Hot Dog Burnt Ends

This checks all the boxes: family-friendly, quick-to-prep, cost-effective…and best of all, deliciously smokey.

I’m not sure if it’s just food people (food writers, avid cooks… ) that go through food phases. 

One example might be obsessing over a particular salad combination and making it over and over again. Or creating different variations of a similar recipe again and again.

So I have this thing for the last while. It’s smoked food. I’m not even into the actual smoking part. I just like the style of cooking and the taste of smoky types of foods… with their simple rubs, crusty burnt edges, and the combination of sweet sugars burnt to a slight bitterness. (Ok, that does not sound appealing at all.) But trust me, it’s simple ingredients that transform the food. It’s definitely not the style of cooking my Hungarian grandmother prepared, yet these foods still have the same rustic homestyle comfort feeling to them.

Over the past few years, smokehouses have popped up in the kosher restaurant scene and so for Dinner Done I created my first recipe in this style for the home cook, Oven Smoked BBQ Brisket (page 130). It features just a simple rub with some smokiness added by using liquid smoke. For Between Carpools I created a Pesach version (for those that don’t use processed ingredients), Oven Smoked Brisket Pesach Version – and we love it so much that I pretty much make it all year round. It’s fantastic re-heated on top of the Crock-Pot on Shabbos morning. It’s also the perfect addition to a meat board with the cholent when serving a crowd.

In Dinner Done, using the smoked brisket, we also shared a recipe for burnt ends. Burnt ends are the trimmings from the smoke brisket. Pitmasters (aka the cooks that BBQ smoke foods) trim them off, cut them into cubes, sauce them and smoke them to caramelize them. In the cookbook it was the perfect recipe for leftover briskets (we rarely have leftovers so that recipe doesn’t get made often enough).

Then one day I realized that while everyone loved burnt ends, it really wasn’t the most cost effective recipe out there. In addition it really takes a lot of time (the brisket smokes in the oven for 8 hours or overnight). And so, hot dog burnt ends came about. It’s ready in under a half hour, and it’s the perfect fun party food. It’s also a fantastic cost-effective addition to meat boards (yes it’s great at room temperature too) and a fun way to serve hot dogs. My kids are trying to convince me to add this to our regular rotation of dinners (not happening kids!) and so I know everyone you serve this to will love it too!

Drizzle with some oil.

Combine rub ingredients and sprinkle onto hot dogs. 

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until puffed and golden at the edges. 

Cut each hot dog into 5-6 pieces.

Toss with BBQ sauce ingredients.

Return to oven and bake for an additional 7-8 minutes, or until BBQ sauce caramelizes on the hot dogs.