Saturday, October 24, 2009

Cooking with the Copain: Scratch Made Corn Dogs


So just after we went to see AB we re-watched a few his episodes to keep the hysteria alive. Josh was particular smitten with the "Man Food" episode that begins as a ruse as Alton is pretending to show the male viewers how to impress their loved ones via fancy food and asks kindly that the women leave while the men are instructed. "It's a surprise!" As soon as the girls are "gone" he pulls a bottle of beer out of tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and macho fried food from under the quiche. Of course I didn't leave and we learned how to make homemade corn dogs.


We went and bought a gallon of peanut oil...and I feel like its coating my innards...


They were actually quite easy...but not so much on the stomach a few hours later.


We were going to wrap them up and take them on a picnic to Central Market Park however we didn't think they or our appetites would survive the trip, so we ended up on the front porch.

Ingredients

  • 1 gallon peanut oil
  • 1 cup yellow cornmeal
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 1/2 cups buttermilk ( it calls for this but a simple substitution is plain milk with a dash of vinegar)
  • 4 tablespoons cornstarch, for dredging
  • 8 beef hot dogs (I don't eat beef so we used turkey dogs!)

Directions:

Special equipment: 8 sets chopsticks, not separated

Pour oil into a deep fryer or large heavy pot and heat to 375 degrees F. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the cornmeal, flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cayenne pepper. In a separate bowl, combine the jalapeno, corn, onion, and buttermilk. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients all at once, and stir only enough times to bring the batter together; there should be lumps. Set batter aside and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

Scatter the cornstarch into a dry pie pan. Roll each hot dog in the cornstarch and tap well to remove any excess.

Transfer enough batter to almost fill a large drinking glass. Refill the glass as needed. Place each hot dog on chopsticks, and quickly dip in and out of the batter. Immediately and carefully place each hot dog into the oil, and cook until coating is golden brown, about 4 to 5 minutes. With tongs, remove to cooling rack, and allow to drain for 3 to 5 minutes.

(recipe from AB on foodnetwork.com)

1 comments:

Nick Warhead said...

We made these from a different recipe and cooked in the Peanut oil, and they took on a really gross peppery corn meal smell. Instead of the chopsticks, we used these craft sticks that were colored (they looked like Popsicle sticks), and the coloring ran off the sticks and into the hot dog..I wonder if that was where the gross smell was from?? We thought that the corn meal didn't sit well with the peanut oil..