The Coney Dog has its origins in Jackson and Detroit, Michigan and it has more of a regional flare than I realized. It is a simple dish: Natural casing dog that 'snaps' when bitten into, coney sauce, chopped white onion, yellow mustard on a steamed bun. That is it. It sounds simple, but it's amazing how many places get it wrong....
1st off, I'd like to start with some terminology. Notice that I haven't called it a "Chili Dog", nor have I used the term "Chili" at all. I privately messaged Huskee regarding the creation of this thread and the one comment he made that was SO true is that many people assume that coney sauce is simply chili minus the beans. That is NOT the case. Coney sauce is its own unique item. I wouldn't eat a bowl of coney sauce. It wouldn't be very good in that quantity. It's actually a condiment and when perusing the internet for coney sauce recipes you'll find the ingredient list to be rather pedestrian and simple. Ground chuck, powdered spices, tomato-based liquid and that's about it. The trick is achieving a gravy-like thickness and higher ratio of gravy to meat than is typical in chili. The best coney sauces are zesty and slightly spicy IMO. Some Coney Island restaurants have a bowl of chili as a menu item. Essentially, they add some lightly seasoned and browned ground beef to some coney sauce.
A key aspect of the coney that so many places get wrong is the balance. If a fork and knife is needed to eat a coney then it has way too much coney sauce on it. You should be able to pick up a coney dog and eat it with your hands. Sure, you'll have a little sauce and mustard goop out and you'll want a fork on hand to mop that up, but if you can't eat it with your hands, it's not properly balanced.
Now, for as much as I am sounding like a coney purist, I'm not totally rigid. For starters, I cannot stand raw onions. When I eat a coney it never has raw onions on it. Also, I'm very heavy-handed with the mustard. Lastly, when I make a coney I don't use natural casing dogs. For some reason, when I bite into a coney with a natural casing dog, my teeth don't quite penetrate the dog and it ends up lifting out of the bun and smacking my nose, leaving coney sauce and mustard on my face. So, I like skinless franks. I know losing that 'snap' loses part of the experience, but I find the trade-off worth it. Most restaurants either steam their dogs or griddle cook them. I think they are even better gently-cooked on a charcoal grill indirect for the entire cook with a small, golf-ball sized chunk of wood. Put a hot dog over direct heat and within 10 seconds the outside gets blackened and leathery.
I am on a quest to create the perfect coney sauce recipe and plan on finding reasons to have coney dogs for dinner very soon so that I don't end up freezing quarts of coney sauce as a little coney sauce goes a long way. If anyone has suggestions, I am all eyes. I've always just winged my coney sauce in the past and while I was always happy with the results, It was always too meaty. A couple of cool ideas I've picked up in my on-line research is once the sauce has simmered, remove about a quarter of it, pop it into a food processor and process until it's a thick liquid, that way it thickens without messing around with a corn-starch slurry, adding masa harina near the end of the cook, etc. Another cool idea that I'm going to experiment with is to process a raw frank and add it to the sauce 15 minutes before it's done simmering. That little trick would add an element that my sauces have never had. I will be measuring out ingredients and am looking to create a recipe that will produce consistently good coney sauce every time. This is particularly where I hope to get some ideas from Pit members.
In spite of its simplicity, when properly done, the coney dog is a culinary delight. I will tell you that I've sampled plenty of brands of canned coney sauce and they are all crap except for Tony Packo's. If I were to have to make coneys in a pinch, I am very happy with Tony Packo's canned chili (I doctor it up a little bit, but even that isn't necessary). And for those of you who are M*A*S*H fans, yes, THAT Tony Packo's. Toledo is only an hour drive for me and I've eaten at Packo's a few times. The place is legit. I always keep a can of Packo's chili in the pantry for an emergency craving.
Finally, I'll conclude this post with a link to a nice video about American Coney Island, located at the corner of Lafayette and Michigan Avenue in Detroit:
1st off, I'd like to start with some terminology. Notice that I haven't called it a "Chili Dog", nor have I used the term "Chili" at all. I privately messaged Huskee regarding the creation of this thread and the one comment he made that was SO true is that many people assume that coney sauce is simply chili minus the beans. That is NOT the case. Coney sauce is its own unique item. I wouldn't eat a bowl of coney sauce. It wouldn't be very good in that quantity. It's actually a condiment and when perusing the internet for coney sauce recipes you'll find the ingredient list to be rather pedestrian and simple. Ground chuck, powdered spices, tomato-based liquid and that's about it. The trick is achieving a gravy-like thickness and higher ratio of gravy to meat than is typical in chili. The best coney sauces are zesty and slightly spicy IMO. Some Coney Island restaurants have a bowl of chili as a menu item. Essentially, they add some lightly seasoned and browned ground beef to some coney sauce.
A key aspect of the coney that so many places get wrong is the balance. If a fork and knife is needed to eat a coney then it has way too much coney sauce on it. You should be able to pick up a coney dog and eat it with your hands. Sure, you'll have a little sauce and mustard goop out and you'll want a fork on hand to mop that up, but if you can't eat it with your hands, it's not properly balanced.
Now, for as much as I am sounding like a coney purist, I'm not totally rigid. For starters, I cannot stand raw onions. When I eat a coney it never has raw onions on it. Also, I'm very heavy-handed with the mustard. Lastly, when I make a coney I don't use natural casing dogs. For some reason, when I bite into a coney with a natural casing dog, my teeth don't quite penetrate the dog and it ends up lifting out of the bun and smacking my nose, leaving coney sauce and mustard on my face. So, I like skinless franks. I know losing that 'snap' loses part of the experience, but I find the trade-off worth it. Most restaurants either steam their dogs or griddle cook them. I think they are even better gently-cooked on a charcoal grill indirect for the entire cook with a small, golf-ball sized chunk of wood. Put a hot dog over direct heat and within 10 seconds the outside gets blackened and leathery.
I am on a quest to create the perfect coney sauce recipe and plan on finding reasons to have coney dogs for dinner very soon so that I don't end up freezing quarts of coney sauce as a little coney sauce goes a long way. If anyone has suggestions, I am all eyes. I've always just winged my coney sauce in the past and while I was always happy with the results, It was always too meaty. A couple of cool ideas I've picked up in my on-line research is once the sauce has simmered, remove about a quarter of it, pop it into a food processor and process until it's a thick liquid, that way it thickens without messing around with a corn-starch slurry, adding masa harina near the end of the cook, etc. Another cool idea that I'm going to experiment with is to process a raw frank and add it to the sauce 15 minutes before it's done simmering. That little trick would add an element that my sauces have never had. I will be measuring out ingredients and am looking to create a recipe that will produce consistently good coney sauce every time. This is particularly where I hope to get some ideas from Pit members.
In spite of its simplicity, when properly done, the coney dog is a culinary delight. I will tell you that I've sampled plenty of brands of canned coney sauce and they are all crap except for Tony Packo's. If I were to have to make coneys in a pinch, I am very happy with Tony Packo's canned chili (I doctor it up a little bit, but even that isn't necessary). And for those of you who are M*A*S*H fans, yes, THAT Tony Packo's. Toledo is only an hour drive for me and I've eaten at Packo's a few times. The place is legit. I always keep a can of Packo's chili in the pantry for an emergency craving.
Finally, I'll conclude this post with a link to a nice video about American Coney Island, located at the corner of Lafayette and Michigan Avenue in Detroit:
Comment