Recap: The Meat Hook Wins The Great Hot Dog Cookoff

By Linnea Covington

This past Saturday, 24 amateur chef teams and five pros, gathered in the lot behind the old Pfizer building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to throw down their sausage skills at the Great Hot Dog Cookoff. For seven years, the competition has rocked the amateur hot dog world and this was the first time they let professional chefs into the running.

Of course, they played by different rules. For the 24 amateur teams, Applegate Farms donated the 100 percent organic beef dogs but The Meat Hook, Gramercy Tavern, Mile End Deli, Marlow & Daughters, and Brooklyn Bangers, who made up the pro-row section, made their own franks. The Meat Hook took home the blue ribbon with their snappy sausage, which they stuffed with beef and pork and topped with jalapenos, Kewpie mayo and a spicy Mexican coleslaw. Marlow & Daughters came in second with their Daughters Alsacian Dog, an all-beef smoked sausage done in the style of choucroute garnie. They encased their frankfurter in a challa bun from Hot Bread Kitchen, and piled homemade sauerkraut and smoked bacon on it.


“The best part about our dog is that everything on it we sell at the store,” said Ben Frey from Marlow & Daughters. He added that the trick to the perfect hot dog is in patience and using a good condiment.

There were two winning teams on the amateur side, one for the judges’ favorite, and the other audience’s favorite. For the former, Ashley Berman and Ericka Martins won with their Father and Son dog, which got topped with veal ragu, gremolata, pickled chili, provolone, and came in a toasted bun slathered in bone marrow. The crowd chose Joseph Maino and Sal Coluccio’s the Nick Mangold Over the Line Dog, a dish the chefs bragged as being “the hog dog to rule them all.” Though these guys won first place, the real winner was the Anarchy Dog, made by Anarchy in a Jar’s Lena McCarthy and Eric Sherman. This tasty bite garnered second place by both the crowd and judges.

McCarthy and Sherman weren’t the only Brooklyn foodie celebrities out there, Cathy Erway, author of The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, was stuffing her hot dogs into wanton wrappers to create the Hot Dogpling. Eric Childs, founder of Kombucha Brooklyn also had his apron on and showed the crowd that yes, you can cook with kombucha. He demonstrated this by pickling the vegetables found in his sushi-roll-styled Detox Dog with kombucha and incorporating the ingredient into the plum sauce - a move that won him third place from the judges.

Another interesting take on a hot dog wasn’t actually a hot dog at all. Charlie Mirisola, who works at Dickson’s Farmstand, and his computer buddy Mike Stewart, developed the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Instead of the donated hot dogs, they decided to hand-blend ground beef (from Dickson’s naturally) to make hamburgers. “We wanted to do a cheeseburger as a hot dog,” said Stewart. “We started thinking about it after last year’s competition.” They haven’t decided yet what’s in store for next year, but rest assured, they will be back.