Griddle Hot Dogs with Homemade Chili Sauce and Steamed Buns (2024)

These griddle hot dogs are so easy to make, and they are absolutely delicious thanks to the steamed buns and homemade chili sauce. Take your Blackstone hot dogs to a whole new level with these tips for cooking hot dogs on the flat top grill!

Every now and then I get a hankering for a good chili dog.

There was a little convenience store down the street from my house when I was a kid, and I used to ride my bike there for an afternoon chili dog. The buns were steamy soft (some may even call them soggy), and the chili sauce was perfect with not a bean in sight.

And it’s those simple dishes that sometimes get forgotten when you think about griddle cooking. The simple hot dog just takes a back seat to Blackstone fried rice or Philly cheesesteaks because, hey, it’s just a hot dog.

But while these griddle hot dogs may not be fancy, they are fantastic! In fact, I would put these chili dogs up against any hot dog stand, restaurant, or ball park. So the next time you want a classic chili hot dog on the griddle, give this easy recipe a try!

Ingredients for Homemade Hot Dog Chili Sauce

This homemade hot dog chili is better than anything you can buy at the store, so ditch the canned chili sauce and grab these ingredients:

• ground beef – I used 80/20 ground beef for my hot dog chili sauce because that’s what I found on sale at the grocery store. When I make this chili again, I’ll use 85/15 for a bit less grease.
• onion
• beef consomme – You can substitute beef stock if you wish, but I find the Campbell’s canned beef consomme soup to be richer in flavor.
• ketchup
• dijon mustard
• Worcestershire sauce
• hot sauce – I use the original variety of Cholula hot sauce, because I find that it isn’t too spicy for the family.
• spices – This hot dog chili recipe calls for a lot of different spices, but most of them you probably already have in your spice cabinet – onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika, chili powder, cumin, salt, and pepper.
• sugar
• tomato paste – I highly recommend keeping a squeeze tube of tomato paste in your refrigerator. So many recipes call for just a few tablespoons of tomato paste, and the tube is super convenient.

Tips for Cooking Hot Dogs on the Griddle

I know it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to cook hot dogs on the Blackstone… Heck, even my wife could probably figure it out! But these simple tips can take your basic hot dogs from good to GREAT:

Start off with good quality hot dogs.

The number one key to the best hot dogs on the griddle is to start with good quality ingredients. You can’t buy the cheapest of cheap dogs at the grocery store and expect to produce a restaurant quality griddle dog.

Now, we could get into a whole conversation about length vs. girth, but if you’ve ever seen the back-and-forth banter between my wife and I in our cooking YouTube videos, then you’ve probably had enough food-related innuendos.

And she would probably tell you that both length AND thickness are equally important.

We prefer to use a premium hot dog like Nathan’s 100% beef hot dogs. For this particular recipe, we used Nathan’s Jumbo Restaurant Style Beef Franks, and they were fantastic! Yes, they may be more expensive than the bulk store brands, but you can often find them on sale.

Get the right griddle temp for hot dogs.

Start off by heating your griddle to the right temperature. You don’t want the griddle to be too hot, because then the outside of your hot dogs will burn before the inside has a chance to really cook.

Think of a gas station hot dog that is constantly turning on those rotating warmer wheels… you know what I’m talking about… right next to the pump of liquid gold nacho cheese and the plastic ball park-style trays of round tortilla chips. Those convenience store hot dogs are cooked slowly and held at the perfect temp so they stay perfectly crisp on the outside and hot and juicy on the inside.

A good griddle temperature for cooking hot dogs is about 350-375 degrees F.

Roll the hot dogs in some oil on the griddle.

Fatty beef and pork sticks shallow frying in more fat… sounds fantastic, right? That’s the stuff that late night cravings are made of!

So don’t be afraid to add a bit of oil to your griddle surface as your Blackstone hot dogs are cooking. You can also add a squirt of your favorite cooking oil on top of the griddle hot dogs and use your spatula to roll the hot dogs around on the flat top grill so that they get a nice thin, even coating of the oil.

The rolling method, where you frequently rotate the dogs by pushing them back and forth on the hot surface, mimics the rolling of the convenience store hot dog rollers. And I prefer this method to just turning the hot dogs after each side gets dark.

