Carts of Cash Chapter 15 –

Chapter 15
Condiments and Cooking Procedures

In keeping with the theme of serving only non-hazardous food from your cart, let’s discuss how to safely and quickly prepare each item.

Starting with condiments, mustard is made with vinegar, and lots of it.  Vinegar is a natural preservative, therefore mustard is a very stable food.  You just don’t have to worry too much about it, other than practicing basic safe food handling procedures to prevent cross contamination.

Ketchup is also quite stable because of it’s high acid content, and even though it is very difficult for bacteria to grow in it, there are common invisible airborne molds which can cause trouble.  Have you ever been to a restaurant where each table has it’s own bottle of ketchup?  Have you ever seen one explode when the lid is removed?  This is the result of mold spores working on the ketchup in the bottle, which creates gas as a byproduct.  If you look closely, you can often see the small bubbles inside the bottle.

The ketchup is still safe for consumption but it won’t taste or smell very good, and bubbly ketchup tends to make customers nervous which is bad for business.  The best way to keep your ketchup from going bubbly is to keep it cool.  You will probably not serve very much ketchup on your hot dogs anyway (true hot dog connoisseurs despise ketchup), so you don’t need to keep mass quantities on hand.  You can keep your ketchup dispenser or squeeze bottle in an ice water bath if it’s really hot outside, although I’ve never had to.  At least try to keep it out of the sun.

One final caution concerning ketchup.  I once heard about a customer who found a piece of glass in her food.  It turns out that the restaurant had a practice of pouring half used bottles of ketchup together to make one full bottle, then replacing the cap and returning the bottle to the table.  This process (called marrying the bottles) is fairly common, however on this occasion the person who was performing this task was tapping the mouths of the bottles together to get the last drops of ketchup to come out.  The result – broken glass in the ketchup.  I just want you to be aware of this situation so that it doesn’t happen in your operation.  Just say no to glass bottles whenever possible.

Relish, tomatoes, sport peppers, and jalapenos are all high acid content foods that shouldn’t give you any trouble, but always check with your health department to see what is allowed.  Onions are also safe, but be sure to check them periodically because they start to get yellow and smell funny in hot weather.

Chili, cheese, mayonnaise, bacon, and sauerkraut are all common hot dog toppings, but they may fall outside of the non-hazardous food category so be sure to check with your inspector first.

Now let’s talk about “cooking” the hot dogs on the cart. 

We’ll refer to this as cooking even though hot dogs are actually pre-cooked.  There are two basic ways to cook the dogs and each has it’s own fans.  You can either boil the dogs or steam them and we’ll look at the pros and cons of each.

Boiling is the fastest way to cook a hot dog.  If you operate in a high traffic area, this is the way to go.  If you work special events, this is your only option.  You won’t be able to keep up any other way.  There are some benefits to boiling.  As the day goes on, you will notice that the water starts to turn brown.  This is a good thing, as it gives subsequent dogs more flavor.  In fact on the East Coast some people affectionately refer to hot dogs purchased from a street cart as “dirty water dogs”.

The problem with boiling is that if you’re not super busy, the dogs that sit in the water too long will lose their flavor.  I made this mistake when I first started out and I’m afraid I probably served a few that tasted like erasers.

Steaming is the kinder, gentler way to cook a dog and although it takes longer, the hot dog retains more of it’s original flavor.  The dogs can sit in the steamer for a long time.  A steamed dog also looks a bit better than a boiled dog, which can blister and curl sometimes.  Steaming also looks better to the customer, especially for those who don’t appreciate the subtle nuances of the “dirty water”.

So which method do I use?  Both.  Call me a hybrid I guess.  I keep one pan full of boiling water.  I put a batch of frozen dogs in and after 7 or 8 minutes, I transfer them to the steamer where they await their fate.  The hot dogs will turn brown the longer they sit around. They still taste fine, they just lose a little something in the looks department.  Try to serve them in the order they were cooked to minimize the darkening.

Grilling is a popular way to cook hot dogs in the south and west parts of the U.S. The problem with grilling is that it dries out the hot dogs very quickly. If you want to grill your dogs that’s fine, but be sure to take them off the grill once they are hot and crispy. Place them in your steamer for hot holding. They will last a lot longer.

Steam your buns!  There is nothing worse than a good hot dog on a cold, dry bun.  Steaming your buns makes all the difference in the world.  They are warm and soft and stick to the hot dog just a bit.  Pure heaven!

There are a couple of ways to steam the buns.  I simply take them out of the bag and place them on a perforated insert inside one of one of the steam pans (above the water of course).  Keep the fire on low and remember to check your water every once in a while. Here is the steam pan set up on my personal E-Z Built hot dog cart.

Another way is to place a damp towel in the bottom of the pan instead of water and place the buns on the towel.  With this method, turn off the flame under the pan or you will soon smell smoke.  The other burner creates enough heat in the firebox to steam the buns.  If its hot out, you can just place the closed bag of buns in the sun and let mother nature steam them.  This works surprisingly well as long as the buns are fresh.  Old buns won’t have enough moisture content for self steaming.

Steaming buns at big events.
If you are working a fair, festival, or large private party you won’t have the steam table capacity on your cart to keep up with the demand for buns. In these cases I set up a separate steam table just for buns.

Here’s my auxiliary bun steamer set up:

Get a two burner camp stove which runs off those small one pound gas bottles. You can find these stoves in Walmart in the camping section. Place the camp stove on a folding table.

Place a full size 6″ spillage pan on the camp stove. Inside the spillage pan place a full size 4″ deep perforated pan (or two half size 4″ deep perf pans).

Put an inch and a half of water in the spillage pan and fire up your burners.

I buy my buns by the case from my distributor and they come frozen in shrink wrapped boxes of 10. I place one box in each side of the steamer and cut the plastic wrap off of the top of each box. I leave the plastic around the sides and bottom because the cardboard box turns to mush from the steam. The remaining plastic allows me to pick up the box of buns without it coming apart on me.

This will also work with bagged buns. Open the end of the bag to allow the steam to get in. If you can find some wire baskets that fit inside the half size pans, then you can just dump the buns in those.

Once the buns are nice and soft I transfer them to the steamer on my cart and place a new box of frozen buns in the auxiliary steamer.

This gives you a constant stream of steamy hot buns. You’ll never run out, even in the most hectic of situations like the church picnic I did. Here’s a video of that gig…

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