One of the best parts of living in LA, is the amazing access to some of the best food available. LA has the best variety of ethnic food and fusion food around. Part of the miracle of being in a hub of cultures mixing with one another is the variety of food you can find here in Los Angeles. Hands down. Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Thai Town, Little Ethiopia, East Los style tacos it's all around and you can't go wrong.
Street Hot Dog carts run aplenty in Los Angeles. You can smell 'em a mile away and are a welcome sight when you stumble out of a late night sporting event, concert or just shopping around downtown LA.
Ever been to or hear of Santee Alley in Dowtown LA? It literally is an alley and you can find anything there for super cheap. Here's more about this iconic, cultural gem.
I've had my fair share of bacon wrapped hot dogs, but the one that stands out the most for me, is the one I had while shopping on Santee one Saturday.
So without further ado, Santee Street Style Bacon Wrapped Hot Dogs!!!!! (the crowd goes wild....or maybe just I do).
The main cast:
Hot dogs
bacon
buns
onion
bell pepper
jalapeno
mustard
mayo
Supporting cast:
onion
tomato
avocado
cucumber
lemon
salt
pepper
How many hot dogs you cook depends on how many you plan to eat. I'm usually pretty happy with one. To be fair, by the time I'm done making it, it's pretty loaded.
I use my much loved cast iron skillet for this culinary adventure. Street carts literally use a baking sheet atop a propane burner. Genius! But I don't make 20 at a time....not yet anyway. I'm making three here. One for me and two for the guy I live with (more about him later....or maybe not. LOL).
Use low to medium low heat for cooking. Slow is key here. We're in no rush. So while your skillet or pan is heating, prep your bacon and dogs.
I use toothpicks to secure my bacon to my hot dogs. It looks like this:
By this time, my skillet is ready. And it sounds like this:
Meanwhile, time to cut up your onion and bell pepper and jalapeno.
This is how I cut a bell pepper. I used to cut off the top and scoop out the seeds. But I hate getting the seeds everywhere. So now I do this:
Slice off the four sides...
until you end up with this and throw away the core. boom!
Slice up your onion into the same sized pieces as your bell pepper. I'm also grilling a whole jalapeno that I sliced in half lengthwise.
By now, your bacon wrapped hot dogs are sizzling nicely and you can turn them using tongs. In the same skillet, I add my sliced bell pepper, onion, and jalapeno. The idea is to cook your sliced veggies in the fat that's rendering off the bacon....yeah. Don't judge me. Salt and pepper your veggies now. Right about now, the smell is gonna be insane. Trust me.
Since your skillet is cooking on low or medium low, you can flip your bacon dogs to get all the side of the bacon cooked and crispy as your onions, bell pepper and jalapeno grill up nicely.
As all that's happening, I chop up more onion (about half a medium onion), medium tomato, half a large English cucumber and a medium avocado.
I scoop out the insides of my cucumber because I don't want a lot of liquid in this salsa. Just cut in half and use a spoon to scrape out the seeds.
And I use a small sharp knife to cut my avocado horizontally and vertically then scoop out using a spoon.
I also scoop out the inside of the tomato before chopping because again, I don't want the extra liquid. Except I forgot to take a picture of it...So just squeeze your eyes shut and imagine it....okay? Good.
Add all your chopped ingredients into a bowl.
Squeeze the juice of half a lemon all over you veggies and toss with salt and pepper.
Viola! Add cilantro too if you have it. I forgot to buy it. But the show must go on...so no cilantro this time.
As I was chopping up the veggies for my salsa, I was turning the bacon dogs so that all sides were cooking and in addition, I was making sure to move my onion and bell peppers around so they didn't burn. Because we're cooking on low/medium low the onions and bell peppers get a nice caramelized thing going on with out actually crisping or burning.
Now it's time to build your bacon dog! But first!! Remove toothpicks. Remember the ones we used to secure the bacon to the dogs? Yeah. You can't eat those.
I toast my buns because I feel like if you're going through all the trouble to wrap your dogs in bacon, slow cook them, caramelize onions and make a fresh salsa topping, then you should toast the bun. Plus, I feel like it makes the bun a little stronger to handle all the stuff I'm going top it with. I just split the bun and place in my toaster. You can also pan toast them without oil in a frying pan.
One time, after a U2 concert in Anaheim, I was standing in line for a bacon dog when the couple behind me were freaking out about the mayo that was being offered as a topping. I just remember them saying,
"Ew. Why would you put mayo on a hot dog?!"
and I remember thinking,
"Why WOULDN'T you put mayo on a hot dog?"
I've given this a lot of thought. Because, well it's an important issue. In a lot of countries, mayo is pretty much a given. In the neighborhood where I work, they sell elote or corn on the cob. If you order it fully loaded, it's butter, MAYO, Parmesan cheese, chili powder and lime. It's pretty much the shiz and I consider it to be a huge cultural asset. In Korea, mayo is a given on any burger. As much as ketchup or mustard is "normal", mayo has its place in many cultures. I think here, its gotten a bad rap.
I love mayo.
There. I said it. Not Miracle Whip. Uh, no. Mayo, yes! I like to dip my fries in it. I love it on sandwiches with tomato, it's the base for many dressings. I embrace it. I like to mix it with BBQ sauce, hot sauce, ketchup and it goes in my ever beloved All Purpose Green Hulk Sauce recipe.
It's not for everyone. My sister never fed my niece mayo when she was little. I did that one day while babysitting. She stopped eating, pointed at her sandwich and asked, "What's this white stuff?". I panicked a little..."Uhhhhh. It's mayo."
"It's good! I like it!"
Phew. Thank God. She's definitely my niece. Crisis averted.
If you don't like it, then just don't use it. But I think it adds a lot of flavor so I use it adoringly. You don't have to. (You COULD try it...or not.)
Most street vendors will put the dog in the bun first and then put the mustard, ketchup and mayo on top. There's a lot going on as I build this sucker, so I choose to put it on the bottom. Your choice.
Look. Let's be honest. I could have put the mayo in a squeeze bottle and made it all pretty and zig zaggy.
Who has time to do that? It's gonna end up chewed up and in my stomach anyway so yeah, here it is blobbed on in all it's glory.
Next, I add a generous heaping amount of the grilled onion and bell pepper.
Then, it's time to put the bacon dog to bed and lay that on top of the grilled peppers.
To one the side, I add a heaping spoonful of the cucumber, tomato, onion and avocado salsa.
Lastly, I top with half the grilled jalapeno...
Soooooo. Clearly we have girth issues here and there's no way you're going to pick this up and eat it. I guess I could just ease off on some of the grilled peppers and salsa....or I could just use a knife and fork. Yeah. That works. That makes it classy, right?
Enjoy!
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