TASTING TABLE NATIONAL
Enjoy this story from our archive, originally sent to TT members on 7/12/2010.
Dog Tag
Hitting the season's favorite sausage with bacon
The hotdog, that summertime staple, is a flawless creation.
But when you're Ryan Farr, the butcher at San Francisco's 4505 Meats, raising the bar is a given. So he created his take on the classic ballpark franks of his youth--with the unconventionally delicious addition of bacon--and may have done the impossible by improving the meaty stalwart.
Farr uses a blend of natural chicken, beef and pork for his dogs, finishing them with bits of Niman Ranch bacon. He precooks the hotdogs in a smokehouse, and when they're warmed slowly over medium heat on a grill--Farr's preferred cooking method--the dogs' casings grow taut and the bacon fat melts. The result: snap, drip, plumpness.
As luck would have it, this creation is the first item that 4505 Meats is selling nationally, shipping weekly in quantities from three to 20 pounds ($7 per pound).
The dogs are beyond fine on their own or with a gloss of yellow mustard. But for an appropriately creative addition, we asked Farr for the recipe for his Money Sauce (click here to download the recipe), a fixture at the stand he sets up at the Ferry Building in San Francisco once a week.
Your summer cookouts are now complete.
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