The Meatwave

Until last month, it had been nearly 20 years since I took a solo vacation. Ever since meeting my (now) wife, I've never really thought about, or wanted to, travel alone again, but a large and growing differential in vacation days I had versus what she had left me pondering how to make use of them on my own. I considered staying home to take care of a long backlog of projects (like editing photos from past vacations and also redesigning this blog), but I'm not one to find allure in sitting around the house when there's an entire world out there for exploring. I finally settled on getting away and Colombia ended being the right mixture of distance, value, and sites my wife could live with me seeing on my own. I ha forgotten some of the perils of traveling alone though, the main one among them being dining by myself. I did get out to some nice restaurants and outstanding meals, but I was definitely most in my comfort zone with quick street food bites, and among the many I ate, one that sat the fondest with me was an overloaded hot dog I enjoyed in small corner joint in Medellin that was overflowing with locals all chomping down on the same messy, junky, delicious creation that is the perro caliente Colombiano.

When walking up to this particular hot dog shop, the first thing that struck me were the sheer variety of sauce choices. I saw the standard ketchup and mustard, but there was also a green avocado sauce, mayo, barbecue sauce, pineapple sauce, and salsa rosado. After deciding to recreate these hot dogs at home for my friends, I made a choice to focus on just a couple sauces instead of the full suite, but it's safe to say that you can sauce these dogs as you see fit.

The first sauce I made was the salsa rosado, which is a mixture of mayo and ketchup that's ubiquitous throughout a lot of Latin America. You really only need those two kitchen staples, but a little lemon juice thrown into the mix can add a nice brightness if you happen to have it on hand (I didn't here).

The second sauce I made was the pineapple salsa, which I chose due to a combination of its uniqueness and recipe development challenge. I'm not sure how the sauce is made in Colombia, but I started with actual pineapple that I pureed with water in a blender to make pineapple juice.

I then strained the juice into a medium pan to remove any pulp. Next I brought the juice to a boil, added in a little brown sugar, and let it simmer until it started to reduce slightly. I then made slurry of lime juice and cornstarch and added it into the mix, and almost instantly the sauce began to bubbly immensely thicken. It took another ten minutes or so though until the sauce had thickened into something that could be squeezed out of a bottle and retain some form. Once it was at that point, I transferred the sauce to a squeeze bottle and placed it in the fridge to cool completely.

Beyond the salsas, the hot dogs I experienced in Colombia had three distinct toppings—melted cheese, coleslaw, and potato sticks. The coleslaw wasn't particularly flavorful, it really mostly added a cool crunch and mellow mayo flavor. So to make something similar, I used my base coleslaw recipe that starts with slicing cabbage very thinly and mixing it with grated carrot along with sugar and salt, which work together to draw moisture out of the vegetables. After five minutes of resting, the cabbage mixture is washed and dried before dressing.

For the dressing, I kept the flavor very light with a mostly mayo base. I did add a slight boost in tang from rice vinegar and a little mustard for a background complexity. Other than that, it was just only salt, sugar, and pepper for the seasoning, and this dressing ended up giving the slaw the right mild flavor I was looking for without tasting bland.

The potato sticks topping was both probably the best part, and also easiest to prepare. I just picked up of a tub of these crunchy, fried potatoes and then crushed a large handful of them by placing them in a resealable bag and whacking it with a rolling pin a few times to get broken, but not obliterated, little pieces of crisp potatoes.

The cheese part of the equationI wasn't too sure of. I knew it was a soft and moist queso blanco when I saw the staff at the shop drop bricks of cheese into what looked like a pool of water, and then pull out melted globs of the stuff to spread along the rolls. My problem really occurred when I got to my local grocery and was presented with a wall of queso blancos—which one would be right choice? Then I saw one called Quesito Colombiano and figured that must be the one for me!

I melted the cheese in a small pan on the grill as I cooked the hot dogs. Very similar to what I saw in Colombia, this cheese melted into a pool of water with soft and stringy cheese nestled inside. Because of this separation, there was actually less cheese than I was expecting once it melted. I was certainly happy I had picked up a couple extra rounds of cheese because I ended up needing them to give each hot dog its proper cheesy layer.

The hot dogs themselves weren't really anything special. They tasted like a lightly season blend of pork and beef, so I found a two meat blend frank in the grocery store and picked them up. These natural casing franks from Hofmann were actually way better quality than what I had in Colombia, and compared to the water heated dogs I had there, the grill also gave the links a better flavor, in my opinion.

To assemble the hot dogs once everything was done, I started with a sesame seed bun (they were actually labeled as "sub rolls" and not hot dog buns) and spread a layer of cheese along the bottom. I then nestled a hot dog into the soft cheese and topped with a layer of coleslaw followed by potato sticks. I then squirted on the sauces, not being neat or tidy about it at all—one hallmark of these hot dogs seemed to be how messy they were.

And messy they were, with just the first bite I had some coleslaw and sauces adorning my hands, which was true to my experience in Colombia. The flavor was pretty spot on too, from the salty and soft cheese, squishy sesame seed bun, lightly seasoned dog, crunchy coleslaw, salty potato sticks, and variety of sauces. I ended up coming home from my trip with not enough gifts for everyone, then realized after serving these hot dogs that this is really the best gift I could give anyone anyway—sharing a food experience with my friends I so loved that can hopefully ignite an appreciation for Colombia and desire to travel there too.

Published on Thu Aug 30, 2018 by Joshua Bousel

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