Before I started this endeavour, when I thought of what constituted crap food, microwaveable complete snacks were it. Developed solely for those with no interest in food beyond being fuel. Having already sampled microwaveable Doner Kebab and Chicken Burgers, when I saw these Hot dogs in my local Lidl, they were a must have. The packaging tries to look as American as Apple Pie, but these ‘McEnnedy’ hotdogs (Why don’t they just call them JFK Dogs and be done with it) are actually produced in Germany from pork sourced in the EU.
The picture above does not really give you a sense of scale of the packaging, but the box itself is good 9 inches in length, that makes 4 inch hotdogs you get out of the packet a bit of a let down. As you can see, what you actually get compared to the box illustration is just laughable. It may say ‘American Way’ on the box, but the hotdog itself and the stuff that’s put on top of it is distinctly European, with one of the topping being white cabbage (Sauerkraut). It was time to cook one of these wieners. I removed all the packaging and slapped on in the microwave and nuked it for 1m50s as per the manufacturers instructions. It was not hot enough at all, as the frankfurter was still cold, so I gave it another 30 seconds.
So what do they taste like? Microwaving bread is never a good idea in my experience, and since the instructions said to remove all the packaging, one side of the bread was dried out like stale bread and the other side was soggy. The hotdog itself was ok, similar to a Herta frankfurter. The topping elevated this hotdog from the depths of Snacksters offerings, to something that is passable to eat if you literally have nothing else. However, given how easy this would be to make from scratch, even microwaving a frankfurter, who would want to buy a frozen one?
Appearance: 3/10
Taste: 5/10
Value: 4/10
Overall: 12/30
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Retailer:
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Lidl UK GmbH |
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Manufacturer:
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Lidl UK GmbH |
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Cost:
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£1.00 |
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CPP:
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705 |
actually, saurkraut is a very popular hot dog topping..but the hot dogs you have reviewed don’t sound so good! Lynda from USA
Lynda / THD – actually the hotdog will be the best part of this. The Germans take their franks very seriously, and if I have a (very rare!) need to buy hotdog sausages I generally home in on Lidl or Aldi, as you can get proper 80%+ pork/beef meat (and not mechanically recovered eyelid meat neither) for the same price as the horrific 35% MRM chicken “Ye Olde Oak” crap that Tesco and Asda sell as a supposedly premium product (quite what’s in their “value” hotdogs I shudder to think – maybe that can be another challenge?)
Still, I’ve never understood microwaveable burgers, and doing it with hotdogs just takes the cake. It probably takes longer to prepare these satisfactorially then it would to do the thing from scratch – apart from chopping up the gherkin and heaping on the saurkraut anyway, which is just wierd. Put franks in pan, set it to boil, open pack of rolls, slice a couple open, add hot franks to buns, add ketchup and mustard.
Now, if they had one that came with the tomato sauce and some nice (??) fried onions, that’d be a very slight time/effort/mess saver.
Thinking of all this, something I tried recently and found to be fairly abhorrent (having cheerfully tried the first half, the second one got relegated to the “in case of emergency” section of my freezer, along with the cheap fishfingers my mum pre-stocked it with ages ago) and may be interesting for you to try — the Instant Breakfast things that Tesco launched recently on a £1-per-pair promotion (ooh, just 1p too much – can it squeak by? I don’t know if that’s going to be its normal retail price). Can’t remember the proper name, it’s toast-and-go or something stupid like that. You’ll know it if you see it… rectangular, flat, Crispy Pancake type breadcrumb-coated things with largely breakfastlike fillings (including hash brown, bizarrely) in small but brightly coloured rip-open plastic packs. The idea is it goes straight from freezer to toaster (on the highest setting – I found this burnt them, but highest minus one didn’t fully cook it!?!?) to plate to mouth. The ultimate convenience food short of something that you can eat directly from the toaster… or crisps, I guess.
In any case… dry, overly crunchy, mostly breadcrumbs, didn’t taste of much and you need an entire cup of water (or tea) to get through them. Had the last two this morning as part one of my “I’m feeling far too desperate to cook anything after this weekend, and can’t afford the time or money to hit greggs on the way to work, but I need hot food” episode (ep2 being the macaroni). I guess you’re paying more for the convenience than the flavour, as you just slap them in the machine and wait for it to pop whilst you either do other things for a few minutes, or just mong out at the kitchen table.
Hi there,
To be honest in my own opinion most American food is crap and sub standard anyways so im glad this product is not actually American. Most Ameerican food is also Genetically modified, I have lived in America and trust me American food compared to European these is no comparison.
Steven in Irelandi
U gotta be some kind of cretin to call American food crap, and you make yourself seem even more stupid when you attempt to denegrate genetically modified food………genetics have saved millions of people from starvation all over the world……..smarten up idiot.
The only thing GM crops have done is make $$$ for Monsanto. They have not saved millions of people from starvation. Crops like roundup-ready Soya and other crops with terminator genes are mixing with non-GM crops and polluting the biosphere and the food chain.
Smarten up corporate arse licking idiot.
ARHH that reminded me of a hotdog I had from a stand in westen super mare, still think thay can get sued under trades description act for ‘SUPER’, any who it was so old and over cooked it cracked when bite into it, I gave it to a rat at the beach front aka mud flats and the rat turned it nose up at it.
Its all crap crap crap,how anyone can eat that shite is beyond me,its all mechanicaly recovered,instead of turning it into pet foods they feed it to stupid people,the likes of who would eat dog turds,and pay for it…..serves em right to.
Found this blog via a mention at Boing Boing, been reading through.
http://boingboing.net/2012/06/05/the-shite-food-of-britain.html
About sauerkraut on hot dogs: it’s a regional thing here in the US, popular where there are (or were) high concentrations of folk of German ancestry.
I’m not sure, either, of the iconic American hot dog preparation. For feeding a lot of younguns lunch, my mother used to boil them and serve them on buns that’d been toasted in the oven. The burger joint we frequented in my youth would split them and sizzle them on a griddle; the buns would likewise be toasted on the griddle. As far as the bun goes it had to be “air bread” — no resemblance to real bread. If we were camping out or at the beach, the dogs were speared on something that resembled a toasting fork and twirled over the open flames.
Now if you want real American sludge food, it’s beans and franks, or Beanie Weenies
Beanie Weenee or Beans and Franks
10 Oscar Mayer Hot Dogs or hot dog of your choice (1 package)
2 Cans Pork & Beans (approximately 6 cups of beans & sauce)
Amounts below can be adjusted to your taste
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup barbeque sauce
1 tsp prepared mustard
You can bake this as a casserole baked in the oven, or do it on the stovetop.
Cut up all the hot dogs in bite size pieces.
Open cans of beans and add to your cooking utensil. Add the brown sugar, barbeque sauce, and mustard and mix well. Add the hotdogs and mix again.
Casserole: Preheat oven to 350 degrees:
Bake for about 20 minutes until bubbly.
Stovetop:
Heat until bubbly over medium heat, stirring frequently so the mix doesn’t stick.