Last night was the only time my grown kids could get together to hang out for Halloween. The older they get the harder it is to find time to be together. So we decided to have "Fair" food and carve pumpkins for Halloween last night. Of course we did watch some spooky movies but our beloved Rangers were playing game 6 of the World Series and we had to watch that. So I made corn dogs, home made lemonade (recipe here on Tried and True), and funnel cakes (recipe here on Tried and True.) We couldn't have been happier.
The corn dogs were a recipe that my hero Pioneer Woman posted last week. They were pretty wonderful and everyone agreed rivaled the ones you buy at the fair. Here they are kids. Give them a try. You wont be sorry.
(Getting the batter for the corn dogs right is the real secret. I would say that the batter should be the consistency of cake batter. Too thin and enough batter will not stay on the hot dog. To thick and goopy and your corn dog will be thick and tough. What I did for this and for the funnel cakes is went to Youtube and watched videos. You can see the batter consistency if you watch a few videos of them cooking them. I wasn't looking for a recipe just how thick the batter was. It helped a lot. )
This batter made almost twice what I needed. But I would rather have too much than not enough.
Corn dogs
- 6 cups Krusteaz Pancake Mix
- 2 cups Yellow Corn Meal
- 2 whole Eggs, Slightly Beaten
- 6 cups Water, More If Needed To Thin Batter
- Hot Dogs
- Chopsticks, skewers (we found these great thick sticks for corn on the cob that worked great.)
- Canola Oil, For Frying
- Mustand or Ketchup. Whatever your dipping pleasure is.
In a large bowl, combine pancake mix and cornmeal, mix. Add eggs and water, adding more water as needed for the batter to become slightly thick (but not overly gloopy.) Start out by adding 4 cups, then work your way up to 6 cups or more. I ended up having to add extra pancake batter to the mix as I got to much water. It was an easy fix.
Heat canola oil over medium-high heat. Drop in a bit of batter to see if it's ready: the batter should immediately start to sizzle but should not immediately brown/burn.
Insert sticks into hot dogs so that they're 2/3 of the way through. I put the batter into a tall glass that I dip the hot dog all the way into the batter. It worked great.
Dip the hot dogs into the batter and allow excess to drip off for a couple of seconds. Carefully drop into the oil (stick and all) and use tongs or a spoon to make sure it doesn't hit the bottom of the pan and stick. Flip it here and there to ensure even browning, and remove it from the oil when the outside is deep golden brown, about 2 to 3 minutes.
