Friday, August 27, 2010

Home made Corn Dogs

I love these things. I never had the pleasure of having one in New York where they first made an appearance but have always enjoyed them at carnivals and exhibitions. I used extra sized all-beef pure franks and used a glass to dip them in the batter. That way the batter coats the entire wiener. The secret is to keep the weiners as dry as possible otherwise the batter won't stick properly.
I was getting somewhat annoyed at having cornmeal lying around the cupboard and not having a proper use for it since I stopped making cornbread with it. Too dry. I've since substituted creamed corn for that so this seemed like the best use of it.

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons of bacon fat or duck fat
oil or shortening for deep frying
10-12 hot dogs
wooden skewers or popsicle sticks

Directions:

Heat the oil in the deep fryer until it's 360°.

Combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt, bacon fat and cayenne pepper with a fork in a medium sized mixing bowl.

In a smaller bowl, beat the eggs with milk and the 1/4 cup of oil. Stir egg and milk mixture into dry ingredients and mix until the batter is fairly smooth and consistent.

Pour the batter into a tall glass. A beer glass works best.

Pat each hot dog/wiener with a paper towel to ensure it's fairly dry.

Insert a wooden skewers (I used 2 for each wiener) or Popsicle stick into each wiener. Holding the stick or skewer, dip each hot dog into the beer glass filled batter, twisting the wiener to coat evenly so that the batter is relatively thick.

Cook hot dogs in several batches of about 2 or three each until golden brown (about 2-3 minutes). Place on paper towels to drain.