Experiment: Dehydrate Then Rehydrate A Hotdog

okay now remember this thing it's an electric dehydrator that I bought primarily to dry my wild mushroom harvest when I go out foraging however it can dry a whole bunch of other things including jerky and fruit and all sorts of stuff but I had a request from someone I work with to do something a little bit different so that's what we're gonna do today so today we're going to try drying hot dogs but I don't just mean the sausages and the bun and the mustard and some pickles cuz we're gonna go for a connor Chicago style hot dog and tomatoes and onions and some relish so we can try drawing all of this not actually as a whole hot dog we're gonna draw all this components and then well I don't really know what the point of this is actually but what we might try doing afterwards is see we can assemble a dehydrated hot dog and then somehow bring it back to life so that's the plan let's get chopping okay so away we go we're gonna try and dry all of these things today the most challenging thing is possibly going to be these sauces so we'll see how we get on with that in a minute so we need to think about the order that we're going to dry things in and I think we're gonna start with the pickles because they are the wettest ingredient so JA Oh mrs. else would these are sweet cucumber sandwich slices so quite a sweet pickle and we'll just lay them out on the tray now I'm gonna make more than I need for just one hot dog here because some of this stuff might turn out to be nice in its own right we will really have to see won't we now if you're watching this thinking nobody ever puts pickles in hot dogs well live a little because people do believe certainly the Chicago style of hot dog has pickle spear in it so you know if people can people do and will need a whole jar of pickle slices on the tray there so that's that tray let's get that on the dehydrator and get the next one ready next I think it's gonna be the tomatoes so let's get those sliced up I've got a chopping board somewhere and a knife at least dinner is better on these just to lose that little tough best dog there so again on the tray just gonna lay out our tomato slices good and then we'll get down to the dehydrator next up it's going to be onions now I've sliced one of those onions and tried to keep them in whole chunks like this just really for neatness but we're gonna break those up a little bit just to dry them I think I'll do is I'll just lose the middle bits cuz they'll just fall through okay so we got the onions in there and we got a bit of spare space in fact I can probably double up a little bit more on some of these because nesting is a thing good I reckon we've got space on there for our hotdogs so let's see if we can make that happen now the hotdogs these are not gonna dry these are not just gonna draw on their own solid like that at least I don't think so I'm gonna wipe off the brine well I think we put one in there like that just to see what happens but the rest of them I'm gonna slice them up so that we can have some hope that they're gonna dry more thoroughly let's just get a few other mail for now so we'll do it with these slice them lengthwise into three strips like so okay and then we can always reassemble that later I'm guessing that what we should end up with here is a little bit like jerky but made of hotdogs instead of beef so however I don't really know so time will tell okay so hotdogs and onions doesn't seem like an awful lot of onions does it no savory can just get a few more bits on there from here I can't go for the really small bits cuz well could do them solid like that and we'll see what happens they might fall through so hotdogs and onions they're gonna go onto the dehydrator now it would be lovely if we could dry these out whole an entire however I just don't think we can because of the overhead we've got inside of the dehydrator so what we're gonna have to do here there's a bit of car coming fill it in like that so you can uh slit there open out like that and another slit there open that out flat and then that will fit on the dehydrator I think I'm just gonna do three buns because I can't actually see this being a great success anyway so I don't want to waste a bunch of bread the other ingredients I think might be quite interesting and tasty when they're dried but I don't know about the bread so there we go buns ready to go in the dehydrator okay now probably the trickiest part which is going to be the relish we've got some spicy jalapeno chili relish and the mustard obviously I can't just screw up that onto the bars here it's just gonna slop through so what we've got is this stuff this is like an ovenproof liner you can use this for lining coke tins it's completely heat proof its food safe but more to the point it provides a canvas on which we can work it's not the right shape to fit on the dehydrator cuz I don't want to block that hole that's where the air comes up so and cut it into two pieces which will help with our flow anyway okay so when I've relish on one and mustard on t'other so and the relish I think Maude and I I think the thing to do is probably just try and squeeze down our inter long ish strips like that okay I think that's probably as best we're gonna do right let's get that on the dehydrator that's the last layer we'll take it downstairs because I'm gonna run in the garage and we're gonna see what we get when we come out okay and there it is we have got pickles Tomatoes hot dogs and onions bread rolls mustard and relish all drawing and that will run for 10 hours or so down here in the garage after that time we will have a result I'm really not sure what kind of result but it's exciting isn't it okay 14 hours later a change has taken place now I put this on for seven hours then I rearrange the trace because what you do is actually find out the ones that are drying less you move them down towards the heat source and the ones that are drying too quickly you move them up and so it's been on for a total of 14 hours and I have had a sneaky peek and it doesn't look like everything has done kind of what I expected let's take a quick look it's breakfast time so I'm just gonna take a quick look now and then we will actually try to prepare or eat some of this for lunch later hmm anyway so if you can hear the wind blowing in the background I'm sorry about that there's nothing I can do to control that it is a stormy windy