Deviled Hot Dogs… or “barbecue”

Ah, early March — the days are warming up, you can finally ditch your heavy winter coat, and you’re looking eagerly at that grill on your back patio. Time for a tasty cookout! Throw some frankfurters on the grill, gang, it’s time to try…

That’s right, deviled hot dogs! via Do What Now? You can tell it’s delicious and edgy because it’s deviled!

OK, there’s nothing particularly devilish about the hot dogs themselves; it’s all in the homemade barbecue sauce that French’s is suggesting will be just perfect if you use as many French’s products as possible.

Deviled Hot Dogs with Frenchwise Barbecue Sauce

Slash tops of frankfurters, brown in skillet. Baste and serve with Frenchwise Sauce.

1 medium onion minced (or 1 tblsp. French’s Onion Flakes)
1 small green pepper minced (or 1 tblsp. French’s Pepper Flakes)
3/4 cup ketchup
2 tblsp. butter or margarine
2 tblsp. brown sugar
2 tblsp. French’s Prepared Mustard
1 tablespoon French’s Worcestershire Sauce
1 tsp. salt

Combine ingredients, simmer 15 min. Serves 8.

The ingredients are quite colorful, but a little scary — I really don’t expect this to turn out well.

Since I was using real vegetables instead of French’s flakes, I decided to fry them in the butter first before stirring in the other ingredients (which probably wouldn’t need much simmering to blend their flavors). Once the peppers and onions were soft I added the sugar, salt, and worshersher sauce… and wow, that is a delicious sauce all on its own, with enough sugar to make it into a neat glaze.

I regretted having to add the mustard, although it tasted pretty decent once it was stirred in.

And I really regretted adding the ketchup, which washed out all but the gentlest hint of the other flavors. This might look like mustard-based barbecue sauce from the way the advertisement is laid out, but it’s definitely a ketchup-based sauce.

I was also surprised to see that it looks EXACTLY like the blood-red bowl of goo in the advertisement.

Sadly, I thought I had taken a picture of the hot dogs slathered with sauce after cooking, but I was wrong and didn’t realize it until they were all gone. Here’s a picture of them lightly basted while in the skillet, instead…

This is surprisingly good. Don’t misunderstand, it isn’t fine dining; but it’s by far the best ketchup I’ve ever tasted. It’s sweeter and more interesting than plain ketchup, but not so spicy that kids (or average 1950’s American adult) would refuse to eat it. I definitely recommend fresh diced vegetables rather than flakes (can you even get green pepper flakes nowadays?), which adds both texture and nutritional value; cutting the ketchup down to 1/2 cup (or farther) wouldn’t hurt.

But it’s just extra-fancy ketchup. It isn’t barbecue sauce, and it sure isn’t “deviled”, which historically means a particularly hot and/or spicy dish. I’m not a huge fan of spicy food, but I feel sorry for anyone who finds the level of spice in “Frenchwise Sauce” to be devilishly high.