Crock Pot Franks and Beans

I was at an American Legion somewhere North of Columbus, Ohio when I was exposed to this dish.  The culinary carnage that ensued is worthy of a war tribunal.  By taxonomy, this is a chili con carne, or it is a stew made out of a chili dog.

This dish is minimally comprised of:

• Hot Dogs
• Beans
• Sweet Sauce

It is always prepared in a slow-cooking system, typically an electric crock-pot.  When there is glazed artwork on the outside of the crock pot, such as NASCAR insignias, you know the kitchen criminal was in a real hurry.

First: the hot dogs.  American wieners are, on commerce volume, the worst parts of any number of animals, made to a fine paste and shoved into an artificial casing.  Further, the meat is pre-cooked.  Almost every time, there is a meat tenderizer as well as some sort of sugar, such as dextrose, and plenty of salt.  when sliced or quartered, the average American hot dog will take on the appearance of a dismembered finger, or worse.  Any sausage will be greasy, so stewing this meat in a crock pot guarantees the grease will rise to the top of the container.  Look for vibrant, orange pools at the top of the dish.

Second: beans.  The Mid-West relishes their canned, sweet beans.  Hormel, Bush's, you name it.  These beans have been pre-cooked and embalmed in a heavy corn syrup.  They also contain a decent amount of salt.  These beans by themselves are grimy and saccharine, but when combined with something else, The syrup overpowers most anything.  Unless you are going through chemotherapy, you have no basis of comparison for this flavor.

Third: sweet sauce.  As if the beans are not sweet enough, pre-diabetic America seems to think sugar always improves a dish.  The sweet sauce is often a hasty afterthought, usually involving condiments such as barbecue sauce, ketchup, and steak sauces.  Sauces take a lot of work to get right, so without good instincts, starting with something really sweet means you have no control over where the flavor is going to go, because it is already pinned down in a corner.  Some of the more heinous acts to adjust the sweet sauce involve chili powder or pepper sauce.  This is a lot like dropping gunpowder into a gas tank to make a car run faster.

The syrup of the beans and the sauce add their flavor to the hot dogs.  This is apparently the intended goal of the slow cooking.  If this meat wasn't pre-cooked, braising meat with a fine flavor base is a good way to cook a tough cut of meat.  But, this is stewing in a double-sweet syrup.  Furthermore, American wieners are formed meat and then they have the tenderizers in them anyway, so slow cooking makes no sense on meat soft enough for retirement homes.  This isn't the right way to cook this meat (try grilling, as intended).  A recipe involving fresh meat and better beans is the start of a real chili. Invented in Texas, you would think this is an American natural skill.  It isn't. 

Potluck Crime:  Aiding and Diabetic, Petty Salt