How to Make Homemade Hot Dogs

Hot dogs or frankfurters are nothing more than ground meat with seasonings. They are easy to make at home with about an hour of time invested. You can make these all beef or all pork, if you wish. Feel free to adjust the seasonings to suit your own personal tastes. Plan ahead to find the casings, usually available at your local butcher shop.

Prep Time: 1 hours,
Cook Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:
3 feet sheep or small (1-1/2-inch diameter) hog casings
1 pound lean pork, cubed
3/4 pound lean beef, cubed
1/4 pound pork fat, cubed
1/4 cup very finely minced onion
1 small clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon finely ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon ground mace
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard seed
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon freshly fine ground white pepper
1 egg white
1-1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/4 cup milk

Preparation:

Prepare the casings (see instructions below). In a blender or food processor, make a puree of the onion, garlic, coriander, marjoram, mace, mustard seed, and paprika. Add the pepper, egg white, sugar, salt, and milk and mix thoroughly.

Grind the pork, beef, and fat cubes through the fine blade separately. Mix together and grind again. Mix the seasonings into the meat mixture with your hands. This tends to be a sticky procedure, so wet your hands with cold water first.

Chill the mixture for half an hour then put the mixture thorough the fine blade of the grinder once more. Stuff the casings and twist them off into six-inch links. Parboil the links (without separating them) in gently simmering water for 20 minutes. Place the franks in a bowl of ice water and chill thoroughly. Remove, pat dry, and refrigerate. Because they are precooked, they can be refrigerated for up to a week or they can be frozen.

Preparing the Casing

Snip off about four feet of casing. (Better too much than too little because any extra can be repacked in salt and used later.) Rinse the casing under cool running water to remove any salt clinging to it. Place it in a bowl of cool water and let it soak for about half an hour. While you're waiting for the casing to soak, you can begin preparing the meat as detailed above.

After soaking, rinse the casing under cool running water. Slip one end of the casing over the faucet nozzle. Hold the casing firmly on the nozzle, and then turn on the cold water, gently at first, and then more forcefully. This procedure will flush out any salt in the casing and pinpoint any breaks. Should you find a break, simply snip out a small section of the casing.

Place the casing in a bowl of water and add a splash of white vinegar. A tablespoon of vinegar per cup of water is sufficient. The vinegar softens the casing a bit more and makes it more transparent, which in turn makes your sausage more pleasing to the eye. Leave the casing in the water/vinegar solution until you are ready to use it. Rinse it well and drain before stuffing.

Hot Dog Storage

Hot dogs are readily available in all sizes and types in just about any grocery store. The pre-cooked weiners are vacuum-packed and have a relatively long shelf life for meat. Store unbroken packages in the refrigerator, and consume by the manufacturer's use-by date. Opened franks may be stored in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator and used within three days of opening. Hot dogs are a good item to freeze for up to six months at 0 degrees F. With most standard cooking methods, the dogs can go straight from the freezer to the pot or grill.

Hot Dog Cooking Tips

Although hot dogs are fully cooked, it is customary to warm them before eating. The flavor improves greatly by any type of reheating method, although as a child, I remember snacking on cold hot dogs wrapped in a slice of plain white bread with no embellishments. Favorite cooking methods include boiled, broiled, braised, baked, grilled, fried, and a particular favorite, steamed in beer or other liquid. Do not puncture hot dogs or sausages when cooking. The juices will run out, resulting in a tough, dry, unappetizing weiner. The hot dog recipe collection includes not only a recipe for homemade frankfurters, but also recipes using hot dogs and condiments to go with them.

Easy Ways to Make the Best Burgers

Burgers -- most of us love them. But sometimes they are dry, sometimes they don't have much flavor, and sometimes they turn into "hockey pucks" on the grill. Here are some tips to bring your burgers from "good" to "great".

Select the Best
MeatI surveyed a lot of authorities on cooking burgers, and there is agreement on this point. The best, juiciest burgers are made from ground beef chuck, which is about 20 percent fat. Less fat makes a drier burger (however, see tips below when using leaner meat). Meat labeled "ground beef" or "hamburger" can be up to 30 percent fat, and authorities agree that it is also best to know what part of the animal your burger is coming from.

