Conductive Cuisine

Parker Dillmann
Welcome to circuit break from MacroFab, a weekly show about all things engineering, DIY projects, manufacturing, industry news, and the conductivity of hot dogs. We're your hosts, electrical engineers, Parker Dillmann.

Stephen Kraig
And Stephen Kraig.

Parker Dillmann
This is episode 157. So you know why it's 157?

Stephen Kraig
No. Why is it 157, Parker?

Parker Dillmann
So I asked chat gbt 4. I the prompt was if there was a electrical engineering podcast that talked about the conductivity of hot dogs, what would you think the episode number would be? And it said 150 because it suggests that the podcast has been around for a while, and the creators delve into more unusual topics.

Stephen Kraig
That's that's that's funny because it's spot on the nose. I mean, we've been around long enough that we could talk about conductive cuisine on our on this podcast.

Parker Dillmann
We're actually over 400 episodes by the time we're recording this thing. So alright. So oh, go ahead, Steven.

Stephen Kraig
No. No. Please go ahead.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, so the hot dog conductivity so Steven posted on our form, which is formed.macfab.com, a kind of like a experiment or theory or what's the best way to put it? Because it actually had a a a it was it was an experiment with results. Yeah. Technically, it was

Stephen Kraig
full on research that we found. It would be a very long story to get into, but the engineering team at my work has been joking about hot dog electronics for a little bit now, and one of the guys posted in our team's chat this research paper of the specific conductivity of hot dogs, and I had to share it with Parker. And then we realized that this needed to be an episode. And and this research paper is is exactly this. It is a full on like, it's it's beyond a lab report.

Stephen Kraig
It is a full on paper discussing the the conductivity of hot dogs, but not just like a hot dog. This this goes into different brands of hot dogs and how the testing is actually executed. And it and and in the conclusion, it's kind of funny too because it's talking about, like, oh, there's quite a bit more that could happen to this. And I'm sitting here reading this paper. I was like, no.

Stephen Kraig
I think you've pretty much nailed it. I think you pretty much have come to your conclusion here. But but yeah. So this we need to post a link to this in the show notes, but it's it's a solid read of the specific conductivity of hot dogs.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. The the my favorite is so they have, like it's it's a website from, like, the mid aughts, so it's very simple. But there's an image of a hot dog that's smiling, and there's this great quote. I don't know who Lawrence j Peter is, but they have a a this quote's awesome. It is the noblest of all dogs is the hot dog.

Parker Dillmann
It feeds the hand that bites it.

Stephen Kraig
You know, I don't I don't even remember why this was a thing, because it's done it's done in in a professional way to the point where it just doesn't even feel like a joke. Like, someone put a lot of effort into this.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Because it was the the hypothesis was the longer you cook slash boil the hot dog, the lower the current will be because there's less water. Like, less water like, water comes out of the hot dog. Right. And actually, they found it was the exact opposite.

Parker Dillmann
As you boil a hot dog, it absorbs moisture, which kinda makes sense from a from a osmosis because a salt a hot dog's full of salt and nitrites, so and the water is not.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. And I mean, dogs, they they plump up when you when you cook them.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm. I I do like the drawn conclusion. It just has how many amps it like, they maxed out how much amperage at 47.2 amps, which is insane to think about through a hot dog.

Stephen Kraig
What I don't know. What what's what's the average diameter of a hot dog? I I wonder what gauge of meat a hotdog is. Is it

Parker Dillmann
a Well, they measure the zero gauge

Stephen Kraig
they measure hug?

Parker Dillmann
Well, they measure cigars and a gay the cigars have a gauge. I wonder if cigar gauge and wire gauge match

Stephen Kraig
up? Wouldn't surprise me.

Parker Dillmann
No. Because a 40 gauge no. No. Because in cigars, the bigger the number, the larger the cigar, which is the exact opposite of wire gauge. Well, we need to have a hot dog gauge then.

Parker Dillmann
Double hotdog.

Stephen Kraig
I you know, I would not be surprised if there is some kind of food standard administration out there that says a hot dog must be, you know, x inches in diameter and so long or whatever. That that would not surprise me at all.

Parker Dillmann
So I I typed in hot dog gauge into Google.

Stephen Kraig
Is that a thing?

Parker Dillmann
Well, the first thing is the gp dash 1010, the gamma beta hot dog probe.

Stephen Kraig
What?

Parker Dillmann
I think oh, this is it is it's just like a radiation detector that they just call it the hot dog. Doesn't look like a hot dog to me. You can get ear gauges that are the shape of hot dogs. Not really any okay. How long what is the longest hot dog, Steven?

