If it’s good enough for Food & Wine it should be good enough for me.
Such was the challenge put forth by this article on the hot dog and peanut butter craze that ran wild a couple of years ago. I just happened upon a post that showed a sad hot dog smothered in peanut butter and someone proclaiming it was time for their yearly treat. Aside from the poor manner in which it was photographed, I was intrigued.
When it comes to food, I’ve always had an open mind. Maybe it traces back to a visit to the Philippines wherein I ate goat bile soup, snake blood, and balut. (And didn’t hate any of them – well, ok, the goat bile soup was a bit tough to stomach, but I held it all down.) Since then, the occasional oddball recipe is usually met with curiosity and, at most, a dramatically arched eyebrow, before I dig in.
The peanut butter and hot dog idea was actually not that surprising to me. Peanut butter has been making appearances on hamburgers in all sorts of restaurants. (At least those that feature a bar scene.) I also grew up on peanut butter and bacon on an English muffin for breakfast – which is still something so simple and miraculous that I urge everyone to try it, even if you can’t stomach the whole PB and hot dog scene. And if you can’t, you are not alone. No one I work with thought it sounded good. But let’s take a moment to think about this rationally and with some reason. I know a bunch of people who love hot dogs. I know a bunch of those people also love peanut butter. And I’m almost positive that 99% of those people love bacon. But that does not necessarily mean that those items will go together, because I also know people who love chocolate ice cream and blue cheese dressing and I don’t think they would work together. However, at the core of this is a question of compatibility.
When you have a hot dog, what do you like on it? Mustard? If so, is it the savory aspect of those two items that works well together? Some people like sweet relish on their dog. In that case, it’s about the combination of sweet and savory then? Which is not far from where peanut butter is coming from. And bacon, well, almost everything goes with bacon, even ice cream. (Think of the miracle that happens when some of your pancake syrup finds its way to the bacon on your breakfast plate.) So what is it that’s so polarizing? Open the mind. Open the heart. Open the mouth.
Food & Wine added bacon and shallots to their version, and this sounded good. For the first endeavor I grilled the hot dog and buttered roll, slathered it with creamy peanut butter, and sprinkled it with bacon and chopped shallots. On one hot dog I added some shredded cheese (a cheddar combo). I went in expecting to experience an unstimulated oral orgasm and was profoundly disappointed. It was all right, but nothing I would call amazing. It tasted decent, but nothing I would attempt more than once. Once again, the build-up did not live up to the result.
I didn’t understand why everyone loved this – and why I didn’t. The individual ingredients were favorites (with the possible exception of the hot dog) and I thought for sure I would enjoy them together. It was the sharpness of the shallots that pushed it into a territory that I didn’t love. In the same way I’m not find of raw onion, these were overpowering the rest of it for me. Purely personal preference, but that’s what food mostly is. I waited a few days and worked up the appetite to try it again, this time with scallions in place of the shallots, and the difference was dynamic. Suddenly, I could see a glimpse of the glory, I could taste a hint of the awesomeness, and I could experience what all the fuss was about. Is it a game-changing dish for me? Not really. Would I try it again when a hankering for a hot dog comes up once every six months or so? Perhaps. Did I convince my husband to try a bite? Not a chance.
