Chili Cheese Dog and Fries
Have you ever ordered a chili cheese dog or chili cheese fries from a food truck or a little roadside drive-in and wished you could make grilled hot dogs or french fries at home taste that good?
At Tasty Kitchen Creations we have two different chili seasonings. Both make awesome chili, but the seasonings are different in each of them so the end product is different. I use the Cowboy Chili Seasoning and I don’t add any beans when I want to make chili cheese dogs or chili cheese fries.
Cowboy Chili Seasoning makes a great chili, with or without beans.
I’ve made chili for years and my family loves my traditional seasoning for our typical regular style bowl of Chili. I use Tasty Kitchen Creations Chili Seasoning for this. That said, we moved from Manitoba to Alberta about 13 years ago. In Manitoba a lot of the fast food burger joints use a meat based chili mixture on their hot dogs, burgers and french fries. Then they top them each with grated cheese. These were my husbands favorite burger joints. When we moved to Alberta we loved our adventures in the mountains, and to be honest we found the pizzas to be much better in Alberta, but it didn’t take long before my husband was missing and craving his favorite chili cheese dogs and chili cheese fries, or yah, and the lakes of Manitoba, he was missing them too! My regular chili is delicious but it has a totally different flavour than the chili on chili cheese dogs and chili cheese fries.
I always love an adventure in the kitchen. It was time to do some research and make this kind of chili myself. Not to be discouraged, but the first few batches I made I’d get an, “yah, its ok”. Not the response I was looking for! Keep trying. After the third or fourth try and tweaking my recipe this way and that, I got the response I was wanted….”oh yah! now that’s good!” OK, NAILED IT!!
So to help keep it authentic I make sure we use the European Style wieners. There’s something about that CRUNCH you get when you bite into a European wiener that makes this hot dog perfect. Also, although I don’t mind making homemade french fries, to be completely transparent, when we are having our meal of chili cheese dogs and chili cheese fries, I usually end up cheating. We stop at one of our local restaurants and grab a family size bag of homemade style french fries that they make so well. Take them home, doctor them up by drizzling chili over top of them, add some cheese, pop them in the microwave for a minute or so or under the broiler for 2 or 3 minutes (just long enough to melt the cheese)….oh my, these are good!
Now to be clear, my husband still craves his favorite chili cheese dogs and chili cheese fries, because I don’t make this for him on a weekly basis. I do manage to keep him somewhat satisfied by freezing the left overs in small batches so he can take a container of chili to work. He puts one of the containers in his lunch, along with a wiener and a bun and a little bit of grated cheese. He then runs out at lunch time to grab an order of fries, and makes his favorite lunch at work himself.
My hubby usually prefers this with a hot dog, but its also as popular on hamburgers (with or without cheese). Simply smear a thin layer of chili on the top side of your burger bun. Add a little prepared yellow mustard, a couple of sliced sour pickles, a little bit of shredded lettuce. Now that’s tasty!
I hope you love these as much as we do.
Our seasonings are available on our shopping page.
Prep Time
20 mins
Cook Time
60 mins
Total Time
90 mins
Servings
12
INGREDIENTS
1 pound ground meat (we love beef, 50-50 beef & pork, you could also use turkey, chicken, lamb or your favorite ground plant based option)
1/4 cup Tasty Kitchen Creations Cowboy Chili Seasoning
1 cup tomato juice
1 cup beef broth
12 European style wieners (you can use regular wieners)
1 dozen hot dog buns
Prepared yellow mustard
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
INSTRUCTIONS
In a medium sized heavy bottomed saucepan brown ground meat.
Sprinkle meat with Cowboy Chili Seasoning. Allow to simmer for approximately 3 - 5 minutes.
Add tomato juice and beef broth. Bring mixture to a simmer. Reduce heat. Allow mixture to cook over low heat for 45 - 60 minutes.
Grill or pan fry wieners.
Warm hot dog buns.
Spread 2 Tablespoons prepared chili across the bottom of each hot dog bun.
Squeeze a small amount of mustard down the length of the chili.
Place wiener on chili and mustard.
Add another small amount of chili across the hot dog.
Sprinkle with cheddar cheese.
Serve with a side of french fries topped with some of the chili and shredded cheese for a really great treat.