Parker Dillmann
What do you how long do you think is the longest hot dog?

Stephen Kraig
Oh, the longest hot dog? I'm gonna guess 27 feet.

Parker Dillmann
You are an order of magnitude off. 270 feet? 197 feet long hot dog. Oh gosh. It had a 198 foot long bun.

Stephen Kraig
They just kept they just had I guess they had a continuous casing and just kept filling it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah, I guess you'd have to have a synthetic case. I don't think you can find a a sheep that's got a intestines that long.

Stephen Kraig
I wonder I wonder if could you make a machine? This going through my head, and I I bet you could. Could you make a machine that has a grinder on one side and a fully cooked hot dog comes out the other side. So it's in, like, every stage of production as it goes, like, goes through the machine.

Parker Dillmann
It's like a reflow oven, but for hot dogs.

Stephen Kraig
Exactly. You put the raw materials in on one side, and it just a cooked hot dog comes out the end.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Continuous dog?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I won't say why you couldn't do that. Yeah. Okay. Now this is silly.

Parker Dillmann
So by the way, there isn't I can't find a gauge standard for hot dogs, but there's a hot dog stand called the Willie Dog cart, and come on, guys.

Stephen Kraig
Perhaps this is just nostalgia talking here. But when I first moved to Texas, it was 1996, and the Astrodome was still a thing. And they sold domedogs. So we'd go see the Astros play, and you could get a domedog. And I bet you it is a a a nostalgia thing, but there was nothing better than a domedog.

Stephen Kraig
Those were so good. Like, it's something about a dog at a ballgame or a stadium. They just taste they hit different.

Parker Dillmann
It's all the nitrates.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. Probably.

Parker Dillmann
It's all the preservatives.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, man. They were good. They were solid.

Parker Dillmann
I'm I'm I'm browsing through the Wikipedia article of hot dogs, and this I this picture looks like, at first glance, a corn on the cob with a hot dog in the middle of it.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
It's actually a hoagie. So it's kinda like a like a almost like a kolache, but, like, you're assemble it's like a like like a disassembled kolache. Like, you take the hoagie and you rip the bread out and then stick the dog in.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. So for those who are not aware, a kolache is a South Texas food item, I guess. The thing is, kolaches, I always had them for breakfast even though it kind of doesn't make sense for them to be a breakfast item. It's it's a piece of sausage or sometimes a hot dog, sometimes with cheese, and they wrap it in dough effectively and bake it. And in the north, they're called pigs in a blanket.

Stephen Kraig
But in South Texas, they're called kolaches due to the the Czech immigrants that came over, I don't know, a 150 years ago or whatever. And and the name kolache isn't even correct, because kolache, if I remember right, it's supposed to be a dessert item. Like, it has, like, a jam or a cream cheese kind of filling in it. The ones with sausages, I think, are called kobleckis, but everyone just started calling them kolaches. And they're like I said, it was a breakfast item.

Stephen Kraig
You could go to the donut shop and get a sausage roll effectively.

Parker Dillmann
And the thing is

Stephen Kraig
I wish more people would would would tune into it because they're amazing.

Parker Dillmann
And you mentioned pigs in a blanket.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Think about a pigs in a blanket, but you know how everything's bigger than Texas?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
The kolaches are bigger.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, pigs in a blanket are are like my experience is they're they use the little Smokies sausages, the little tiny things that are like the length of your pinky finger. We're talking about a full size sausage. Yeah. So think of think of a pig in a blanket times, like, 5, and that's 1 kolache in Texas.

Parker Dillmann
And a lot lot my favorite are the you know, it's got the dog in it, the sausage with jalapeno and cheese.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's that's the that's the stuff.

Stephen Kraig
Though those were always good in the morning when I knew I was gonna go out and do, like, manual labor all day long. Or or if it was a day where it's like, okay. We're gonna go hit the lake and go water skiing or something like that. You blast the kolache in the morning, and you're good to go. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Blast the kolache? Yeah. So that basically, they their hypothesis we're back going back to hot dock connectivity, this this paper. Their hypothesis was incorrect. They absorb water while boiling.

Parker Dillmann
I think they'd mentioned, like, improving the investigation part where you can try, like, grilling a hot dog and seeing if that changes it.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Another thing that they mentioned in this so so the setup, they have a hot plate with a, like, a a boiling water tub effectively. And, apparently, they put multiple hot dog pieces in this tub and boiled them together and then would pull them out and do their conductivity testing. And in the improvement section, they were they were saying, perhaps doing them 1 at a time and replacing the water such that you don't just keep adding hot dogs and adding more salt and more electrolytes to this boiling dog water because that could be influencing future dogs in the in the test.

