🇲🇽 Mexico · Family: El Hot Dog Sonorense
In the hot dog con tocino the bacon is not a topping laid beside the frank but a wrapper fused to it, and that single decision organizes everything else. A frankfurter is spiraled in bacon and griddled until the bacon renders and crisps and the dog cooks inside its own rendered fat, then set into a soft bun with the usual onion, tomato, jalapeños, and a stripe of mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup. What defines it is the way that one strip carries flavor through the build. As the bacon crisps it salts and bastes the frank from the outside in, so the sausage tastes of bacon fat rather than steam, and the rendered grease on the griddle is what the bun and the toppings pick up. The bacon supplies smoke, salt, and crunch the dog lacks; the frank supplies the meaty center the bacon clings to. Strip the bacon and it is an ordinary dressed dog; with it, the wrapper and the sausage are one connected thing rather than two.
Made well, this is bacon discipline more than anything. The bacon should be wound tight and continuous along the dog so it covers the sausage evenly and stays put on the heat, then cooked long enough that it actually crisps and renders rather than steaming pale and flabby, since limp underdone bacon is greasy and adds slack instead of snap. The dog wants color on it too, turned so the wrap browns all the way around without scorching the spots that sit longest on the griddle. The bun is soft and briefly warmed on the same surface so it takes a little of that fat and holds without going slick. The fresh onion and tomato and the chiles go on to cut the richness, the sauces striped rather than poured. A good one is crisp-skinned and hot through, the bacon snapping against the soft bun. A sloppy one is pale flabby bacon, a greasy bun, and no contrast between wrap and dog.
Hold the bacon and add to it and the build moves toward its richer relatives. Spoon warm pinto beans in alongside and pile the load and it becomes the heaped Sonoran-style dog, which deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. Melt cheese over the bacon-wrapped frank and it turns slicker and heavier, which deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. Drop the bacon for a plain grilled frank dressed the same way and that leaner street dog deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here.
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Other El Hot Dog Sonorense sandwiches in Mexico: