It’s been tough tasting all of these recipes. It has been day after day of sorting through recipes, preparing all of the ingredients, and getting people together in our tasting kitchen to vote for the top three recipes. After many, MANY hot dogs (and bottles of rød vin), we have finally decided on the three best recipes. These three recipes are the recipes that YOU will be tasting at our Winter Hot Dog Championship @ Jimmy's No 43, along with, of course, the R/DK classic røde pølse hot dog. Out of the three selected hot dog toppings, YOU will decide the ultimate winner, and the fate of Revolving Dansk (ok, maybe that is a bit extreme, but you may be helping us decide a future offering at our launch and future events).
The recipes that won our Online Recipe Contest, and will be served at The Winter Hot Dog Championship, in no particular order, are: The God Morgen Dog: Created by Kate Hovey Hornsby, this hot dog is topped with sriracha-ketchup, jalapeño cole slaw, deviled egg cream, and bacon. The Mexi-Dog: Created by Crystal Civil, this hot dog is topped with pico de gallo, guacamole, pickled jalapeño, and fresh tortilla chips. The Hot Hanoi: Created by Hannah Sloane, this hot dog is topped with sriracha-mayo, pickled daikon and carrots, cilantro and mint. But let's back up a bit.
We came up with this idea to have a Winter Hot Dog Championship, simply because we saw how fun it was to get some special ingredients from Chili Klaus and Lakrids by Johan Bulow, and then taste some interesting combinations with some of our friends. And then it hit us "Doesn't everyone just want to throw some crazy toppings on a hot dog just to see how it tastes?" As it turns out, they do! We got over 60 submissions via Facebook and Twitter to our Online Hot Dog Topping Contest. These recipes included a wide variety interesting toppings, like sriracha-mayo, rødkal, liquorice, pickled okra, olive tapenade, chili crab sauce, and pork cracklings. Our first step was to narrow it down, based on imagined taste combinations, availability of ingredients (scaled to 100+ hot dogs), uniqueness of the combination, and how the flavors paired with our pølser. In the end, we tasted a total of 14 hot dogs, along with our panel of esteemed judges, over 3 different weekends. And yes, it was worth barely eating all week just so we could gorge ourselves in rampant hot dog feasts - viking style! Tasting Number 1: The first round of hot dog tasting in our tasting kitchen included the following hot dogs: 1. "God Morgen Dog" by Kate Hovey Hornsby, which included sriracha-ketchup, jalapeño cole slaw, deviled egg cream, and bacon. 2. "Southern Dawg" by Angelo Moore Bovino, which included pimento cheese, vidalia onion strings, pickled okra, and benson bacon bits. 3. "Remembering the Summer" by Christianna Giordana, which included fresh strawberries, goat cheese, basil, and balsamic vinegar. 4. "Mexi Dog" by Crystal Civil which included pico de gallo, guacamole, pickled jalapeño, and fresh tortilla chips. 5. "Haute Dog" by Karen Teng, which included caramelized onions, gruyere cheese, pork crackling, and dijon mustard. Tasting Number 2: After a week of running, it was time to move it on over to the next round of entries, which included: 1. "Brazilian Style" by Annika Sundberg, which included mozzarella cheese, avocado, pineapple chutney, and fried plantains. 2. "Extra Chili Cheese Dog" by Arthur Bovino which included beef chili, lots of cheddar cheese, pickled jalapeño, and cacique crema. 3. "Bacon Cheese Dog" by Camilla Fuhr, which included crumbled bacon, mozzarella cheese, spring onion, and barbecue sauce. 4. "Hot Hanoi" by Hannah Sloane, which included sriracha-mayo, pickled daikon and carrots, cilantro and mint. 5. "The Jam Dog" by Tonni Leth, which included strawberry jam, ketchup, red cabbage, and caramelized onions. 6. "The Greek" by Katrine Bjørnson Strøyberg, which included feta cheese, olive tapenade, fresh tomatoes, and flat leaf parsley. The competition was fierce! This weekend's hot dogs were even tougher to test, with so many taste explosions in our mouths. Tasting Number 3: We got a few more entries, so we needed one last tasting, just to be sure. We decided to put a new recipe face to face with an old recipe, as they were very similar, along with one additional recipe. We tasted two new recipes: 1. "The Quaca Dog" by Jairo Rolando Garcia, which included guacamole, spicy corn, diced tomatoes, and queso fresco. 2. "The Malaysian Dansk, by Shaokao Cheng, which included chinese pickled vegetables, crushed Japanese uni rice crackers, sriracha mayo, and fresh cilantro. See all creations on our instagram page. Here is how the voting went down: Each of our participants was able to rate each hot dog on a scale of 1 to 5. It was interesting to see that some were unanimously good, some were average but in agreement, and then some were polarizing, like rødkål, you either love it, or you hate it!