Parker Dillmann
The hot dog brine, so to speak?

Stephen Kraig
Exactly. Which okay. This this has been an argument in in Parker and my friend group for a while of grilling dogs versus boiling dogs. I am I'm firmly in the camp of boiled dogs are superior.

Parker Dillmann
It's almost as heated as actually, no. I would say it's more heated than the chili debate.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. The and the chili debate is do you put beans in chili or not? Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
And but yeah. So so the so some of the group are into grilling dogs and some are into, I guess, steaming dogs or whatnot. And then some some of us are into boiling dogs. And once again, I think it's perhaps a nostalgia thing because I think, you know, growing up, if my mom was away and dad was cooking, you know, lunch for the kids or whatnot, he'd throw a couple dogs in a pan and put them on the stove and, like, I had boiled dogs with dad. Like, that was that was an old memory of mine.

Stephen Kraig
And there is nothing more disgusting than hot dog water, like, after after boiling it. It is it is vile. That stuff looks so disgusting. And so I I kind of I I think it's funny that there is a that there is a scientific study that is suggesting like, hey, maybe the maybe our problem with this study is hot dog water.

Parker Dillmann
Mine was my my nostalgia cooking with hot dogs was, like, the store brand mac and cheese, and then my mom would cut up a hot dog, and throw them in there with the noodles as they as the with the pasta as it boiled, and cook the cooked the hot dogs in it.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, oh, so the so the pasta would soak up the dog water.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Soak up the dog water.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, so good. Mc and weenies. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It it would, depending on the brand of hot dogs, sometimes, like, the casing would shrink, and it would, like, poof it was really weird. You know how, like, a pepperoni curls?

Stephen Kraig
Yes.

Parker Dillmann
When you cook it?

Stephen Kraig
Well, they think

Parker Dillmann
like think yeah. Yeah. Think like that, but it's like squeezing, so it, like, pokes up both ends of the slice of hot dog. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
It's like an inverse of a cup then. A convex hot dog slice.

Stephen Kraig
Now there's gonna be some mathematician that does, like, the 3 d surface of of how a hot dog expands.

Parker Dillmann
You know, what's the you know, speak because this is like this is just like the resistance of hot dogs. What is the like, what if you start passing AC current? Like, does does it have, like, a skin effect? Like, is the casing of the hot dog, like, carrying the most of the current, like, in in alternating current?

Stephen Kraig
Well, okay. So it it's really funny that you bring this up because we had this exact argument at work. Do do hot dogs have a skin effect? And the answer could be wait. The answer could be yes and no.

Stephen Kraig
Yes from a yes from just a food aspect, I guess, and no from an electrical aspect. And the reason why is because we're just talking about 60 Hertz. If we're talking about 60 hertz, the frequency of this thing, that current is penetrating all the way to the middle of the hot dog as it goes down. I it's not going to it's not gonna have the skin effect in the electromagnetic way that you're thinking there. However, hot dogs do have a casing.

Stephen Kraig
And the casing itself could be have a different conductivity than the, I guess, you could say core material of the hot dog. And and that alone could cause current to flow separately from it. The other thing that's kind of fun about this experiment is that compared to different types of food, hot dogs are remarkably homogeneous, Like, they are ground to a complete pulp, and then pushed inside of this casing, such that the current is not going to experience any kind of discontinuities in the hot dog or areas of different densities. It's going to be uniform all the way throughout the dog. Right?

Stephen Kraig
So what's funny is you can make a handful assumptions about your analysis of the conductivity of hotdog such that, like, say, if you cut a hotdog in half and look at the cross section, current would flow uniformly throughout that coin of hotdog, I guess, is is one way to think about it.

Parker Dillmann
I'm just dying here.

Stephen Kraig
I'm telling you. We've talked about this.

Parker Dillmann
I wonder if there's, like, a ISO standard. You know how you can get, like, standardized, like, like there's, like, a standard for peanut butter.

Stephen Kraig
And you can

Parker Dillmann
just, like, buy a standard for

Stephen Kraig
You can buy NIST peanut butter.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I was about to say, yeah. Is there a NIST standard of of hot dog? Is there, like, a NIST dog?

Stephen Kraig
Oh. I would not be surprised.

