Brazilian Hot Dogs

Brazilian Hot Dogs

This is a quick and easy recipe for Brazilian hot dogs that we eat quite regularly at home. They are so easy to make and this is my wife’s very simple version. Though sometimes this can be a very varied dish in Brazil. In Brazil they call these ‘cachorro quente’ which literally means ‘dog hot’!

 

The Brazilian Hot Dog

In Brazil, they have wonderful fast food places where you can order bespoke beefburgers and hotdogs to suit your wishes. They literally make your hot dog to order.

This recipe is a very simple one, with only a few ingredients. In practice, in Brazil, you will have many alternatives available to you, depending on where you are.

For example, in São Paulo (SP) you may have the option of mashed potatoes. And in Vitoria (ES), you may have quail eggs as an optional extra. But this all depends on where you are.

 

 

Other places may have onions, mustard, parmesan cheese, bacon, ketchup, green bell peppers, peas or even pimenta as hot dog ingredients. You can of course add what you fancy. 

But what is ubiquitous to all Brazilian hot dogs are the shoestring potato sticks (or ‘batata palha’ in Portuguese), which belong in this meal, wherever you are. These are slightly thinner than the ones we are used to in Europe, so whenever we are near a Brazilian store, we tend to stock up and buy whatever we can!

If you are buying from a fast-food restaurant or stall in Brazil you will generally get the sausage as a single sausage in the bun. But this recipe calls for it to be chopped into pieces, which is how it would be served if you were to eat at someone’s house or at a party.

 

 

 

It also means you can fit more than one sausage into your hot dog bun, if you are not worried about the mess and the calories!

For the tomato sauce, we used a smooth tomato sauce from Tesco, which is simple but good.

Which Sausage to use?

The Frankfurters we use in this recipe are very much like the German frankfurters used in an American hot dog. We also bought these in Tesco and they are simply cheap, cooked and smoked pork frankfurters. They are quite thin. 

In Portuguese, frankfurter-type sausages are known as a ‘salsicha’, as opposed to ‘a linguiça’ which is used to describe the more meaty sausage, which are also excellent in Brazil, by the way. But these tend not to be used in Brazilian hot dogs.

Linguiça is more likely to be found served together with Brazilian rice and beans (the staple dish in Brazil) or maybe as an ingredient in feijoada, a sort of bean stew.

 

 

We used some simple maize buns from Tesco for these hot dogs. But you can use any suitable buns you can get your hands on.

How to eat a Brazilian hot dog

These Brazilian hot dogs are really a challenge to eat, as they are a full meal. If you buy them on the street you will eat them out of a specific plastic bag. This plastic bag partly holds them together. But you are bound to drop some. It is a bit like eating a kebab on a British street on a Friday night!!

At home, we serve up on a plate. But though we always start with our hands we always end up using a knife and fork!!

If you try to make this dish, please let me know how you got on and which ingredients you used in your Brazilian hot dog!!

How to make a Brazilian Hot Dog

Or some other Brazilian treats:

 

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