Spiral Ham: DIY Spring Hot Dogs

Are you ready to make some spiral-cut hot dogs in celebration of spring? Are you ready to indulge me as I derive a perverse amount of joy in imitating all those shiny lifestyle blogs? Okay!

Step 1. Get you some dogs.

Step 2. Get you a skewer. One is all you need. (Apologies to John Lennon.)

Step 3. Take a deep breath and gently push the skewer lengthwise through the hot dog, staying as close to the center as possible.

Step 4. Use a sharp knife to make one long continuous diagonal cut from one end of the hot dog to the other. Go ahead and cut all the way down to the skewer. You can make the width of the spiral as thick or thin as you want, just try to keep the width more or less the same so you get a nice, even spiral.

Step 5. Pull the skewer out.

Step 6. Cook the hot dog how you normally would. We like to grill ours, but they also turned out great when we cooked them on an unlined baking sheet for the Spring Fourth birthday party. Ten minutes at 350 did the trick. You don’t even need to turn them.

These are great fun for parties, picnics, potlucks…pretty much any time you want to pretend you’re a Very Fancy Person but you still just want to have hot dogs. Here is my Very Fancy Person Hot Dog Lunch on a Random Wednesday. Pinkies up!

When I first heard about this technique (I forget where), it was served with a side order of baloney about how this is a superior way for a person to prepare his or her [gourmet, free-range] frankfurters because the increased surface area of the spiral was better receptive to one’s choice of toppings mango chutney Grey Poupon unicorn tears blaaaaaah, but COME ON. You’re doing this because IT LOOKS COOL, and that, my friends, is reason enough. Hot diggety dog.

One note: We tried this with sausages once and it didn’t work, probably because the consistency of sausages isn’t, well…consistent. Most sausages have bits and chunks of different ingredients speckled throughout (bits! chunks! I’M SORRY!), whereas your regular plain old hot dogs are made up of the same generic meat mass all the way through. Mmmmmmmmmm. Meat mass. Meat mess.

I hope you love these. I also hope they’ll work when cut and cooked on a roasting stick, because goodness knows we do love our campfire food around here. Four more days until the time change and we can try it out!

Bonus for sticking it through to the end: A ver brief pictorial explanation of how it is that my fingernails are painted rainbow colors yet I am neither five years old nor Rainbow Brite.

More tomorrow!