Parker Dillmann
Well, if you type in n I s t hotdog, the national hotdog and sausage council, which is hotdog.org. Really? Wow. How did I not you be a hot dog ambassador, Steven. What?

Parker Dillmann
How do I how do I sign up for this? It's hotdog it's hot hyphen dog dot org.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, okay. Wait. I was going to hotdog.org. Oh my god.

Parker Dillmann
They have etiquette about eating hot dogs?

Stephen Kraig
Wait. How do you hot dog ambassadors. Oh, it's a contest. Oh, wow. An ambassador receives a life time appointment as a hot dog ambassador.

Stephen Kraig
A wiener warrior t shirt. Okay. Oh my god. How did we get in on this? Oh, well.

Stephen Kraig
It's it's already over for this is for last year. Okay. We're gonna have to jump on this for this year.

Parker Dillmann
Okay. So I went to the NIST shop oh, I love this. Shop.nist.gov. Nice. So see if you can get hot dogs.

Parker Dillmann
No. There's no hot dogs.

Stephen Kraig
Type in sausage. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Let's see. Sausage? No. So peanut butter might be I wonder what kind of food there is.

Stephen Kraig
We were joking about seeing if you could make a NIST certified PB and J, buy all the ingredients for it from NIST and and make one, and how much would it cost? If I remember right, peanut butter from NIST, it's $1,143 for 3 small tubs of certified peanut butter.

Parker Dillmann
They have a lot of weird stuff under food. What is typical diet? What? It's literally a package that's just called typical diet.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, really?

Parker Dillmann
104 yeah. Called for 840 it's a SKU 1548 b. Typical diet. Well, that's in there.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. This sucks. Okay. So you can get aquacultured salmon. You can get certified fish for $676, but you can't get a hot dog.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. You can't get a hot dog. What's in what's in typical diet?

Stephen Kraig
A cow liver is on here.

Parker Dillmann
There's a lot of weird stuff.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. This is super weird. Oh. Wait. Wait.

Stephen Kraig
Wait. Wait. Okay. I found an adjacent thing. It's called Meet Homogenate, which is basically -It's not spam.

Stephen Kraig
It's just Yeah. Exactly. It's like ground up just lifts and other parts. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
That's that's not spam.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Wow. This is this is another $1100 can of spam. You're right. They have a thing called typical diet.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. What is it? The document about it is just it's like a bat it's like a bag of powder that's all the macro and micronutrients you need. Lily, what's in it? So so You can technically just eat that for the rest of your life, and you'll be okay.

Stephen Kraig
No. No. Do you do you remember in the matrix after they get Neo out of the matrix and he gets onto the Nebuchadnezzar ship and they have to, like, pour out that, like, gruel into a little tub for him? That is typical diet.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's typical diets. There's dry cat food.

Stephen Kraig
A typical diet has point o 1 4 milligrams per kilogram of lead in it.

Parker Dillmann
You know, a lot of the lot of the vegetables you eat have trace amounts of lead because that it's in the soil.

Stephen Kraig
Sure. Well, I guess if if you're eating that, it's part of a typical diet then.

Parker Dillmann
Yep.

Stephen Kraig
That is funny.

Parker Dillmann
Adult nutritional formula. How's that any different than typical diets? You know what? I'm not gonna click what's in that. I love how oh, there's some ingredients guide for hot dogs on the national hot dog and sausage committee.

Parker Dillmann
Council, I should say.

Stephen Kraig
So in this sorry. Back to back to this report real quick. The typical values of resistance that were found for hot dogs. And and just to be clear, the way they actually the method they did here was not full hot dogs. I think they were pieces of hot dogs.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. They cut up the hot dogs in 5 centimeter.

Stephen Kraig
5 centimeter segments. Yeah. And and I had

Parker Dillmann
a they had a specific word for it, though.

Stephen Kraig
Nuggets. Nuggets. So so in fact okay. So we actually had some more conversations about this at work. Because a hot dog tapers at the end, you would want to create 1 standard dog piece.

Stephen Kraig
So you had to previously define, like, what is a length of dog that you're willing to measure. The so so yeah. These were cut into cylinders. Right? Now the resistance of a 5 centimeter chunk of hot dog on the low end was 55 milliohms, and on the high end is 93 milliohms.

Stephen Kraig
So there's not a huge shift in resistance from one test to another. Now that 55 milliohms, excuse me, was after what is it? 240 seconds of current flowing through it. So, effectively, you know, 240 seconds of being cooked. And that 93 milliohms was after 30 seconds of being cooked.

