The Best Single-Use Tools for Ruining Your Hot Dogs

Browsing Amazon, you'll find any number of single-use kitchen contraptions claiming to perform functions you didn't know were possible. In this column, As Seen on Amazon, we'll be testing these eyebrow-raising tools you can have delivered to your door in one day.

There are, on Amazon, all manner of hot dog steamers, rollers, and slicers designed to cook a food that is (technically) already cooked, and deform a food that is (definitely) already deformed. They all exist with the noble goal of taking what is already an odd, processed, and unnatural food and making it more odd and more unnatural.

Broadly speaking, hot dog contraptions fall into two categories: those that cook dogs, and those that deform them. Whole websites (including, on occasion, this one) exist to test practical kitchen appliances (rigorously, for hours and hours) and teach us—as highly-valuable, highly-educated consumers—to settle for nothing less than the greatest toaster of all time.

Instead of doing that, I decided to test a bunch of cheap plastic tools for cooking hot dogs. I took on the single-use tools that should only be seen on the dying medium of 3 a.m. infomercials but that have found a strange new accessibility and availability on the internet. Here's how it went:

Spiralizers

A hot dog is already meat extruded into a man-made shape. If, for some reason, you want to re-extrude that meat into a different man-made shape (a spiral, mainly)—for crispier edges, or choking-hazard avoidance—a wide array of single-use items are available to help you reach this goal.

The Best of the Worst: The Curl-A-Dog Spiral Hot Dog Slicer is a plastic clamshell mold. You place your hotdog within said clamshell, press down, and it imprints the hot dog with a series of grooves. The plastic blades inside will leave shallow channels, thereby increasing the number of crisp-able edges, and creating slots to maximize condiment penetration.

The device performs exactly as advertised, but not drastically better than a knife, which, believe it or not, can also cut grooves into a hotdog. Still, if you need to carve a lot of hot dogs very quickly — or are just a hot dog lover who can't figure out what to do with all of your copious drawer space—I would opt for the Curl-A-Dog above its competitors.

The Worst of the Worst: The Outset Spiral Hot Dog Cutter consists of a tube in which you place your hot dog. The tube contains a spiral of grates, through which you cut grooves into the hot dog yourself with a miniature plastic saw. It's difficult to do without messing up. My hot dog fell apart on the grill.

The grid-shaped stamp of the SLOTDOG Hot Dog Slicing Tool which, again, cuts grooves into a dog, was almost comically robust compared to its frivolous purpose. Unless you have tons of extra drawer space, go with the Curl-A-Dog.

BUY IT: Curl A Dog Spiral Hot Dog Slicer 2 Pack, $11 on Amazon

Slicers

If you want to cut your dog fully into pieces instead of a spiral, I’d steer clear of the novelty hot dog tool category altogether. Again: How hard is it to just use a knife?

The Best for Toddlers: There's maybe one exception to this rule. For cooks with kids, the literal dog-shaped Evrilholder Hot Dog Holder and Slicer is tempting. You place your hot dog on top of a plastic cylinder with grooves. Then, you place the dog's body—which has plastic blades—through the hot dog and into the groves of the base. Theoretically, it forms perfect hot dog slices. In reality, you'll waste a lot of time trying to line the dog's bladed body up with his grooved underside (something I'd imagine would be frustrating particularly if you're the toddler with as yet-to-be-developed motor skills that this tool is designed for). For what it's worth, the kid in the instructional video for this tool doesn't even seem to be able to muster much enthusiasm. Bonus: the machine does have an attached condiment holder for your ketchup or mustard (fight which one goes on a hot dog elsewhere!).

BUY IT: Evrilholder Hot Dog Holder and Slicer, $9 on Amazon

The Best for Versatility: If you insist on a specialized device—and not, again, a tested-and-approved favorite knife that was literally designed to cut a variety of foods—this hybrid hot dog-banana slicer allows you to cut more than one food item (it allows you to cut two!). It looks like a hard boiled egg slicer but longer, and the tidy grid of thin metal blades can instantly slice your hot dog into forty–four bite sized pieces. Another idea? Appropriate a wire egg slicer for cutting hot dogs (I assume you already own one since you must be obsessed with single-use tools).

BUY IT: RoseSummer Hot Dog & Banana Cutter, $10 on Amazon

For the true best way to slice and shape your cripsy-edged hot dogs, buy the best paring knife:

Cookers

Lastly, the hot-dog cooking devices: Both of the gadgets I chose to test were from J-JATI, a single-use appliance powerhouse whose cockamamie wares are sold mainly on Amazon.

The Best for Steamed Hot-Dog Enthusiasts: The J-JATI Hot Dog Steamer Cooker Maker Machine combines a hot dog steamer basket with bun-warming spikes in what Google tells me is the “European-style.” Huh.

The machine works well and does what it says, producing ten large steamed hot dogs (because everyone wants a steamed hot dog and has just been settling for grilled all this time) and two warm buns within a single appliance. If, for some reason, you need to produce a hot dog’s two components at a ratio of 10:2, you’ll be happy with the cooker, but I wouldn’t bank on that joy lasting long. The plastic was so plastic-y it made hot dogs themselves seem almost like a natural, sustainably-farmed piece of produce from the farmers' market.

BUY IT: J-JATI Hot Dog Steamer Cooker Maker Machine, $24 on Amazon

The Best for Consuming Harmful Chemicals: I felt the same way about the J-JATI Waffle Corn Hot Dog Presser Maker, which is designed to make “waffledogs" (picture a corn dog, but the crust is made of waffle). Like the Hot Dog Steamer, it did what it promised, but the smell of warming plastic made me fear for my health. That said, at this point I’d eaten fifteen hot dogs, so this type of concern seemed too little, too late.

BUY IT: J-JATI Waffle Corn Hot Dog Presser Maker, $24 on Amazon

For the best hot dogs, cook them on our top-recommended grill:

Originally Appeared on Epicurious