That’s how you get a perfectly cooked hot dog on the griddle that is bronzed all the way around.

Use this easy hack for steaming the hot dog buns on the griddle.

Every now and then I have an off-the-wall idea that turns out perfectly, and I can’t help but pat myself on the back… And these steamed hot dog buns are one of those awesome ideas.

Usually when you steam something on the griddle, you add a squirt of water to the hot surface right next to the food item and immediately cover it with a melting dome. The water coming in contact with the hot griddle surface creates steam, and you can trap that steam inside the dome to speed up the cooking process and steam your food.

But with hot dog buns or other bread products, you don’t want to add water right next to them on the griddle, because there’s not really a good way to keep the water from flowing into the bread and making it soggy.

That’s why most people serve their griddle burgers or hot dogs with toasted buns, not steamed… Until today…

To make perfectly steamed hot dog buns on the griddle, add about 1/4″ of water to a small baking sheet. Place the tray of water on the griddle and allow the water to heat up. Then, set a wire rack on the baking sheet, and place your buns on top of the rack. The buns should be elevated above the water, so if your wire rack is shorter, be sure to adjust the amount of water in your tray.

As the water heats, it will produce steam. Just add a melting dome on top of the buns to trap the steam, and after a few minutes, you’ll have perfectly steamed hot dog buns!

Great griddle hot dogs take patience.

Certain griddle foods, like hash browns, can go from good to GREAT with a little bit of patience.

Can you cook a hot dog on the griddle in 2 or 3 minutes? Sure. But are griddle hot dogs even better if you cook them longer, rotating them in a little bit of oil as they cook? Absolutely!

These hot dogs took about 8-10 full minutes to cook on the griddle, and that fantastic “sunburnt” reddish blistered color is your delicious prize for being patient:

How to Make Homemade Hot Dog Chili

This hot dog chili sauce is very easy to make, because you basically just dump all of the ingredients in a large skillet and allow the mixture to reduce.

Start by adding all of the ingredients for the hot dog chili sauce (except for the tomato paste) to a wide-bottomed skillet or saute pan. A wider skillet is best because the chili ingredients will have more area to spread out to help speed up the reduction process.

Once everything is added to the skillet, use a large fork or spatula to break up the ground beef inside the liquid like this:

Mix all of the ingredients together, and cook the chili sauce on a medium heat until a good amount of the moisture is reduced.

*Truth be told, I brought my skillet inside and cooked the hot dog chili on the stovetop to save propane. Your stove is more efficient for making dishes like this that need to be cooked for a longer period of time.

Once your chili is done reducing, it should look something like this. Now, you can reduce your sauce further, but I like a more “saucy” style chili for my hot dogs. And remember, you haven’t added the tomato paste yet, so it will thicken a bit more also.

Right at the very end, when your homemade hot dog chili sauce is done cooking, add the tomato paste to the skillet and mix it in well. From there, you can taste the chili and adjust the seasonings if needed. If you want a spicier hot dog chili, you can add some cayenne pepper or more hot sauce, or for a sweet chili sauce, add a bit of sugar.

My wife and I agreed that the hot dog chili recipe below was perfect as is, so we didn’t adjust a single thing.

And here’s what our hot dog chili sauce looked like when it was done:

Assembling the BEST griddle chili dogs:

In my opinion, the BEST chili dogs have these 5 components:

• a perfect, meaty hot dog chili sauce (hold the beans)
• yellow mustard
• finely diced raw onion
• freshly grated sharp cheddar cheese
• a soft steamed bun

And this ONE TIP can make a HUGE difference in your chili cheese dog:

When grating the cheese, use the smallest holes on your cheese grater to finely shred the cheddar cheese.

When we visited Cincinnati a few months ago and tasted their famous chili dogs, we absolutely LOVED the extremely fine, light, and airy style shredded cheese. By grating your cheese with the smallest holes on your cheese grater, you’re able to mimic that light-as-a-cloud fluffy cheese and pile it on without overpowering the other flavors. Delicious!

I hope you guys enjoy these easy hot dogs on the griddle as much as we did!

Can you open a can of chili and dump it in a saucepan? Absolutely. But sometimes when you take the extra time to make it from scratch, and shred your own cheese, and just put a little more effort into your griddle recipes in general, it’s absolute perfection!

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