Stephen Kraig
So, yeah, there there is a shift, not maybe not 50%, a little bit less than 50% shift between those numbers. I wonder if that's how that stacks up from brand to brand. Like, if you go get a Hebrew National and you compare it against the ballpark, are they all gonna be in this range or are you gonna see a huge wide variety of resistance values based off of them? And could you just purely from taking a hot dog, from testing its resistance, could you identify flavors of a brand? So in other words, like, if you if you tested some dogs and you were like, oh, this is a this is a, a 100 milliohm dog.

Stephen Kraig
I know it's going to be this kind of brine, and I know it's gonna taste like this, or it's gonna have this kind of snap to it. That, I would love to see that kind of conclusion.

Parker Dillmann
I'm now imagining you going to the ballpark now, and you you're, like, with your multimeter, and you're measuring the Franks. And you're, like, this is not a real ballpark frame. No. No.

Stephen Kraig
This this is 200 milliohms. I could tell it's gonna be bad.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. This is not an official licensed ballpark, Frank, of the MLB. Steven, I have something You're not gonna like this. Oh. Hot dog association or council.

Parker Dillmann
They recommend steaming hot dogs, not boiling. Oh, okay. Why is that? Because boiling can split the hot dog.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. I know one of the big things about from Hotdog Enthusiasts is that the case snap is one of the big things. Like, when you bite into it, you want that mouthfeel of the the the case.

Stephen Kraig
The best part about this is Parker is just losing it on the other side over here.

Parker Dillmann
You said hot dog enthusiast.

Stephen Kraig
Oh my god. Oh, we're having

Parker Dillmann
too much fun with this.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. So so I can understand it. If if if the casing snaps, you know, when it's in the dirty dog water, then it's a it's you've ruined the experience. Right?

Parker Dillmann
I I love it.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. Okay. So let let let's let's move on real quick. You had you had mentioned earlier about cooking dogs with AC. So there is a gadget that we've run into that does use AC current for cooking dogs.

Stephen Kraig
Why don't you introduce the gadget, Parker?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. The the the presto hotdogger. I love the name of this thing. And I love how so bigclive.com. So weird that's his channel name.

Parker Dillmann
Bigclive.com. He's done experiments with this device and not actually taken apart. It's literally like a a wire that goes into your AC socket at your house, and it goes right into the hot dog. There's, like, there's nothing in the heat.

Stephen Kraig
Effectively, you are putting your dog across hot neutral. That's it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Across mains. Yes. Yep. And it's like it holds I think it holds, like, 6 hot dogs.

Parker Dillmann
It holds a pack of hot dogs, and it's got a little lid so it you can keep all the the juices from exploding all over the place. Yeah. So my question to you though, Stephen, is is that a pure way to cook a hot dog?

Stephen Kraig
I I I'm curious what you mean by pure.

Parker Dillmann
Well, so you're in the boiled hot dog camp. Yeah. Uh-huh. What is your feeling about

Stephen Kraig
Oh, about that method. Got it. That method of cooking a hot dog. Okay. I've never electrocuted a hot dog and eaten it.

Stephen Kraig
So I I I can't I can't speak to it fully, but the I think from what I I watched the video of the hotdogger, the presto hotdogger, and they come out looking similar to boiled dogs. They don't plump. They do, however, release a ton of steam. So I'd I I would be worried about them drying out too much and getting kind of tough. But overall, I would say I would have to try it, but I'm skeptically optimistic.

Parker Dillmann
I mean, don't do this at home, everyone. But you can just take your multimeter probes, stick them in your socket, and put a hotdog between them. Oh, no. What if you took a variac? Oh,

Stephen Kraig
yeah. If you found out that there was something that was amazing about 72 and a half volts going through a hotdog

Parker Dillmann
particular brand of hotdog.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Maybe. The the okay. The thing that's funny about this gadget is it is about as simple as you can get. Like it has a bottom tray and 2 what do you even call them? Just things down in there that have spikes on them.

Stephen Kraig
Like, big conical spikes. And you take your dog, and you you you you form like a like an arch Arch. Out of your dog. And, you stab them into this thing, and it doesn't make it doesn't make contact until you put the lid on. So there is safety, sort of, involved in this product because the lid itself is what plugs into the wall and it has contacts that when you close the lid it makes contact And and and they claim that the original presto dogger claims it'll cook your dogs in 60 seconds.

Stephen Kraig
Which the funny thing about that is, if you're grilling dogs, you can grill a dog in 60 seconds. You're not really saving a lot with this and as long as your standards are pretty low, you can microwave a dog in 60 seconds. Right? So I don't know. Like, did this No.

