. Supposedly, it comes from around the same year I was born, 1988: as Grunge music took off, and Pioneer Square became THE late-night destination, a nearby Bagel stand encountered a problem: a bunch of drunk concert-goers were driving up business by buying bagels, but they were also whining that they wanted something with meat, suggesting the shop would make a killing if they carried hot-dogs. Hadley Longe, the owner, didn’t love the idea, but capitulated by buying bialy sticks with cream cheese and onion: the bialys (bee-all-ees) could be sold as is, or a hot dog could be plopped into the same depression as the cream cheese. People loved it, and with a year or two, other food carts and bars in the region were offering hot dogs with cream cheese to appeal to those same consumers. It got bigger when the Kingdome (RIP) hosted the NCAA Final Four in 1989, since Pioneer Square is like, 5 blocks from where the Kingdome used to stand, and was on the main thoroughfares if you were heading back up town or to the ferries after the games.

You get yourself tucked under that pergola there, get a hot dog in your hand on a drizzly night, boom.

The idea really got widespread in 2001, when the Mariners, at their new stadium, had a record-breaking season (the last good one, so far), so people started showing up to their game. (It’s not that we’re fair-weather fans: this is Seattle, there’s no fair-weather to be had. It’s more that it’s very hard to get us to come out of our homes. As I noted a couple months ago (…oh no, I apparently didn’t. That’s the post I wrote up, but then had a terrible week so I never got to upload it. Shit) Anywho, as I ATTEMPTED to note a couple months ago, Seattle’s biggest hours for nightlife are its HAPPY HOURS, because Seattle does not have the same night life scene as other big cities: people get drinks and dinner to avoid rush hour traffic, then they go to house parties and try to stay out of traffic). Hot Dog stands proliferated, and demands for cream cheese were common enough to necessitate most carts meeting demand.

It’s certainly a unique combo, but MOST people who try it find that it’s pretty good: it sets up a fun temperature and textural contrast: the hot meat of the hot dog, often in a snappy casing, against the cool creaminess of the cream cheese. It’s more than a little rich, so it helps if you get something to cut it: I’m a big fan of celery salt, or jalapeño cream cheese, both options at the place I first tried them, Munchy’z, a hot-dog-stand, then a business, and I think back to a hot-dog-stand in my college town of Pullman.

Who, no joke, announced they were re-opening like, 30 minutes after I wrote that sentence.
I edited out the timing on this picture so you don’t see how shamefully long it took me to get to this step, but I assure you, it was there.

It’s by no means a non-contentious pick: an article on the phenomenon in 2012 garnered multiple Seattleites complaining that they’d never heard of it, and accusing it of being a trend foisted on the city by outsiders, which is a CLASSIC Seattleite move. “I don’t personally recognize this, so it must be an ignorant TOURIST’S opinion” . Hell, the place that the supposed OG vendor bought his bialy sticks from? They don’t even put cream cheese on their hot dogs. Or, rather, I should say “didn’t”: it actually shut down 8ish years ago, like, within a year of the article about them being part of the dish’s history coming out. Tragic timing.

So, to MAKE this beast, you need some cream cheese.

Shown blandly here.

There’s a bit of a disagreement/contrast on how best to prepare/apply it. Many businesses use whipped cream cheese, which flows more easily. Others use caulking guns to force non-whipped cream cheese, while still others are required to use cream cheese packets, due to permitting issues. For a simple at home preparation like this one, I just went with softened normal cream cheese, though if you want to put in the extra effort, you can whip cream cheese, beating together 8 ounces of cream cheese with 1 tablespoon of milk or (according to at least one source) sparkling water.

You’ll also need prepared onions. Personally, I tend to lean a little more toward caramelized than simply sautéed or grilled, despite it eating up a lot more time.

This picture is probably too close to the next one, but I really felt like I needed to have more than just a picture of a block of cream cheese, and then the finished product.

Slap them on a hot dog, sprinkle with some celery salt if you like, or something spicier, and Boom, Seattle Dog.

Visually very interesting. Super well shot, Jon.

ON TO PART TWO

Shang Tsung once choked on South Korea’s Seoul

Very weird ref Title Jon. I like it. Anywho, I felt that I couldn’t just give you guys the Seattle Dog, since it’s only 4 ingredients, and doesn’t have a particularly robust history, so I decided to needed to add something else to the post. Unfortunately, I then did the pro gamer move of “Not researching any other kinds of hot dogs, or getting the ingredients for the ones I do known how to make”.

Very pro gamer move.

