I did not eat corn dogs growing up. I was a card-carrying member of the crispy hot dog fan club, the kind of kid who wanted a hot dog with actual char on it. And if yours was anywhere near boiling water, I wasn't interested. A dog wrapped in batter looked too much like a boiled dog in disguise, and I wanted no part of it.
Then I grew up. Moved to Austin, Texas, and found myself at the Texas State Fair in Dallas multiple years running. You can't stand in that midway and stay principled about a corny dog. I caved. I converted. I have not looked back.
These days, a corn dog is my favorite side at Cookout, and we eat the vegan corn dogs at our house on a regular rotation. I am, genuinely, a corn dog person now. This is my life.
The History of Corn Dogs
Nobody agrees on who invented the corn dog in the first place.
There's an Oregon beach stand called Pronto Pup that claims it happened on a rainy day in the late 1930s when soggy buns sent the owners looking for a better plan. There are the aforementioned Neil and Carl Fletcher, who started selling "Corny Dogs" at the 1942 Texas State Fair for 15 cents apiece and had to cut them in half and hand out samples before anyone would try one. Then there's Cozy Dog Drive-in in Springfield, Illinois, that has its own version of the story entirely. The origin debate has never been settled.
What has been settled: mustard.
The Fletcher family has been clear about it for over eighty years. At the Texas State Fair, they go through 1,500 gallons of mustard versus 800 gallons of ketchup. And ketchup only showed up because customers demanded it in 1994!
The corn dog and mustard aren't paired because someone thought it was clever. It's just what belongs together. And I've been thinking about that pairing a lot this summer.
4 Corn Dog Recipes!
There is a version of summer that exists purely in memory.
Warm pavement. A cold drink sweating through its cup. Something fried on a stick, held up to the light like it's the most important thing in the world. Corn dogs belong to that version of summer. They don't need to be improved. They just need a little backup when you wanna shake it up.
Here are some of the most recent ways I've been enjoying corn dogs when it's just too hot to cook anything else!
A Classic, Upgraded
Whisk half a teaspoon of Carolina Mustard BBQ Rub and a small drizzle of honey into two tablespoons of yellow mustard. That's the dip in the photo for this blog post!
The rub is built on yellow mustard powder, brown sugar, smoked paprika, and apple cider vinegar powder, so it deepens mustard instead of fighting it. The honey rounds out the vinegar tang. It still tastes like mustard (that's the whole point), but it's mustard that someone actually thought about.
Citrusy Spicy Dip
Stir Chilli Lime into mayo, squeeze a little fresh lime over the top, a few glugs of Cholula, stir, and dip.
The lime powder in the blend has real tartness, and the fresh lime on top pushes it further. Plus the tang from the hot sauce...it's bright, a little spicy, and works especially well on corn dog nuggets where the ratio of batter to dip is more generous.
The Sichuan Situation
This one is for the heat seekers.
Pull your corn dog out of the air fryer and toss it immediately in Chef Shuai Wang's Sichuan Hot Chicken Spice, then hit it with a drizzle of Kewpie mayo and a little sriracha. The Sichuan peppercorns bring that electric, mouth-numbing buzz alongside the cayenne heat, with cinnamon and star anise adding warmth underneath.
It's a lot in the best way. It's excellent. I'm obsessed. This is the spice blend that truly keeps giving 💅🏼
Jugaad It
Add a little extra white sugar to a bowl with Jugaad It and toss your dog in the blend straight out of the airfryer!
Jugaad It is three ingredients (salt, sugar, MSG), which sounds minimal until you taste what MSG does to fried cornbread batter. The salt pulls out the corn flavour. The sugar catches the heat from the fryer, and the extra sweetness balances the salt from the dog. The MSG adds a savory depth that makes the whole thing taste more like itself.
Top with Kewpie, a little sriracha, Furikake, and a pinch of gochugaru. It reads like a Korean street food mashup. It tastes like summer decided to try something new.
Keep It Easy, Friends!
All four start with a corn dog. None of them requires more than five minutes or a hot kitchen. That's the whole idea, y'all. And coming from a former crispy-hot-dog purist, I mean that sincerely.
Spread love, cook corn dogs!
Cara Manning, Spicewalla's Director of Marketing