Stephen Kraig
This is what me scratches an itch that wasn't there.

Parker Dillmann
This is really funny. We bring up microwaving hot dogs. So what me and my dad do is we'll take sausage and hot dogs, and we'll we'll pan fry them or grill them. So if we have the grill on, like, we're cooking, like, steaks or something, we'll just throw sausage or hot dogs on on, like, the side. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Sure. Okay.

Parker Dillmann
Cook them. And then put them in the refrigerator. And then during the week, you grab you grab it out, and it's already charred, ready to go. You put it in tortilla, put it in the microwave for about 30 seconds, and then squirt mustard on it. Boom.

Parker Dillmann
Ready to go.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. It's a fast meal.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. But it it's you microwave it after the fact. But you you it's interesting because a lot of these products are also precooked, so you're cooking it again on the grill and then cooking it again in the microwave.

Stephen Kraig
It's really cute. My my nephew when he was young, we used to ask him if he want a hot dog, and he would just be like, no. No. I just want a dog. He didn't want you to cook it.

Stephen Kraig
He wanted it to be cold. So he didn't want a hot dog. He just wanted out of the package and just give it to him. Yeah. He was into that.

Stephen Kraig
But frozen? No. Not frozen, but like, you know, you have a hot dog pack in the fridge. He wanted it. He liked cold hot dogs.

Stephen Kraig
So he didn't want a hot dog. He just wanted a dog.

Parker Dillmann
He just wanted a dog.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Okay. I'm I'm imagining, like, we need to make an alignment chart for ways to cook hot dogs, and that's like neutral chaos.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. No. Yeah. No. That's yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Chaotic neutral. Right? Like Chaotic neutral is just dog out of the pack. Open the package, put it in the mouth. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Refrigerator temp. 4 what would be, like, 38, 40 degrees.

Stephen Kraig
So so where does the Presto hotdogger fit in the alignment chart?

Parker Dillmann
Oh, chaotic evil.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Absolutely. K. Wait. Wait.

Stephen Kraig
It would be chaotic evil if if, like, in this video that, was posted, you don't run it on a 120 volts. You run it on 240 and and just completely obliterate the dogs.

Parker Dillmann
What what's the other one? It's like what the other alignment charts? It's like, like, functionally, I think, and then chart functional.

Stephen Kraig
I'm not I'm coming up as a blank. I really don't know what you're talking about.

Parker Dillmann
No. You've seen these before.

Stephen Kraig
I got I mean,

Parker Dillmann
I'm I'm

Stephen Kraig
sure I have.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, function function versus form. So, one axis, it's it's function purest, function neutral, function like rebel chaos, and the other one's form purist, form neutral, form chaos.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
That's probably a better alignment chart for for this. Because, like, true neutral would be, like, boiled dog.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I could see that. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Or maybe, like, form purest, functional purest is, like well, that'd be, like, steamedog. Right? Like Yeah. The way it's intended, it's also, like, really functional to do it. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
You you're right. Kinda like what you're saying earlier, like, the pure way of cooking a dog.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. But also it's, like, functionally in the form. Right. Those alignment charts are always great. We should make one of those for I'll I'll actually I will make one of those for the featured image of the spot.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. The banner image. Right?

Parker Dillmann
The banner image will be a alignment chart of cooking hot dogs Because there's all because there's there's there's the presto hotdogger, but we have a an instant hot dog device that was put into our, it it was an instant hot dog device for it was on YouTube that used thermite to cook a hot to boil a hot dog, basically. I think we talked about that before, though, on the podcast.

Stephen Kraig
Have we? The the the video for this is is fantastic. It's about 30 minutes long, and it's it's worth every minute of it because it goes pretty deep into the engineering and, actually, the chemistry of finding like the right mix of thermite for cooking a dog properly. And and the end of it is they come up with like a survival dog kit where you have you have the apparatus that contains a dog and ever whenever you whenever you want it, you just ignite the thermite. Okay.

Stephen Kraig
At the beginning of the episode though, they they mentioned something and I really thought they were gonna go this route, but I also don't know how like this would be a hell of an engineering challenge. They mentioned that they the original thought was to have a hot dog that acted like a glow stick where you crack the hot dog and then it just starts cooking, and and then you can eat it. But how you could do that and still make it food safe is Yeah. That's the challenge. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. They they tried putting

Parker Dillmann
they've they tried, like, bore scoping or coring out a hot dog, and they put thermite in there.

