What you see here is what happens when you've planned on serving your meat with a mixed green salad, and you open the brand new container to find it mostly wilted and slimy. Boo.
I digress.
This one's been making the rounds lately and it would be nice to have something cushioning my hot dog upon occasion. One thing you will notice is that while I can do some seriously fancy cooking- and occasionally do!- most of what I make on a regular basis are keto-fied family favorites. I have two kids and they're.....let's charitably say picky. For example, my early-elementary-age daughter told me tonight she wants to try ketchup with her hot dog...for the first time. Ever. As in she's never had ketchup. Her three-years-older brother still refuses to try ketchup. They're that picky, most especially the boy.
So while I may be up for trying Chicken and Kale sweet n sour curry with Sriacha and ginger infused Zoodles (that's gotta be a recipe somewhere, right?!), my children aren't that adventurous and would be incredibly hungry if I fancified every day.
Hot dogs are, unsurprisingly, one of the things I can get my kids to eat on a regular basis. Tacos, Mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, chicken nuggets and tenders, French fries, and bready breakfast foods are another. These are all easy weeknight family staples for the SAD* family. For the keto family these can be significantly difficult, which means I'm always excited to try out a new way to keto-fy the old standards.
The basis of this recipe comes from the Fat Head movie blog's pizza dough** that's become something of a legend amongst the keto community. And for good reason. I've made it twice now and it was not only quick and easy, it tasted great and you can pick it up. That is a HUGE deal for keto pizza. The base recipe is mozzarella and cream cheese, melted then mixed with egg and almond flour to make a dough. This bagel dog recipe adds in some xanthan gum to add a bit of rise.
Now I made it exactly as directed and I have a quibble with the instructions for the bagel dough. To make the Fat Head pizza dough you melt your mozzarella and cream cheese and then mix in the dry almond flour and egg as separate ingredients. In this recipe the instructions say to mix the almond flour, egg, and xanthan gum together before kneading it into the cheese. This was disastrous. When adding them separately it took a little work to knead them into the cheese, but when I pre-mixed them together it clumped badly and I could not get it to incorporate very well.
The other issue is that it was much stickier than the Fat Head dough, which I assume is due to the lesser incorporation of the dry ingredients. Consequently, I had difficulty rolling the balls of dough out into long strips. I ended up more or less pinching them gradually further down on each side. They also were a pain to roll around the hot dogs. I doubt my dogs will be anywhere near as pretty as the ones at the link simply because in many spots I had to just press the dough onto the dog because it would not roll.
I did not use the "everything" spices because my kids would have run for the hills. I did sprinkle it with coarse sea salt prior to baking and told them it was like having pretzel hot dogs, which they thought was neat.
The finished product was pretty tasty, and my son- of all people- really liked it. The outside was fairly bread-like, but the inside was more cheesy than bread. I believe this to be a result of the non-cheese ingredients not incorporating properly. Next time I make this I will mix it the Fat Head way and see if I have easier to handle results.
Here is the finished product:
Not nearly as pretty as the pics at the link, but I suspect the "everything" spices cover up for a lot.
Overall, I rate this recipe as a keeper with tweaks.
* SAD is the acronym for the Standard American Diet. The SAD makes my body sad. :(
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