Let me clarify the winding path that led me towards making Rachael Ray’s Chicago Dog Salad. Last month I wrote about Portillo’s Chicago Dog vs. Wienerschnitzel’sand in that style check, I got here to understand that I’m merely not a fan of your run-of-the-mill Chicago-style sizzling canine. These dogs, topped with tomatoes, pickles, onions, sport pepperscelery salt, and relish, are all the time subjected to the same insult: It’s a salad on prime of a sizzling canine. To many people, a sizzling canine is finest when it’s easy: beef tube, condiment, bun, perhaps some onions. Too many greens have a tendency to show individuals off. Unless, after all, the greens are the purpose.
The old Chicago canine insult rang in my thoughts to the purpose the place I couldn’t cease serious about the idea of a sizzling canine salad. Maybe a sizzling canine salad isn’t that dangerousI assumed. Wait, I guess sizzling canine salads are already a factor, I assumed. Sure sufficient, a fast Google search of “Hot Dog Salad” yielded loads of outcomes.
The sizzling canine salad, defined
Those outcomes come within the type of many recipes. Even The New Yorker has a recipe for a sizzling canine salad, by which creator Tamar Adler makes a case for the recent canine salad as a sound use of leftovers, very similar to Jacques Pepin would use braised meats to make a salad the subsequent day. Adler makes use of yum goon chianga Thai sausage salad, as inspiration:
“Hot-dog salad” is just not a phrase that naturally ignites the urge for food, however please hear me out. The sweetness and saltiness and tube-iness of sizzling dogs makes them a viable possibility for a salad impressed by a Thai yum goon chiangwhich is often made with candy Chinese sausage. Thinly slice the recent dogs on a bias and sear them shortly—or, even higher, lower them into matchsticks after which sear them till the perimeters are crisp—then mix them with copious quantities of herbs and shallot, plus chili, lime, fish sauce, and sugar. The cook dinner Leela Punyaratabandhu adds cucumber to her yum goon chiang. I feel my hot-dog salad advantages from cucumber, as properly. And peanuts.
The recipe sounds phenomenal, and it proves past the shadow of a doubt that with the appropriate substances and stability of flavors, sizzling canine salad can completely work. The query I’ve is whether or not a Chicago canine salad can work.
With a Chicago canine, individuals usually complain that the bun will get too soggy. That shouldn’t ever occur, and if the greens are dried correctly it gained’t. But what if, to sidestep this challenge, you removed the bun fully? What in the event you embraced the salad-ness of the Chicago canine and stopped serious about it like a sandwich in any respect? Would the flavors nonetheless work? Rachael Ray positive as hell thinks so.
Rachael Ray’s tackle the recent canine salad
One of the primary Google searches for a sizzling canine salad yields a recipe from celebrity chef Rachael Ray. Essentially, it’s the substances of a Chicago canine, minus one or two parts, blended right into a bowl. Here’s the full recipe from the Food Network.
Reading Ray’s recipe, it’s simple to be judgmental of the entire idea, however there’s one thing reassuring and even familial about this salad. We’ve all had leftover sizzling dogs (cooked or raw) sitting round after a barbecue, so why not repurpose them in all types of the way?
On paper, the recent canine salad isn’t probably the most sensical factor on this planet, nevertheless it’s a thrifty use for one’s groceries. I needed to discover out if it tasted any good.
How does Rachael Ray’s sizzling canine salad style?
Ray’s “salad” seems to be much less like a leafy salad and extra like a cruciferous coleslaw studded with sizzling dogs. It’s obtained an actual aspect dish vibe to it. Still, the flavors do work. Let’s discuss in regards to the good right here.
For starters, I actually just like the thrifty French dressing she makes with yellow mustard, vinegar, oil, and sugar. It’s tangy, barely candy, and packs the required punch to tame the recent canine’s pure fatty taste. I’ll say, nonetheless, that yellow mustard in a salad dressing feels profane. Using Dijon can be most popular, however hey, after a barbecue you in all probability don’t have Dijon laying round. You’ve obtained yellow mustard.
The salad itself incorporates romaine, store-bought coleslaw mix, tomatoes, pickles, and crimson onion. When blended with the mustard French dressing, it varieties a crunchy, tangy base, however the salad is just not excellent at this stage; the mustard taste is simply too pronounced. It wants one thing. It wants sizzling dogs.
In the accompanying videoRay actually cooks the dwelling hell out of her sizzling dogs. They are darkish—caramelized, crispy, and practically burnt. And they need to be, as a result of steamed sizzling dogs wouldn’t work right here. I do know there’s some debate as as to whether Chicago dogs ought to come steamed, water-simmered, or charcoal grilled. Food author Whitney Moeller covers this in her Substack newsletter, Dig In!: On a bun, steamed works. On a salad, the recent dogs want some extra texture and taste. Much like in yum goon chiang, the meat must be seared and crisped.
What strikes me in regards to the sizzling canine salad is how weirdly romantic it’s. Each element wants one another: The plain sizzling dogs don’t work with out the salad, and the mustardy salad actually doesn’t work with out the recent dogs. The mustard cuts via the meat whereas the recent dogs add crucial fats to the brilliant and tangy salad. True symbiosis.
If you need to nitpick, you could possibly say that this salad is lacking some key parts of a Chicago canine. Sport peppers are notably absent, as is the celery salt. After tasting a number of bites of the salad, I threw on a number of pickled banana pepper rings, which added tangy warmth akin to gardener. Perhaps even the bun of a Chicago canine could possibly be recreated with some poppy seed croutons. As it stands, this recipe isn’t a straight 1:1 recreation of a Chicago canine in salad type. It’s only a practical use of leftovers repurposed to feed a household. I can’t assist however see culinary big Jacques Pépin on this recipe.
I’m positive Ray’s recipe has been shamed to excessive hell within the years because it was launched, however I assist it. The Chicago Dog Salad works, and for the recent canine critics, it would even be preferable to the long-lasting regional delicacy.
