Recipe: Gourmet Pigs-in-a-Blanket

As promised yesterday, I’m sharing my process to make the above “gourmet” pig-in-the-blanket.  They were inspired by one I ate while shopping at Whole Foods earlier this month.  Their deliciousness comes from its ingredients: pizza dough, uncured hot dog, red and yellow peppers, red onion, and mozzarella cheese.  They are perfect for my bento box.  You can change the filling to include whatever you want for your own tastes.  I can also see how this would be a very kid-friendly meal.  I hope you enjoy as much as I have.  If you want to try this, I highly encourage you to.  Just read the notes at the end of it all.  What I’m about to share is the process of what I did.  You might want to change that process a bit.

First ingredient is going to be pizza dough.  I, in no way, felt like making pizza dough for the first time for this recipe.  I purchased a package of frozen dough instead.  It worked beautifully.

I also used uncured hot dogs and “soft” mozzarella cheese.  Now, I don’t know much about uncured hot dogs versus cured.  I’m not a hot dog connoisseur as some individuals are who debate such issues.  And I’m not joking here.  While reading about uncured hot dogs, I ran across just such websites.  My palate isn’t sophisticated enough to debate such an issue.  All I know is I enjoyed them, and it is what was in the ingredients list on the one I had at Whole Foods.

I also purchased what I term as “soft” mozzarella cheese.  I’m sure it has a more technical term for it.  It’s the type of mozzarella that is squishy to the touch instead of the hard block of cheese you have to grate.  For some reason, I get the impression it is a bit fresher, and I’ve never tried it before.  I’m not much on cheese for the sake of cheese.

Next come a red pepper, a yellow pepper, and some garlic.  You are going to want to chop these up.

And finally a beautiful red onion.  I have to find some recipes that use red onion.  This thing didn’t make me cry when I cut it open.  Definitely a reason to use red onion more often.

The first thing I did was roughly chop a few cloves of garlic and put them in a heated pan brushed with olive oil.

Then, I threw in the red bell pepper.  I must note that this wasn’t the best order of things.  I ended up having to scoop out the garlic since it was ready much sooner than the red pepper.  I allowed the red pepper to cook until its skin blistered as though it had been roasted.

Once done, I took the red pepper out and chopped it up.  Into the empty pan went chopped red onion and yellow peppers.

In a saucepan, I placed four hot dogs with water covering them.  I brought the hot dogs to a boil on the stove.  Once the water was boiling, I turned the heat off, moved the pan to a cool surface, slapped on a tight-fitting lid, and let them steep for about 8 minutes.  After cooking, I cut them in half.

Once everything is cooked, it’s time to play with pizza dough.  First, take your pizza dough and spread it out on a floured surface.   This frozen dough took me a little while to flatten and spread out.  Cut off a nice chunk for your gourmet pig.  Place a half a hot dog with a few slices of cheese around it.

On top of this, sprinkle your cooked garlic, as much or as little as you want.

Finally, smother it with peppers and onions.

Wrap it all up, closing the ends if you can.  Closing the ends keeps the cheese from oozing out.  Brush the tops of them with olive oil or a small amount of melted butter.  Whichever you prefer.

Cook according to the package instructions for the pizza dough.  My dough said to cook at 400 degrees for 8 minutes.  I found 8 minutes wasn’t long enough.  I didn’t roll the dough out as thin as you would for a pizza.  It took these much longer to cook for that reason.  Keep a careful eye on them and pull them from the oven when browned to your liking.  Don’t worry if some of the cheese oozes out and burns a bit as in this picture.  these dogs aren’t burnt on the bottom or inside.  They are quite tasty.

In fact to prove it, here is the inside of one.  Yummy looking don’t you think?  These are absolutely great.  The 4 hot dogs I cut in half and made are going to feed me for the rest of the week.    Today’s bento is going to look surprisingly similar to yesterday’s bento.  LOL!

Jenn’s notes on this recipe:
This was an easy and well-liked recipe by me.  However, I didn’t realize how much longer it was going to take to cook the pizza dough than the instructions on the package indicated.  If I would have realized that, I probably would have rethought cooking the veggies beforehand.  They were a little mushier than I would have wanted.  I would have enjoyed them a bit crisper.  However, they aren’t horrible, and all in all it is still quite a tasty dish.  Be sure to keep this in mind when you make these.