As such, the second dog I made today is based on South Korean PRINCIPLES, hence the name “Seoul Dog"” but I am making no claims to it being authentic. It’s just like, what I chose to make off of the prompt. But I WILL explain WHY I did everything.

Now, OBVIOUSLY, the first thing you need for a Seoul Dog is Kimchi and Gochujang. These are important ingredients, because if you think about a classic hot dog, with the mustard, ketchup, and relish, you’re dealing with pungency/spice from the mustard, sweetness/texture from the relish, and vinegar/sweetness/umami from the ketchup. Kimchi and Gochujang, therefore, cover a lot of the same bases: Gochujang is sweet, and spicy, and umami, like the middle-point between mustard and ketchup, and Kimchi is spicy relish.

Just with, you know, vastly less color range.

To that, we wanna add a cheese dog. This is for a couple reasons, the first of which is, to engage in a bit of racial stereotyping: South Korea is weirdly into cheese. I say weirdly because, according to some studies, literally 100% of South Korea’s population is, to some degree, lactose intolerant. A South Korean corn dog (a much worthier contender for the title of “Seoul Dog”…to the degree that there is literally a chain of Korean Corn Dog vendors with the name) often includes melted cheese as one of the ingredients, or even fully replacing the hot dog itself, creating essentially a giant mozzarella stick…on a stick. (interestingly, in Korea, corn dogs are just called hot dogs, since Korea and other East Asian countries don’t typically use many buns or bread with dishes, so battering and frying hot dogs is a more natural cooking process for them.)

Side note on the ones in the back here: those are chunks of potato. So these are like, Corn Dog-Mozzarella Sticks-Tater-Tots fusion.

So rather than make a whole corn dog right now (though I am considering it), I’ll just pop a cheese dog in there. Besides, it helps me finish off one of the many packages of hot dogs in the house.

Heated cheese dog goes on the gochujang and kimchi…and then there’s the flourish. To wit, we’re going to “sushi style” this bad boy a little, by hitting it with some kewpie mayo and Japanese Barbecue sauce (aka Teriyaki sauce), for added richness (since the gochujang and kimchi are a little more potent at cutting through stuff than standard mustard and relish) and sweetness.

This isn’t my best mayo drizzle, but the teriyaki is a little easier to see.

The result is perfectly fine. The flavors actually blend together quite nicely, so it’s kind of hard to think of it as a special kind of hot dog: it’s just sweet, salty, savory, and a little spicy, in all the ways you kind of expect a good hot dog to be. It’s definitely a version I’m happy to keep tinkering with.

The Tail End

And that’s two special hot dog styles, if you’re looking for something to serve up as summer starts winding down. They’re both special ENOUGH that they make an impression, while also being simple enough that you can hammer them out from a quick trip to the supermarket. And for some reason, I’ve started having a writing identity crisis, so I’m going to pack this in for the moment, and wrap this all up Tuesday morning. Does that sound like me? What do I normally sound like? Will hot dogs sate this confusion? Normally 2 AM is a great time to grab a Seattle Dog, but I am not NEARLY drunk enough to really vibe with it. Till next time, little doggie.

THURSDAY: I GUESS WE’RE TALKING ABOUT HOT DOGS.

MONDAY: MAN, WE’RE A DAY LATE BECAUSE JON DIDN’T MAKE THE SEOUL DOGS UNTIL MONDAY AFTERNOON, AND LAST WEEK HE HAD FEWER NIGHTS OF REHEARSAL THAT TOOK LESS TIME. WHO KNOWS IF HE’LL GET SOMETHING USEFUL DONE IN TIME.

Time to whip up these

RECIPES

Seattle Dog

Ingredients (for 2)

One medium onion, sliced thin

2 tbsp butter

Salt and pepper

3 tbsp cream cheese, softened

2 hot dogs

2 buns

Celery Salt

Preparation

In a skillet over medium heat, melt the butter, add the onion, and cook to desired doneness, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.
Cook hot dogs to desired doneness.
Spread half of the cream cheese on each bun, add hot dogs, and top with onions. Sprinkle with celery salt

“Seoul” Dog

Makes 2

Ingredients

2 Cheese dog/Bedder with Cheddar/other cheese-studded sausage product

2 buns

¼ cup kimchi, roughly chopped

3 tsp gochujang

2 tbsp kewpie mayo

2 tbsp Teriyaki sauce, or Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce

Preparation

Prepare the cheese dog as directed.
Spread the gochujang on one side of each bun, and place half the kimchi on the other. Nestle the cooked dog between them. Drizzle over Kewpie and sauce. Serve