Passion for Corndogs

The Pursuit of the Perfect, Pretty Corndog

Towards the end of the Winnipeg spot, Terry started teaching me to cook corndogs.  He was very particular about the corndogs, especially the ones that we’d put on display at the start of each new spot.  Some went in the glass front of the joint and some hung from the ceiling.  But only the prettiest and most perfect corndogs got to go on display.  The imperfect ones were sold as mere food. 

Terry would prepare the batter from a large bin of Groscurth’s secret recipe batter mix.  Not even Terry was allowed to know the recipe.  The mix was shipped to us from Rusty.  It was all very mysterious, but it sure made tasty corndogs. 

To cook a corndog we would take the pre-stuck dog, dip it thoroughly in the batter so that the batter reached the end of the dog where the stick handle was, making sure the batter covered the end of the dog but not the stick (batter on the stick made it slippery and harder to hold onto).  Then, we’d pull out the dog and “wipe its nose” (wipe the excess batter off the end), quickly flip it right-side up (so the batter didn’t start to drip off the end again), then turn it upside down again and lower it into the 400F grease fryer. 

If we immediately let go of the stick, the dog would drop to the bottom of the fryer and the batter would mush, or break completely, resulting in a hideous, unusable corndog.  Instead, we had to hold the stick with the corndog in the fryer long enough for the batter to start cooking and fluff up so the corndog would float.  Then you could finally let go so the corndog could finish frying in peace. 

The regular corndogs were pretty easy.  You could stick the dog straight down into the fryer and hang onto the end of the stick until it was time to let go.  The super corndogs were trickier because they were too long to go straight down into the fryer without banging the tip on the bottom, or keeping some of the battered dog out of the grease, which would make for an unevenly cooked corn dog.  So, we would lower the super corndog into the fryer on an angle so as to immerse its entire length without hitting the bottom of the fryer.  Depending on how the dog was stuck, we’d have anywhere from a half-inch to one-and-a-half inches of stick to hold onto, requiring holding the top of your supporting finger just above the 400F grease while the corndog fluffed up.  Often it meant holding the top layer of your supporting finger right in the grease to get the corndog right.  I spent the summer with the top of my right index finger (from second to third joint) deep fried.  Holding my finger in the hot grease didn’t even hurt once my skin was fried.

Terry cautioned me against reflexively reaching into the grease for a corndog if I accidentally lost my grip on one.  Our natural instinct is to grab for something if we drop it, and you could burn yourself quite badly if you thrust your hand into the fryer trying to catch a dropped dog.

I quickly proved myself as a worthy corndog protégé.  Terry and Rusty raved, and John pouted because I could make corn dogs that looked just as nice as the ones he made, and this was his seventh year.

One of the first things we did when opening a new spot was to make the display corndogs.  Mostly Terry chose his own pretty, perfect corndogs for display, but more and more often one of MY corndogs would make the cut.  It was truly a source of pride for me.

Sticking Hot Dogs

Me sticking a Super Corndog

During the slower times we would stick hot dogs, which was a skill in itself, although not nearly as exciting and sexy as deep frying your own finger in pursuit of the perfect corndog.  Of course, wieners don’t come from the store with sticks in them – we had to put them there.  John taught me how to properly stick hot dogs.  The trick was to grip the dog, enveloping as much of it as possible with one hand, and with your other hand, you inserted the stick into the end of the dog.  You would push the stick clean and straight (supporting the dog and guiding the stick with the enveloping hand) into the meat, and would send it straight up through the center of the dog.  Hot dogs apparently don’t like having sticks stuck up their butts any more than anyone else does because if you weren’t careful, the stick would go off-course, resulting in a lopsided wiener that wouldn’t fry properly, or even worse, splitting the case of the wiener and poking the stick out the side (and we all know how much THAT can hurt).  If that happened, you could forget making a pretty, perfect corndog with that one, but you could still make an edible one.   If the wiener didn’t’ go on the stick properly the first time, however, you couldn’t pull it off and try again.  That would weaken the fibers of the packed meat and the wiener would slide off the stick when the cook dipped them in the batter. 