day today right the bread rolls well yeah should have done that the bread rolls have turned into crisp bread essentially I'm not going to taste there now all that ruined that one I was stupid wasn't it okay the relish has turned into well it's dried it's turned into kind of weird fruit leather type stuff the mustard huh yeah I should not pick that up well the mustard has turned into crispy little strands which have maintained their shape but are incredibly delicate should not pick that up but yeah the mustard is turned into little crispy zigzags and some of its falling down the middle right the pickles have turned into brittle almost like glassy little chips so let's just take one of those and does it snap yeah so those now snap the hotdogs and the onions the hotdogs are now like shoe leather oh they're actually crispy so the hotdogs all of the oil has come out of them so they're really really greasy but they're also kind of crunchy the onion rings are crispy the whole hotdog yeah I didn't think that was gonna work actually so the whole hotdog is still moist inside and that would not keep if we were doing this to preserve it finally the tomatoes and the tomatoes are dry little crisps so everything seems to have worked okay anyway I'm just going to put that back for now and then at lunchtime we all try to prepare well we'll taste some of this for a start I'm gonna taste all the components of this as they are but then we'll try and assemble some kind of meal and we will also do the experiment where we try to turn it back into a non dried hot dog in a bun okay so this is going to be the dry tasting of all of these pieces of the hotdog and I'm not really sure where to start so I guess we'll start with a little nibble of this incredibly brittle and dry bread roll this yeah like a crisp bread perfectly okay really weird but now interestingly the bread rolls were quite near the top of the whole assembly for drying and I can taste the other ingredients in there the vinegar that helped the pickles and the flavors out of the hotdogs and vegetables has infused into that bread so that's a bit weird okay next I think we'll try a bit of this pickle so these pickles are dried into shiny little brittle crisps let's have a taste of that then that's strange that's odd and not altogether Pleasant and the reason is it tastes of the sea I guess it's just the salt and the sugar and the vegetable taste but it tastes a bit like seaweed but also a little bit like seafood so take it's got a bit sort of which weirdly almost shrimpy sort of taste to it which is really weird so that's the pickle that's not a triumph but interesting but quite weird the onion again this is dried out into a brittle little crisp I think this should be okay okay that's all right but it's harder and more chewy than I thought it would be this actually there must have been a fair bit of sugar in these onions and as a result they've kind of candied a little bit and so what we've got is a kind of chewy onion candy but flavor-wise not a problem now tomatoes again these have dried into fairly brittle little pieces shouldn't be a problem because sun-dried tomatoes are a thing yeah okay that's all right a little bit bitter but tastes like a tomato not giving me any problems that one okay time for the hot dogs now and I've got two pieces I've got a middle slice and I've got an outside slice let's try the middle slice first that's actually really good that's like a weird sort of jerky it's smoky it tastes of pork and it's got a texture that's not like regular jerky because it comes up cuz obviously it was quite finely ground inside the sausage casing so it comes apart quite easily that's pretty darn good let's just see if the outside slice is any different no bit more crispy but actually that's also really good really tasty it's a bit like one of those snacks alarm ease but a bit drier and a bit more greasy okay now it is time for I don't know what these are gonna be like so the mustard has dried into just well back into mustard powder I guess let's have a little taste of that I'm not gonna taste very much because I have a feeling this is not gonna be good actually do you know what that's all right there mustard you still taste the mustard it's fine the relish doesn't smell good actually smells kind of funky but let's give it a taste yeah it's all right and it's retained some of its heat and flavor so yeah all in all there you go we can dry every part of a hot dog that weirdest part of that is definitely the pickle strike pickles of just strange taste of the sea and the most successful bit obviously is the hot dogs sausage okay so the next part is where things get a bit more interesting because I'm gonna put all these ingredients to one side and we're going to try to reassemble a hot dog here and then we're gonna see if we can think of a way of rehydrating it now rehydrating it's gonna be a problem because of the bread more than anything else we can't obviously just soak it in water we can can't leave it out in the rain or anything like that so I think it's gonna be steaming ideally pressure steaming would be best I think I don't think that results gonna be brilliant anyway but I'm gonna put this on assemble a hot dog caught some semblance of hot dog we're gonna put it in the steamer for half an hour and we're gonna see if what we get out is anything like the original hot dog [Music] so there is our dehydrated hotdogs in entirety let's give it a steam and see what happens okay the water is now boiling so there you go and so there we are a delicious plump looking fresh hotdog with pickles and relish and onions slices of tomato doesn't that look fantastic all the rehydrated one oh no no this is not the rehydrated one that's over here [Music] um not I would say a resounding success really the moisture hasn't gone back into most things that bread is just about become flexible again the onions have turned into leather even the mustard hasn't regained its moisture so steaming clearly isn't the right way so anyway I'll leave you to guess which one of these two you think I'm gonna eat for lunch today so thanks for watching this experiment and I hope to see you again soon [Music]

Channel: Atomic Shrimp

Views: 191,262

Rating: 4.8548408 out of 5

Keywords: hotdog, hot dog, food, dehydrator, rehydration, experiment, disgusting, drying, dehydrating

Id: Xwpo-rQL9zU

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2019