One of the fastest ways to go out of business is to serve a tasteless, mushy excuse for a hot dog at your cart. In today’s lesson, let’s find out how to avoid that.
Cody writes…
Hey Steve my biggest question that I can’t find any where is. How long can the hot dogs sit in water before the taste of the dog chances? What do you recommending how long to keep them in before they become waste?
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You Must Experiment. Different brands of hot dogs have widely varying holding times, especially in water. Do a taste test yourself at home. You don’t even need a cart to do this. Here’s how…
Put six dogs in hot water and taste one every ten minutes. You will find out how long your particular hot dogs can hold up.
Don’t ever leave hot dogs in boiling water. You’ll turn them into mush. Your hot holding water should be somewhere around 160 degrees.
Here’s a Neat Little Trick. I get my dogs up to temperature fast in boiling water, then immediately transfer them to my steamer where they will last a loooong time without going mushy or losing their flavor.
Thoughts Slingers?
-Steve
HDP
Hello Steve,
We boil our nathons dogs for 3 minutes then to the steamer. We never boil more than 7 minutes and our customers just love the taste. Not one complaint since we started in April. Business is steady at Lowes and i’am now building my 2nd cart.
Reggie’s Dawg House!
Good for you Reggie!
I haven’t boiled a dog in a year, I always steam now, we use Nathan’s and they hold up very well in the steam trays, I do boil my smoked and then transfer them to steam.
Nathans are good dogs.
I have avoided the whole mess by deep frying mine.
Cool. Send me some pics of your set up!
I hold mine in beef broth to keep from losing flavor.
Thanks Rick – hey I need you to call me regarding your free website. 636-399-2460.
-Steve
We always steamed ours. Bout 3 hours max in the steam before they pop.
Natural casings will only take so much stretch !!! Arrrr har har har !!
No fried dogs here only fresh steamed.
1St Mate Jim.
There’s about seven jokes regarding your comment that I can’t say (this is a family website, lol).
I used members mark all beef dogs and cooked them with better than beef bullion. Then transferred to steam table in same liquid.
Do you ever serve hot dogs left over hotdogs from the previous day?
No.
Oscar Myer all beef hot dogs have the best taste I have ever had.
They are also cheap! Good way to keep them coming back!
That’s what I thought. I was told they would be ok but I didn’t think so. Didn’t want to chance it always use fresh every day.
I steam my dogs, it seems to keep that texture or I like to say SNAP when you bite into dog. But here is the thing, It’s a great question but not supper important. See as you go on you will know when you will have the mad rush and about how many dogs you need in a day. That’s the more important issue to me serving a bad dog is a No No, when I first started I put a few dogs in and at times I had people wait for a fresh dog that will taste so good it will make your toes wiggle 🙂 I’d also offer a free bag of chips for the wait. Like I said when I FIRST started slinging. I believe by doing that rather then serving possible bad dogs was more important yes I had a few walk away’s. But here is a fact serve bad food any good or give a bad service the customer will tell 10 ppl how bad it was as angry ppl talk. Serve a GREAT DOG and they might tell just ONE person how great it was. That’s word of mouth it’s very important and opposite of what most pole believe. So how long will be completely up to you to figure out. I hope for you and every digger it’s 20 minutes so you all run out of dogs and build a awesome business
Right on Tony!
I’m going to start my own hot dog stand pretty soon doing all the research and learning how to cook Them well. Thank you
You’re in the right place Kristi! We’re here to help you. Let us know what you need.
-Steve
Steve, It sounds like holding your hot dogs in a steamer is the best way to keep your dogs from going bad, should you not sell them right away. My questions are:
1) Do you start with frozen hot dogs when you start by boiling them?
2) About how long do you boil them before sending them over to the steamer? (Are they fully cooked and then kept warm using steam?)
3) I know when I steam a dog at home the water is at a “rolling boil” when I only steam them. When I’m holding a dog in a steamer, am I correct in assuming that you turn down the flame so that there isn’t as much steam?
4) Can you guestimate for me how much steam is needed to keep them warm, but not continue to over cook them and not to little steam so that they aren’t warm or fall below the safe holding temperature?
I know every system is different so some basic/general guide lines will help and be much appreciated. Thanks Steve.
1. Yes
2. 7 minutes
3. Yes. In fact, after your water is boiling you can turn off the flame entirely for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Steam can get much hotter than the boiling temp of water. Hot enough to burst and ruin the dogs. Just make sure your dogs internal temp stays above 140 degrees.
4. See # 3
Steve, My experiments show that boiling is best when cooking a large number of hot dogs for a large group. When you boil 36 hot dogs in a full-size spillage pan, they all get done at about the same time, whereas when I tried to steam that many they didn’t get cooked evenly as some parts of the hot dogs are over the steamer holes and some are not. This made some of the dogs done before others which took more time and effort. The 36 frozen dogs were done in approximately 9 minutes and that’s throwing them all in the boiling water at the same time, completely frozen.
My question is regarding adding something like beef bouillon to keep the boiling water from sapping out all the flavor until the water gets nice and “Dirty”. I notice that when you boil a dog (small numbers of dogs) the flavor can go away, whereas when the water gets nice and “Dirty” it actually enhances the flavor.
1) Do you add anything to your water like vinegar and a type of bouillon?
2) Can you recommend something to keep the water from “sapping” out the flavor until the cooking water gets “Dirty”?
3) Any personal recommendations will be appreciated.
Hi Kevin,
1. I don’t personally add anything to my water, however beef bullion is popular.
2. See #1
Vinegar helps keep the dogs from turning brown if they sit in the water a long time.
Hope this helps!
Hi Steve , I am thinking about opening a hot dog store can you please give me any advice, Thanks Ray
Hi Ray, I have an inexpensive course that will really help you get started the right way. Check it out at https://hotdogprofitspremium.com
See you over there!
-Steve
[…] boiling hot dogs, which begs the question, what happens when hot dogs sit in the pot for too long? Hot Dog Profits states that they’ll get mushy and emphasizes that hot dogs should never be left in boiling […]
Steve… ur driving me crazy with this outlandish hotdoggery. My mouth is waterin… my toes are wigglin…. the wife and kids left month ago…. But all I can think about is those sweet little dawgs u got stewing in that beef bullion…. I’ve been truckin for years but nothin quenches my burnin desire like the taste of an all American hot diggity doooooo….. Hell yeah brother…. Gobbless