Stephen Kraig
Rifle not rifling. What what's it called when when they drill like, they do the long drill of of rifles? A bore? Yeah. But Rifling.

Stephen Kraig
That it's called rifling. It is called Well, rifling is adding the the spiral rifles on it. I thought it had a deep deep drill, something like that. I don't remember. But yeah, they they did they were doing that with hot dogs and trying to replace the core with something that could cook the dog.

Stephen Kraig
And they ended up just like charring everything they tried.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I wonder why they didn't try, like, the presto hotdog method, and, like, a lithium battery pack, and you're like maybe that was too easy. Because you could just, you know, DC to AC converter, a Presto hot dog, dogger, and now you have a portal like, an instant hot dog on the go.

Stephen Kraig
What's coming to mind? You know you know the little wall packs that you use for rechargeable batteries. I'm thinking Oh, yeah. Yeah. But they

Parker Dillmann
just got hot dogs in the house. Yeah. Yeah. Where it has, like, the spring loaded clip on the end? Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I'm gonna be honest.

Stephen Kraig
Load up your trip your your double and triple a dogs into it and just click a button and it cooks up.

Parker Dillmann
Cooks your dogs up.

Stephen Kraig
Honestly, that okay, the chemistry behind the thermite stick that they made was fascinating, and that's really cool. But I think you're right. Electrically is considerably easier, especially given the research that was already done on the specific conductivity of dogs and what it takes to cook them. On top of that, if you had an electric cooker like that, you could have it solar charged. So so so you could recharge the battery and be ready for the next dog.

Stephen Kraig
Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Every every week, you have enough charge to cook a dog.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
You know, I actually, I'm thinking about this more, is what I would would have done. So the part the problem with the presto cooker is it like it, like, it's not a humane way of cooking a hotdog. It's aggressive.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. It's not gentle is what you mean.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what if we went we combined this this paper, this research study. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Because they were they put it in they were boiling the dog. Right? But so what you do is you and it's combined with this other the instant hot dog device. So it's a chamber of water. So you put the hot dog in there, and at the bottom is a spike.

Parker Dillmann
And it's you spike the hot dog. And then on the other end is the other spike. Right? When you pass the current through the spikes, which heats up the dog, but to keep it under control, this is like a nuclear reactor. It like, the and the dog's the is the is the neutral what is it called?

Parker Dillmann
The the fuel rod? Yeah. Right. Because passing electricity, but then the the water keeps it the temperature under control to a certain extent. Oh, that's brilliant.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. And and here's the thing. You still get a boiled dog. It's just You still get a boiled dog. It's just the what's funny is in this situate if you if you put dogs in a in a pan and put them on the stove, the method of cooking them is the heat gets into the water, which then heats the dog.

Stephen Kraig
But in this situation, we have the spikes, the dog heats the water. Right? Yeah. It's it's it's a little bit backwards. But the nice thing about that too is if you need to cook more than 1 dog, the second one wouldn't take as long because the water's already, you know, it's already yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I wanna try this now. How do I safely because I definitely don't wanna stick, like, multimeter probes into a a hot dog and then toss it in some water and then plug it into my wall. I do have a Variaq, which makes it a little more safe.

Stephen Kraig
Light bulb limiter. Put a light bulb in series with a hot dog, and that that limits the amount of current that the dog can consume from mains directly.

Parker Dillmann
It's cleaning up all those electrons.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I guess if it's, because like they're saying that the well, if the Presto cooker works and doesn't trip like a 15 amp breaker, it should be fine.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Let's try that out. Minimum amount of current needed to cook a hotdog. I guess what what needs to be defined there is what does it mean when a dog is cooked? Because they're precooked.

Stephen Kraig
You're really just warming them. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I think what it is is so, like, what's the temperature of the hot dog from, like, your fridge going up to the temperature you're gonna take them out of the bath? So, like, the jewel increase, how much energy you put into the hot dog. Right? And that's how much work that's how much work you put into the hot dog.

Stephen Kraig
I mean, we're laughing, but it's true.

Parker Dillmann
That's exactly what's going on. Oh, man.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I'm gonna try I'm gonna try the reverse boiled dog idea. So using the dog as the element, And so it's like the Presto hot dog maker and but it reg it's self regulating because it's in a it's in the water bath. I bet you that would work. I bet you it would. Unless unless, like, you might have to it might be a point where, like, the water becomes more conductive than the dog because of all the dog water.

Parker Dillmann
That might become a problem.

Stephen Kraig
Yes. Yes. You're you're right. And at that point but that's self regulating. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Because then the temperature would decrease at that point because you're just passing all the current through the water. So so you you Well, no.

