For More Flavorful Hot Dogs, Make Them Colombian-Style

At your next hot dog gathering, try expanding your condiment selection. Instead of just mustard, ketchup, relish, and sauerkraut on the table next to the buns, you can bring more international flavor by offering toppings to let your guests make their hot dogs Colombian-style. For your guests to make a perro caliente Colombiano, they need pineapple sauce, pink sauce (salsa rosada — mayonnaise, ketchup, garlic powder, onion powder, and lime), and something to make it crunchy, like potato chips (or papitas).

Generally, a Colombian hot dog is boiled instead of grilled. Quail eggs, cheese, and bacon can also be added to a Colombian dog. Colombia is not a hot dog monolith, but as long as there is a tangy, fruity sauce and a crunch to bring variety, it will have the taste of the dish you can find sold by vendors in Bogotá and Medellin. You can even caramelize some pineapple yourself as a topping in place of the sauce. Colombia has a lot of tropical fruits, some you may never have heard of, so topping a hot dog with pineapple just makes sense.

In a post on Reddit, a person admitted that Colombian-style hot dogs were too much for them, specifically the combination of pineapple and quail egg. The commenters, however, disagreed. People responded with: "Colombian dogs are amazing," "Love Colombian hot dogs," and "... it really comes together well!" One person wrote about their experience traveling the country and eating the hot dogs, writing: "The combo sounds like a lot but it works really well. ... the pineapple is pretty subtle and frankly the quail eggs didn't even register. I think many vendors skip the eggs entirely but can't recall." 

Perro caliente is one of the many ways people all over the world like to eat pineapple. If the quail eggs are too much for you, or you struggle to find them, they can easily be omitted. If you want to give them a try, you can always look for canned quail eggs for an easy way to add the topping.