Even Better...and Best Ways
Select a piece of chuck and have your butcher grind it (yes, there are people behind those doors -- just ring the bell). Ask for a "coarse" grind. Or, best, grind your own with a meat grinder or chop in the food processor (cut into 1- to 1½-inch cubes first). An advantage to this is that there are fewer worries about contamination and you can safely cook your burgers medium-rare, if that's how you like them.

Don't Handle the Meat Too Much
The heat from your hands begins to melt the fat and makes the patty too dense. Move it lightly from hand to hand and loosely make a patty ¾- to one-inch thick (no thicker, or you will have to cook it too long).

Don't Press Down on the Burgers When Cooking
This compresses the meat, making it denser, and also squeezes the juices out of the meat.

Make an Indentation in the Top
Have you noticed that your burgers tend to form rounded tops when cooking, causing the condiments to slide off? So did the folks at America's Test Kitchen. They found that by pushing down slightly in the center, creating a round area about ¼ inch lower than the surrounding meat, made the burger come out flat.

Try Different Types of Meats or a Combo
Almost any kind of ground meat can be used to make burgers, or mix together different ones. I've heard of mixing pork with beef, chicken with lamb, or even buffalo with beef. For flavor, try mixing some fresh sausage in with another type of meat.

Adding Flavors to the Meat
Many people just want great beef, straight up with salt and pepper. But it's also fun to add flavors, and if you are using leaner meats, or leaner cuts of beef, you can add moisture at the same time. Finely minced vegetables such as onion, mushrooms, or mild chiles are especially good for this. You can also take a lean cut of meat and add some olive oil for good fat, although this will cook faster than meats that are naturally fattier.
Tip: When adding other ingredients to ground meat, use a spoon or spatula to avoid heating the meat with your hands - see above.
Liquids - Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce are perhaps the two most common liquids to add to burgers. Most recipes call for about a Tablespoon of liquid per pound of meat, but I have seen anywhere from a teaspoon to 2 Tablespoons. Wine is another possibility, or, for blander meats, concentrated beef stock or.
Spices - Other than salt and pepper, almost any spice in the cabinet is a good addition. Garlic or onion powder is probably the most common, but everything I've seen everything from chili powder to Asian spices to Middle Eastern to packets of salad dressing mix (but watch the sugar on that one).
Cooking the Burgers - Get the grill or pan really hot. If using lean meat, oil the grill or put a little oil in the pan. Put the burger in and don't move it until it naturally releases. Some people turn it at this point (and then flip again later), and others cook for 2 to 4 minutes, depending on how hot the grill is, the type of meat (leaner meat cooks faster), and how done you want it to be. Then flip the burger and cook on the other side until done, about 2 to 3 minutes more.
If you have a thermometer, cook until 160° F., unless you have fresh meat ground at home. In that case, you can take them off around 140 if you like.

Delicious Rice Noodles

The Noodles is not a modern food item it is eaten from 4000 years ago in China and then it is slowly spread to Northern America and rest of the world. At first Noodles were made only by millets. In Northern America Noodles are made by Wheat & Rice. The communication develops all people made Noodles as per their taste with using items like Wheat, Rice, Millets etc.

A Noodles is a delicious dish and also it is a item of fast food. Noodles were invented 4000 years ago in China. Mainly Noodles are made from Wheat, Millets etc. Wheat & Millets are high contents of carbohydrates, proteins etc therefore Noodles also high contents of carbohydrates, proteins & other nutrients. Noodles are made faster in cheap rate. This shows that eating Noodles is a cheap and good for Health also. The native dishes derived from Malaysia and Indonesia take full advantage of vegetables

Rice noodles are noodles that are made from rice. Their principal ingredients are rice flour and water. Rice noodles are most commonly used in the cuisines of East and Southeast Asia, and are available fresh, frozen, or dried, in various shapes and thicknesses. This is a good salad for a hot day.

N- Noodle
O- Omni (in all ways)
O- Optimal (best)
D- Delicious and
L- Loved
E- Everyone.
Noodle is Omni Optimal with Delicious and Loved by Everyone.

A Rice noodles is a very simple dish. Rice noodles are lovely to use and very light and easy to digest, take care not to leave in the boiling water too long otherwise they over cook. Vegetable rice noodles is a very flavor and very tasty and preparation is very easy. There are a few different kinds of rice noodles. The ones referred to here are flat, dried and about the width of linguine.