In addition to getting the stick in straight, you also had to ensure you left some, but not too much, wiener hanging off the end of the stick, and get the other end far enough onto the stick for a nice smooth wiener, but still leaving enough stick available to hold onto; ideally about an inch and a quarter.  Too much loose wiener often resulted in the tip breaking off under the weight of the batter.  Too much handle generally meant the wiener was bunched up instead of straight.  Not enough handle meant the cook would to burn his fingers in the grease making sure the whole corndog was immersed. 

I became quite good at sticking hot dogs, and then John threw me a new curve: sticking SUPER corn dogs.  The sticks are twice as long and you must push one wiener on, and then push a second one on, making sure that both are straight and in alignment with one another, in addition to all the other criteria for a properly stuck wiener.

The first day of Winnipeg, we spent hours sticking hot dogs.  When we finally quit that evening, I thought we had stuck enough hot dogs to last the whole summer. (Judging by how many crepes the Crepe Shop sold, it was a fair assumption).  I found out the next day when the wieners were brought out again, that we’d done enough for about one or two days.

I had a love-hate relationship with sticking wieners.  It was so monotonous and boring that sometimes I would talk John into letting me serve while someone else would do the sticking.  But sometimes sticking wieners was a welcome relief from the hot grease and yelling over the blare of a music ride to serve some silly customer. 

I never tired of cooking the corndogs, though, and worked endlessly in pursuit of making the perfect, pretty corndog. 

The Grill

When a corndog was sufficiently cooked, it would be pulled from the depths of deep-fryer hell with a pair of tongs and placed beside the fryer on the 200F grill – regulars on one side, and supers on the other.  We tried to make just enough corndogs to satisfy demand so that everyone would get themselves a happy, perfect, freshly cooked corn dog but there were times when things didn’t work out that way.  The longer a dog sat on the grill the more its batter would harden and flatten on the side that was against the grill.

In the evenings after it got dark, our joint would be besieged with bugs drawn by the lights of our joint.  There were small, flying, beetle-like things that flew into the joint and bounced around all over the place.  No matter how well you secured your hat, you were sure to get one or two in your hair, nestling right down next to your scalp.  And the fish flies!  Two inch long fish flies (ie. Caddis flies) with their long, yucky, wiggly bodies that would fly in and more often than not, dive right into the fryer.  The beetle things were bad for bouncing their way onto the grill, and sometimes onto the corndogs on the grill.  We’d watch, and unceremoniously flick them off.  It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, though, that we would miss seeing one land and then we’d potentially serve a corndog to a customer with its vile little carcass stuck to what should have been pure fluffy batter-ey goodness.  So, Terry taught me the fast twirl-and-flick maneuver whereby you would twirl the corndog as you picked it up, inspecting it for vile little carcasses, and flicking them off before handing the customer their clean, carcass-less corndog. 

Busy Times and Blow-Offs

When we had busy times, we’d have the fryer completely full of corndogs, and it became a challenge to try and slide your raw corndog into the fryer without touching another corndog (thus sullying the other corndog with a glob of batter), and completely ruining the batter of your raw one.  We’d have to use the tongs push the happy frying corndogs to one side to make a safe corridor for the new one. 

Even busier than the busy times were the blow-offs.  Toronto has concerts; and concerts end.  Then people leave the concert hall devouring everything in their path.  One of the best cooks (John couldn’t even keep up, let alone me) would start cooking an hour before the concert was supposed to end. We’d have a pile of about 500 corn dogs, and in two minutes be fresh out.  The cook would keep on cooking as fast as possible, but there has never been a technique developed for keeping up.  After the pile was sold, we’d have hundreds of dogs sold before they even hit the grease.  A good blow-off was a solid hour of steady cooking and selling.

When we had a blow-off, all attempts at making pretty perfect corndogs were off.  We’d be dipping and wiping and flipping and immersing so fast that no one had time to worry or tsk about how ugly they were with their tendrils of broken batter hanging off their exposed brown deep-fried wieners. 

Normally a corn dog would take about a minute or two to cook.  Ironically, the more you had cooking at once, though, the longer they took.  Normally the grease was 400F, but the more corndogs you threw into the fryer, the more the grease temperature dropped and when you most needed the most corndogs as fast as possible, the passive aggressive things just really took their sweet time about it.