The Chicago-style gimbap

let's pay homage to a Chicago legend by shoving it in a rice roll

Hi, clowns!

Hope you guys enjoyed the egg adventures last week. There was that weird brown egg I cooked in my Instant Pot, and then there was that really, really, weird exploded egg in my air fryer (for paid subscribers). Someday I will look back fondly upon my legacy and think, “Wow. I did exactly nothing for mankind.”

And then you’ll think, “Wow. I spent part of my life reading Dennis’ newsletter. That guy did exactly nothing for mankind.”

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Oh, and before I forget, if any of you are fans of The Onion and follow the site on social media, you may or may not have caught a cameo of me on their TikTok and Instagram feed.

I had a few people frantically messaging asking if that was me, and if I’d gotten a new job or something. I’m flattered that some of you think I’m funny enough for The Onion, but the real story is that the site I write for, The Takeout, is a sister site to the satire classic. My coworkers asked if I felt like being in a video and I happily agreed.

Now I’m a superstar and Hollywood agents are knocking down my door!!! Congratulations to me, I just won an Oscar for my TikTok performance. I’ll put it next to all my James Beard Awards.

This week, Davida suggested I take gimbap, a classic Korean dish, on a ride, and combine it with a Chicago-style hot dog.

But not just any hot dog: I’d mash up gimbap with a take on a local legend’s, Superdawg.

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If you’re not from Chicago, the name might not be familiar, but Superdawg is an institution around here.

It’s one of the very few drive-ins in Chicago (there’s two locations, one is in the suburbs), and is known for its hot dogs, aka Superdawgs, along with the two giant hot dog mascots on top of the building, Maurie and Flaurie. The mascots are named after the beloved late founders of the restaurant, and practically everyone around here goes nuts when they see them. What’s cool about Superdawg is that their hot dogs are manufactured specifically for the restaurant, which means you can’t get them at any other stand. If you ever come visit us in Chicago, let’s go get some and shout at some giant hot dog mascots together.

This is now the eighth piece I’ve done involving hot dogs on my newsletter and I’m beginning to wonder if I have some sort of problem. What’s weird is I really don’t eat hot dogs very often. I do shove them up my ass, though.

Gimbap (or kimbap) is a Korean rice roll that’s wrapped in seaweed. It’s typically stuffed with pickled and cooked vegetables and a little meat, and makes for really good picnic food, a snack, or a really tidy lunch. I decided to take all the classic toppings of a Superdawg, which are neon-green relish, onions, yellow mustard, pickles, along with pickled sport peppers, and cram them all into a roll to see if it would be any good.

Now, the word “gimbap” just means “seaweed rice” in Korean, so really, you can fill it with anything and technically have the right idea. As you know, I always have the right idea.

To start, I fired up my tiny and banged up rice cooker, which looks like it’s been through a few car wrecks.

That thing is a goddamn tank. I’ve had it for at least 15 years now.

The issue is, I’m not particularly manually adept, so in order for some assistance, I turned to my Sushi Bazooka.

Yes, it’s really called a Sushi Bazooka. I wrote about it last year for The Takeout, and for that piece, I used it to make Big Mac sushi.

This thing is fuckin’ amazing. Heh. Sushi Bazooka.

I first filled each side of the mold with sticky rice and used the inner plunger to make an indent in each half.

Then I filled the hollowed rice tube with all the toppings of a Superdawg, including the mustard.

The hot dogs I used were some of the cheapest I could find at the grocery store, which is a brand called Scott Pete. Scott Pete used to be called “Scott Peterson,” which wouldn’t ordinarily be a particularly interesting name, except for the fact that Scott Peterson is the name of a convicted murder whose trial was highly televised back in the mid 2000’s. Peterson was found guilty of killing his wife, whose body was famously never found.

So every time I went to the store and saw the name Scott Peterson slapped on some crappy deli meat, I would always associate it with murder. At some point they renamed it to Scott Pete, probably to avoid the whole murder-meat association, but I see you, Scott Peterson. I see you.

My favorite part of using the Sushi Bazooka is when you use the plunger to shit out the tube of stuffed rice.

If you do it correctly, it eases out of the hole smoothly. You don’t even have to grunt or push hard or anything.

After that, it’s just a matter of gently rolling the seaweed around the rice until it’s snugly bundled up.

For something called a Sushi Bazooka, the thing works entertainingly well.

Check out my Superdawg gimbap!

So maybe it’s a little lopsided, but it’s my child and I love it anyway. You can see everything perfectly, like the murder meat, the pickle slice, weird green relish, the mustard, and I swear the onions are in there somewhere.

I sliced it up and served it with some radish kimchi and pickled tomatoes, which is Superdawg’s signature garnish (the tomatoes, not the kimchi).

Whoa, guys. It turns out Superdawg-inspired gimbap is really good. When you think about it, all the toppings on a Superdawg fit the bill for what’s usually in typical gimbap anyway. Some versions of gimbap even have long thin slices of hot dog or Spam in them, along with sweet pickled radish and various vegetables. It all goes extraordinarily well with a soft blanket of sticky rice and crispy chewy seaweed. Perhaps Maurie and Flaurie had a secret Korean connection I never knew about.

People often argue about whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. I think everyone’s wrong.

Maybe a hot dog is actually gimbap.

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