French Onion Dogs
When I decided to make patty melts as a burger of choice at a Meatwave this past summer, I went for broke and just filled up my entire Dutch oven with onions and cooked them down into dark, sweet caramelized beauties. With so many onions on hand, I could now use them for dishes beyond those patty melts and looked in the direction of the other backyard cookout staple of hot dogs for inspiration. I eventually settled on the idea of French onion dogs that I envisioned to be kind of like a deconstructed onion dip topper.
The only thing with loading up the Dutch oven with onions was that it took a damn long time for that massive quantity to cook down to the point that they started to brown. Besides the occasional stir though, this was mostly inactive time, so it really wasn't that big of a deal. I've used a Cook's Illustrated method before that accomplishes this step in the oven, which does take even longer, but also eliminates all work during the initial cooking process.
Once the onions began to leave brown fond at the bottom of the pot came the active portion where I continually deglazed the fond and then let it reform again until the onions were to my desired doneness. I like them pretty dark and super sweet, and that actually creates a French onion dip disagreement in my household because onions cooked to this point render a dip that's pretty sugar and very different from the dips you buy from the supermarket. To my wife, this just tastes wrong, so onion dip tends to be something I rarely make and I continue to let Heluva Good! do all the work.
Going deconstructed really just meant I kept the onions and dip portions separated. For the dip, aka sauce in this context, I used the standard sour cream and mayonnaise duo as the base and added some common onion dip fodder like Worcestershire and garlic, plus some mustard and herbs that I felt would taste appropriate in this application.
The rest isn't much of a recipe since it just requires heating up some store bought hot dogs on the grill and then assembling everything together in a bun—I preferred split top butter rolls for these. Besides the sauce and onions, I also chose to add potato sticks as the salty crunch you would normally get from a chip. I could have just used chips, but the potato sticks come out of the can in the right shape and size and were going to perform the same end task, so I opted for the simpler solution.
I am quite a fan of the sweet style French onion dip, so these dogs were right up my ally. Even more so because keeping the onions separate really allowed them to stand out in the end, with their sweetness being tempered a bit but the tangy and herbal sauce, but just enough to pay homage to the inspirational dip without tasting like it outright. The potato sticks were key for their crunch and saltiness and proved their usefulness once again as a topper as they have in the past on pepitos and other sandwiches as well. If you're looking to do something with your hot dogs that's a bit different, but will also continue to be a crowd pleaser, these French onion dogs are pretty safe bet.
