North America · Volume 35, Tex-Mex, the Rio Grande and the Desert Southwest

Sonoran hot dog

Name: Sonoran hot dog
Total time: 25 min
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Tex-Mex, the Rio Grande and the Desert Southwest
Ingredients: 4 all-beef hot dogs; 4 rashers streaky bacon; 4 bolillo rolls (or soft white rolls), split; 200g cooked pinto beans, warmed; 1 tomato, diced; ½ onion, diced; a line, per hot dog mayonnaise; a line, per hot dog yellow mustard; a spoonful, per hot dog jalapeño salsa; 4 whole jalapeños, grilled

Arizona

Sonoran hot dog, bacon wrapped with pinto beans and salsa in a bolillo roll: a bacon wrapped grilled hot dog in a soft split roll, a smear of warm pinto beans along the base, diced tomato and onion scattered over.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 25 minutes

Researched: 26 sources cited
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

A bacon-wrapped grilled hot dog in a soft bolillo-style bun, piled with pinto beans, tomato, onion, mayonnaise, mustard and a jalapeño salsa line, Tucson's own answer to the question of what a hot dog could be. El Guero Canelo, Wikipedia

by Arizona

English-language coverage generally dates the modern bacon-wrapped Sonoran hot dog to Hermosillo in the late 1980s, University of Sonora students its first enthusiastic cart-vendor market. Spanish-language Mexican regional press tells a fuller, earlier story that English coverage largely skips entirely: the hot dog's arrival in Hermosillo is dated to 1947, brought by Cipriano "Nito" Lucero, a Guaymas-born former army chef sergeant, who opened Café Kiki with his wife Luz Celia Ajá and introduced flavours he had picked up in military service; the fully loaded modern construction, including its bolillo-style bun, evolved gradually afterward as competing street vendors sharpened their carts, eventually clustering around Plaza Emiliana de Zubeldía facing the university, known locally as "the Hot Dog plaza." This chapter names the local-language source directly because the gap between it and the English-language version is exactly the kind of thing house rules exist to catch. El Sol de Hermosillo

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 25 minutes.

Ingredients

4 all-beef hot dogs
4 rashers streaky bacon
4 bolillo rolls (or soft white rolls), split
200g cooked pinto beans, warmed
1 tomato, diced
½ onion, diced
a line, per hot dog mayonnaise
a line, per hot dog yellow mustard
a spoonful, per hot dog jalapeño salsa
4 whole jalapeños, grilled

Method

Wrap each hot dog tightly in a rasher of bacon, securing the ends.
Grill over medium heat, turning regularly, until the bacon is crisp and the sausage heated through.
Warm the rolls, split but not all the way through, and spread a thin layer of warm pinto beans along the base.
Nestle the bacon-wrapped hot dog into the roll, and top with diced tomato and onion.
Finish with a line of mayonnaise, a line of mustard, and a spoonful of jalapeño salsa, with a whole grilled jalapeño alongside.

What a modern chef changes

The same bean-and-bacon build, each component given its own precise treatment.

Rung uncited, a component-precision logic

Method

Confit the hot dogs briefly in rendered bacon fat at 70°C for 20 minutes before bacon-wrapping and grilling, seasoning the sausage from within before the bacon takes over the outside.
Purée the pinto beans through a chinois into a completely smooth spread, rather than serving them whole, so the base layer holds together cleanly under the toppings.

Open in the atlas: cook mode, scaling and tick off lists