What’s better than a hot dog? A hot dog with cheese on it. What’s better than a hot dog with cheese on it? A hot dog with cheese on it that also comes with a healthy dose of chili heat. We know what you’re thinking – it sounds lovely, but there’s no way you could do it without wrecking your diet or nutrition plan. It’s our pleasure to tell you that you’ve got it wrong! It’s entirely possible to make healthy chili cheese dogs at home, and you’re about to learn how.
Where Did Hot Dogs Come From?
Before we do that, though, have you ever taken a second to sit back and think about how hot dogs got started? Which came first, the sausage or the bun? They don’t fit in a regular bread roll, so someone had to decide to start making bread the perfect size to fit a hot dog sausage. Most websites which contain information say that hot dogs were brought into America by German immigrants, who brought their favorite snack with them when they moved to the United States in the 1860s. The frankfurter sausage – better known as a hot dog sausage to us – was invented in Germany some four hundred years earlier.
That’s not the full story, though. You can trace the origins of the hot dog back a lot further than that, and if the legends are to be believed, it was the personal chef of Roman Emperor Nero who first realized the culinary potential of the cooked sausage, almost two thousand years ago. Hot dogs might feel like modern snack food, but they’ve been around for as long as our civilization!
What About Chili?
As chili grows naturally, it’s been around for as long as humanity, and possibly even longer. We haven’t always eaten it though. Nobody knows who started eating it, or why (there are some people still asking that question today), but only when Columbus discovered the Americans in 1492 and witnessed the Native Americans cooking with it and eating it did it become popular. He brought samples of it back with him to Europe, and the rest is history.
Despite their association with them in popular culture, it’s not thought that eating chili began in Mexico. Chili con carne is a Texan invention. Our association with Mexico comes from years of stereotypes and illustrations in fiction. The link is so strong that we even see it on mobile slots websites like AmigoSlots.com, where slots like ‘Chilli Heat’ feature colorful Mexican backdrops and chili on the reels. The Mexican theme is popular with slots, so the more people play them, the more the myth perpetuates. If chili can bring a little extra spice to playing online slots while people are looking for tasty wins, though it can definitely do it to a humble hot dog!
What You’ll Need
This is a very simple recipe so long as you get all the ingredients right. To successfully cook our healthy chili cheese dogs you’ll need:-
Two tablespoons of vegetable oil;
Two teaspoons of chili powder;
One small chopped onion;
One chopped clove of garlic;
Fifteen ounces of red kidney beans;
Eight ounces of tomato sauce;
Half a cup of low-fat cheddar cheese (shredded);
Eight toasted hot dog buns; and
Eight hot dogs. For this recipe, use turkey or chicken hot dogs (not pork).
You may also wish to add a little salt, according to your taste. Go easy with it though; part of the reason we can call this meal ‘healthy’ is that it’s low on sodium!
How To Cook It
There are only two stages to making these delicious chili cheese dogs, so as long as you follow them closely, nothing should go wrong!
For the first step, warm your vegetable oil in a frying pan, keeping the temperature down to medium heat. When it’s warm, add in your onion and allow it to cook, stirring continuously until you can see that it’s softened. This should take no more than three minutes. When you’re satisfied that the onion has softened, introduce your garlic and your chili powder, and saute the whole mixture for thirty seconds. Now it’s time to add the tomato sauce, and also the beans. Both ingredients should be stirred thoroughly into the mix, and then everything in your frying pan should be brought to a simmer. As soon as it starts simmering, drop the heat down to low and let it keep sizzling. You should let it sizzle until the tomato sauce turns thick. This should take no longer than ten minutes. If you’re going to add salt, this is the time to do it.
For the second step, we need to cook your hot dogs. The meal would feel a little incomplete without them! You’ll need a large pot of water for this. Bring it up to a boiling point, and then throw in your chosen hot dog sausages. Keep an eye on them as they boil in the pot, which should take approximately ten minutes. You can use that time to get your buns out and get your serving plates ready. After ten minutes have passed, fish your hot dogs out of the pot. Drain them thoroughly, and then place them into your puns. Your chili and cheese mixture should be standing ready to pour on top of them, so do that and then serve.
That’s all there is to it! Including preparation time, it should take you no longer than half an hour to from start to finish to take these ingredients from the cupboard to the plate. They taste great, and you’re free to eat them without the guilt of wondering what they’re doing to your nutrition regime. If you (or someone you’re eating with) are a little more sensitive to chili than the average person, consider using one teaspoon of chili powder instead of two. It may not have as much kick to it, but it’s better to be safe than sorry! Give them a try at home, and if you enjoy them, be sure to let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading our recipe – and enjoy your cooking!