Author Topic: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity  (Read 7091 times)

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Offline Gyro

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Re: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity
« Reply #25 on: March 19, 2019, 07:08:47 pm »
Best Regards, Chris
 

Online Benta

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Re: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity
« Reply #26 on: March 19, 2019, 07:24:54 pm »
Where I worked in the '80s, we did this regularly. We called them "Ampere-dogs".
Stiff wire into one end, stiff wire into the other end, connect to 220 V (as it was called in those days).
5...10 seconds and it was done, any longer and it splits.
They did have a special metallic taste, my guess would be ionisation of some of the ingredients.

 

Offline james_s

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Re: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity
« Reply #27 on: March 19, 2019, 11:47:00 pm »
That's one of the cultural differences between the UK and the USA. In the USA all sausages I have seen are pre-cooked and just need heating. In the UK all sausages are made from raw meat and need thorough cooking before eating.

(Clive's hot dogs were canned and as with all canned goods are cooked and safe to eat right out of the can.)


There are lots of raw sausages available in US supermarkets, just yesterday I cooked some pork links for breakfast, and a few weeks ago I grilled bratwurst. Hotdogs are universally precooked as far as I've seen though.

Something to keep in mind is the fact that there are many words shared between US and British English that have entirely different meanings. For example a cookie in the US is a biscuit over there, I'm not sure off hand what the British call the things we call biscuits. Their chips are our fries, our chips are their crisps, what they call hotdogs may well not be the same as what a hotdog is in the US.

At any rate I remember cooking (well, heating) hotdogs with electricity when I was in elementary school. The teacher brought in screwdrivers to use as electrodes and a clothes iron as a ballast. It worked fine however I recall the hotdogs didn't taste very good at the ends where the electrodes went in. I also had a book somewhere of electricity experiments for boys, I think from the 1950s which had instructions to build a mains powered hotdog cooker.
 
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Online IanB

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Re: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity
« Reply #28 on: March 20, 2019, 12:39:20 am »
Something to keep in mind is the fact that there are many words shared between US and British English that have entirely different meanings. For example a cookie in the US is a biscuit over there, I'm not sure off hand what the British call the things we call biscuits. Their chips are our fries, our chips are their crisps, what they call hotdogs may well not be the same as what a hotdog is in the US.

Hotdogs are not a British cultural thing. When we put a sausage in a bun it likely won't be a German style sausage it will be a British sausage*, preferably fried or grilled until nicely browned on the outside. Best is cooked over an open flame around a camp fire until slightly crispy ("sausage sizzle").

Similarly, Southern style biscuits don't have an equivalent in Britain, so there is no translation available.

* British sausages are generally large, plump, juicy, made with pork or beef, and with plenty of herbs and seasoning in them.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity
« Reply #29 on: March 20, 2019, 01:36:46 am »
Whatever the case I think hotdogs are actually pretty gross. They're one of those classic traditional middle class foods that people eat probably as much out of tradition as anything else. I'm sure every culture has a few things in that category. I prefer proper sausages, even in the precooked category there are much tastier options than the classic hotdog. That's only my opinion though.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity
« Reply #30 on: March 21, 2019, 04:10:45 am »
That's one of the cultural differences between the UK and the USA. In the USA all sausages I have seen are pre-cooked and just need heating. In the UK all sausages are made from raw meat and need thorough cooking before eating.
That’s utter nonsense, sorry.

As an American who’s lived in USA and continental Europe in roughly equal amounts, and who visits the UK regularly... nope. All of these places have sausages that are sold cooked (hot dogs, frankfurters, wieners, kielbasa, etc) and sausages that are sold fresh (italian sausage, bratwurst, breakfast sausage, “bangers”, etc).

You’re in USA, have you never seen fresh brats, italian sausage, chorizo, breakfast sausage (links or bulk), etc. in the meat case?!? When I lived in USA, I practically always had hot italian in the fridge. :)
 

Offline Syntax Error

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Re: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity
« Reply #31 on: July 17, 2020, 08:18:22 pm »
My father told me that one way of testing if a transmitter waveguide was working, was to place a sausage in the RF path. If it fried then peak envelope power was being achieved! Or use an apprentice's finger if a sausage wasn't available from the mess.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Cooking hot dogs with mains electricity
« Reply #32 on: July 20, 2020, 06:01:57 am »
That seems like a good way to make a nasty mess in the waveguide when a bit of oily juice squirts out of the sausage. I've seen microwave ovens damaged by spatter that kept absorbing power.
 


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