Wiener Wednesday: Pine Valley Red Hots (1954)

Happy Wiener Wednesday!

The #SummerOfFranks rolls on with a selection from a recent acquisition, The Family Circle Meat Cookbook (1954).

That is a broiled sirloin steak if you were wondering.

The cookbook is divided into 12 chapters:

• The Meat in Your Menus
• Beef
• Veal
• Lamb
• Pork
• Ham
• Sausage
• Bacon
• Variety Meats
• Quick-Fix Meats
• Sauces
• Meat Accompaniments

Frankfurters fall under “Quick-Fix Meats.” It reads:

Frankfurters are the most versatile and best-loved of the sausages…Wieners and Vienna Sausages are similar to frankfurters in taste. Wieners are longer and smaller in diameter. Vienna Sausages are smaller and usually sold in cans.

I have thoughts.

1. Vienna Sausages  taste NOTHING like hot dogs.
2. Frankfurters and wieners are not the same thing???

I took to the web to do some research. From the Daily Meal:

Frankfurters are made entirely with pork, and wieners are a mixture of pork and beef. And as the names might imply, frankfurters originated in Frankfurt and wieners from Vienna. To make things even more confusing: in the U.S., “franks” tend to be all beef.

Shit. Does this mean that I have to switch up the kind of sausage I use based on the recipe?

The recipe calls for frankfurters. I used Nathan’s. Which are all-beef. So these would not be considered frankfurters in Germany. But I am not in Germany, I am in the US of fuckin’ A, so these are frankfurters.

Anyway–I selected the recipe based on both the name, Pine Valley Red Hots, and the accompanying photo.

Looks like bloody entrails with chunks of cream cheese.

Now to cook!

Soooo…..nothing of note happened during the prep of this dish. I doubled the chili powder, but that was the only modification. And it didn’t make it any sort of red-hot.

I am particularly proud with this plating. Seriously. Compare the two.

The plating was better than the taste. I mean, it was edible. Edible but boring. The sauce basically tasted like a half-assed pasta sauce. Except with celery.

I feel like this dish would have been much improved if, instead of using canned tomato sauce, ketchup was used as the base. And with more Worcestershire. More mustard. Maybe some vinegar.

Basically the sauce for a Pittsburgh Chipped Ham BBQ Sandwich.

I will say that the onion/celery topper was a nice touch. A little crunch was appreciated.

Note: the sauce was better for lunch the next day.

I did a little research on Pine Valley and came up with nothing but a bunch of golf courses and country clubs. But I did remember that there was a Pine Valley cocktail in my Pap Pap’s copy of Here’s How! by Stouffer’s. I think I’m gonna give it a go tonight and I’ll be back soon with all the deets.