Parker Dillmann
Because it would because your electrodes are in the water too. So it would just jump around the dog. Yeah. I guess it would just heat up I guess it would just heat up the water and it also didn't heat up the dog. Right.

Stephen Kraig
But but the the what is it? Specific heat. The specific heat of a dog has gotta be different than the specific heat of water. So they so if if given long enough, they reach some kind of equilibrium. Right?

Stephen Kraig
And maybe, just maybe, that equilibrium point is the tastiest dog you've ever had. Yeah. We might be on to something here, Parker. I mean, I wonder

Parker Dillmann
So I'm wondering about the power calculation here. So, like, the Presto is on a 120 volts times it's probably like, how much power is that Presto cooker make? Presto hotdogger power consumption. I mean I can't believe I can't believe I'm googling this.

Stephen Kraig
But okay. But let's say let's say you've you've loaded it with one dog. And and, hey, we know the resistance of a 5 centimeter chunk of dog.

Parker Dillmann
So someone's done the preliminary work on in instructables. Who is this? Umologist. Thank you for providing I'm gonna put this in our show notes so that we have it for later. What it costs to cook a dog is what it so this is how much electricity it takes to cook a dog and how much it costs.

Parker Dillmann
That's the experiment. So they act he's running an exp or they are running an experiment on different oh, how much it costs different ways to cook a hot dog. Oh, okay. Like, charcoal, gas grill, electric stove. Oh, charcoal stove.

Stephen Kraig
Most expensive for sure.

Parker Dillmann
Electrocution of a hot dog is the cheapest way.

Stephen Kraig
I'm not surprised.

Parker Dillmann
You can cook 19 and a half hotdogs for 1¢ on a presto hotdogger. That's the economical way.

Stephen Kraig
For 1¢.

Parker Dillmann
But, you average a 126 watts. Cooking a hotdog on a on a presto. So a 100 so you're actually only putting about an amp into the dog. That's a lot lower than I thought.

Stephen Kraig
That is a lot lower given the resistance values that were measured in that paper.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I wonder if they were using higher voltage to measure it. What voltages were they?

Stephen Kraig
Let me look here. 2.6. 2.6 volts. That's it? 2.6 volts, and that netted them, you know, in the thirties to 40 amps.

Parker Dillmann
I bet you because they're probably measuring with DC. I bet you're the alternating current and the

Stephen Kraig
So what are you saying wait. Are you saying the DC resistance and the impedance of a dog are that different?

Parker Dillmann
I bet you they are way different.

Stephen Kraig
Have we found the 4th fundamental electronic component? A hot dog? A hot dog.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, man. I think when you wrap this podcast Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. This has been stupid for long enough. Yeah. Thanks to all of those who are still hanging on listening to this. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
We we got to have fun with this one.

Parker Dillmann
I think we should have a poll about when this episode does come out, a poll on different ways how people like to cook hot dogs.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. That's a good idea. What is your favorite way? I'm I'm gonna I'm just gonna go out on a limb. I think everyone's favorite way is grilling.

Parker Dillmann
That is how they market them.

Stephen Kraig
True. That is true.

Parker Dillmann
My favorite way, even though I I like grilling them. I I actually like pan frying.

Stephen Kraig
Pan frying is good too.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. Pan frying is good. Though if I was gonna if I make mac and cheese, I always put hot dogs in them. I I boil the dog.

Parker Dillmann
Yep. Slices of it, at least.

Stephen Kraig
Make little coins and dog.

Parker Dillmann
Coins and dog. I like that coins and dog.

Stephen Kraig
That sounds like an indie band. Yeah. Coin's a

Parker Dillmann
dog. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Alright. Let's go ahead and wrap this up. So once again, thank you for listening to the very end. So that was circuit break from Macrofab. We were your host, Steven Craig.

Parker Dillmann
And Parker Doman.

Stephen Kraig
Take it easy.

Parker Dillmann
Later, everyone. Thank you. Yes. You are a listener for downloading and listening to our hot dog cooking podcast. Tell your friends and coworkers about Circuit Break the podcast.

Parker Dillmann
Well, we usually talk about electronics, but this time pot the hot dogs. If you have a cool idea, project, or topic, or unusual way to cook hot dogs, and you want us to discuss it, we'll we'll gladly talk about hot dogs dogs again for another hour. Let Steven and I and the community know our community where you can find personal projects, discussions about the podcast, engineering topics, and news, and ways to cook hot dogs is located atform.macfab.com.