Taking a Bite Outta Guy Fieri's Hot Wieners

In honor of Guy Fieri's visit this Tuesday, June 7, with his Guy Fieri Road Show, I dug through the Food Network Top 100 Guy Fieri recipes and found a gem from Guy's Big Bite: Hot Wieners Rhode Island Style.

Now, to us non-Rhode Islanders (or would it be non-Rhodies?) the recipe reads a lot like a plain ol' chili dog. Well, actually a lazy man's chili dog, since the spiced meat in question cooks in a half-hour on the stove rather than the hours most traditional chilis take. But with the help of fellow blogger Jonathan McNamara, The Virgin devised an ingenious plan to kick things up a notch: wrap the dog in bacon and then cover it with chili. Sort of a "Rhode Island meets Sonoran" dog.

Find out how it's done after the jump. 

If you thought Cooking Virgin was going to attempt to make hot dogs from scratch, 1. my cooking skills aren't that impressive yet and 2. the pictures involved would probably make you lose your lunch, rather than enticing you to make it. Plus, if Guy Fieri's getting paid big bucks to cook and eat on national television and his prep cooks aren't he isn't making his own wieners, I'm sure as hell not going to sift through cow/pig/mystery meat parts.

Note: My recipe is 1/4 the size of Guy's, as I didn't have the need to feed 20 people. But it still worked...sort of. Here are The Virgin's DeStructions, loosely based on Guy's recipe:

1. To start, mince 2 tbsp of onions and place in a pan with 1 tablespoon of butter. Heat over medium until onions are clear-ish. Frankly, mine were still a little opaque, but the original recipe warns not to brown them and I was a little worried.

2. Add 1/2 tbsp each paprika and chili powder, plus a pinch of dry mustard, cinnamon, allspice and curry and stir. What apparently results from using such a small amount of ingredients is a congealed blackish brown lump studded with onions. Yum.

Don't worry, it gets better.

3. Stir in 1/4 lb. ground beef (Guy recommends 80/20; I used a slightly leaner 85/15 since I planned on getting a hefty dose of fat from the addition of bacon) and brown over medium heat for five minutes 4. Add 1/4 cup water, stir everything around, and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes until it becomes a better looking chili-esque meat mixture. Breathe a sigh of relief.

5. In the meantime, brown 5 strips of bacon until cooked but still slightly soft, in a small saute pan.  

6. Add 6 hot dogs to a pot of salted boiling water and boil 7 minutes until cooked through. Guy says to steam the buns over the water, so I grabbed a handy rack from my toaster oven and set premade hot dog rolls on top.

7. Wrap the dog in bacon, top with chili, mustard, onions and celery salt and tasty cheddar cheese (which goes so much better with bacon).

The result: Guy has actual cooking talent, and better equipment than the Virgin (get your mind out of the gutter), so naturally his dogs turned out better than mine. My buns were soggy and the bacon was too crisp to wrap around the dog successfully, so I had to plop it on top. But even so, it made for a pretty tasty, very mild and sweet homemade chili dog that was devoured to the last bite.    

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