Bacon-wrapped hotdogs are an illicit treat you can find on the street after sports games and concerts.  The vendors selling them are often unlicensed and have a home-brew stand cobbled together from a wire shopping cart and a couple sheet pans from Smart and Final.  Pretty sure they’re not HACCP approved.  Delicious tasting though.

Here’s my method for getting close to that flavor at home.

Equipment for me is the key on this one. The street vendors fry the bacon in oil so the bacon can get nice and crispy. It’s pretty labor intensive and you have to keep turning the dogs to get an even browning. I wanted a more hands-off approach – and I needed to make a bunch at once for my son’s soccer team. Enter the Vollrath rack:

It took a little bit of reading, but I got the numbers to work out. Farmer John dogs are eight to a pack, and Smithfield bacon is pretty consistently 16 slices to a pound.

Would have liked to stay all local on this one but I couldn’t get an accurate slice count from the Farmer John package. Spiral wrap the bacon on the dogs, and you get the following.

Now the rack goes into the oven – for bacon, start with a cold oven – and I had mine at 375 F. I roasted the bacon and dogs for about 30 minutes. I turned them once.  They do ( dogs and bacon ) render a lot of grease, so the pan helps.  While they were roasting I seeded and sliced some jalapenos.

I did not go all out with condiments on my dogs – ketchup, mustard – I left that for the soccer kids to decide. I did set out the jalapenos and serranos so that there was something for the grown-ups too.

My version is a little spartan compared to a lot of others you see, maybe next time I’ll try a little ketchup and mustard in there to see if it adds anything.

Taste the local flavor indeed.