Chicago-style desperation.
Can you use canned Vienna sausages for a Chicago dog?
Happy new year, blockheads!
Davida and I spent the last part of 2019 with some pretty gnarly colds. That was the decade’s final fuck you. I also had diarrhea. Then, on New Year’s Day, I woke up with diarrhea. What a blessing.
You new readers have no idea what you’re in for.
Sometimes it is very difficult to come up with ideas for my next post.
I have this cute little notebook I keep in order to jot down notes. The main issue is that I get some fantastic ideas, realize the notebook is at home, and I promptly forget the Nobel-prize-for-literature concept that I had in my head.
My potential is vast, but my execution is a complete failure.
I was planning on cooking another 70’s recipe, because Davida and I went thrift shopping yesterday and found some terrible cookbooks.
I decided I’d cook this ham, banana, and hollandaise recipe originally conceived in Hell by the Lord of Darkness himself. But when I went to the grocery store today, I couldn’t find the hollandaise sauce packets I needed. I proceeded to get unreasonably angry, shaking my baby-like fists at heaven, hoping that the vast abyss would hear me.
Then something caught my eye. Vienna sausages. Hope remained.
You guys know what I’m talking about. If you don’t know (perhaps you overseas readers don’t have them), these are basically little canned hot dogs. You’ve probably got some form of them in your grocery store.
Fuck it. I already ruined Chicago dogs once. Might as well keep digging a hole. Humanity’s making a beeline for complete annihilation anyway.
This is what I’m talking about.
My dad used to buy these by the case. He’d eat them straight from the can with a toothpick, and after school I’d have some too. Some of you probably find this repulsive. In retrospect, this snack is what made me the success (is that the right word?) I am today.
If you’ve never had one, these things are basically a form of deconstructed meat, which is reconstructed into sticks, which are then mechanically defecated into a can. Delectable. Molecular gastronomy at its finest.
Mechanically defecated.
I’m really outdoing myself today.
A typical Chicago dog is topped with the following: Yellow mustard, chopped onions, radioactive green relish, sliced tomatoes, sport peppers, a wedge of dill pickle, and a sprinkling of celery salt.
I prepared the ingredients, put them all on a plate just so I could take a photograph of them, then I wondered how my life had come to this. Me, lonely in the kitchen on a Friday night, posing stuffed animals and food, waiting for my fiancée to come home.
It takes exactly three Vienna sausages to simulate a real hot dog.
I think I may actually be the only living person who’s ever documented this information. What an honor.
Also, to recreate my childhood, I just pulled them straight from the can, cold. I wasn’t going to heat these puppies up. That would be disgusting.
It looked fine to me. Good, even. Though my definition of “good” is looser than 99% of the population.
Was this much, much, cheaper version of a Chicago dog a revelation? A package of my favorite (and coincidentally named) Vienna Beef hot dogs runs $7-$8 when they’re not on sale. A can of Vienna sausages are under a buck. Maybe I did come up with a Nobel prize in saving hot dog money.
I took a bite and was immediately banned from any Nobel prize, for life.
I won’t go so far as to say this thing was an abomination, but, there’s really no way to describe the way Vienna sausages collapse in your mouth. One physical touch and these things become a paste. What I also didn’t realize was how little actual flavor is contained in this meat jelly, which is mainly made of mechanically-separated chicken. The meat tubes degenerated and all I could taste was a bunch of acidic and sweet condiments barely held together with bread.
Listen, you guys don’t come here to see success.
Every time I do something that makes me nearly throw up, I can hear your wild applause from wherever you’re reading this mind-numbing, mildly entertaining, and unnecessary culinary descent into the useless unknown.
For the hell of it, I made an actual version too. The black swoop you see in the lower left corner of this photo was the camera strap getting in the way, which I only noticed just now.
I saved a hot dog in the freezer to shove up my ass later. That last sentence was written just to see if you were still paying attention and not skimming, like a dickhole.
The usual version was gloriously messy and delicious as usual, with the bonus of the hot dog anus peeking out from under the pickle.
The desperation Chicago-style Vienna sausage dog has been confirmed as a failure. We can close this case, Mulder.
What the hell, might as well ruin hot dogs twice.
Thanks for reading, and again, as usual, spread this all over social media if you liked it!
I’m going to wait for a few days to promote this one on social media so you can all have the glory of exclusiveness for now, straight to your inbox, but don’t let that stop you from sharing it immediately, gloating in the fact that you get this shit earlier than everyone else.
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I wonder if they have these in the Vienna Woods. It's called "Wienerwald" and it's in Austria. There's a restaurant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienerwald_(restaurant)