The Unofficial World Hot Dog Championship

I'll be the first to tell you; I was playing out of my league.  

The six-team contest had some big names:

Team Sweden: Brothers Ebbe Vollmer and Mats Thulin Vollmer from Restaurang Vollmer (2 Michelin Stars) in Malmø. The duo is known for straightforward, down-to-earth cooking using their exquisite home-grown produce.

Team South Africa: Korbus van der Merwe from Wolfgat in Paternoster. Korbus's mission is to cook sustainably while using super-local produce and ingredients. 

Team Japan: Hideto Takeda, Mads Battlefield, and Henrik Levinsen from Ichimatsu and Restaurant Hjemme, respectively. 

Team Denmark: Jonas Boelt, executive chef at Great Northern Food Hall in New York. There, he created a hot dog the NY Post claimed to be the top dog in New York.

Team Spain: Juan Antonio Vargas, head chef of Mugaritz - 9th best restaurant in the world and owner of three Michelin stars.

Oh, and a butcher from Texas...

In the months before the competition, the Folkets Madhus team and I tried to scheme up the ultimate butcher's hotdog - for awhile; there was talk of all the toppings being made from offal with a touch of fresh blood foam.  I decided to compete with a more traditional dog rather than blow everyone away with a butcher's hot dog that would horrify some and cause others to turn vegan. The key word here is more traditional - I still wanted to play around with this dog. For a few weeks, I tested hot dog bun recipes, trying to make something unique. I'm not sure where the idea came from, but I decided to add some dehydrated prosciutto to my dough - a recipe that I will come back to and tweak one day. It definitely has some potential!

In place of a Texas-styled sausage, I opted for a traditional Danish grillepølse that highlights Nordic spices and seasonings. I thought this selection exemplified the spirit of the Butchers' Manifesto - the passage of the craft from one generation to the next. With the help of Mads Cortsen, I topped the dog with caramelized onions, pickled green tomatoes, thinly slice glass kale, a mayonnaise, and watercress. 

The day of competition, Michael, Gustav, and I gathered at Torvehallerne.  After we had assembled our station in our little hotdog trailer, we pulled out a bottle of Michael's famous Bacon Snaps and went to meet our competition.

Initially, the idea was to take the other teams off their "game" with a few swigs, but after hitting five trailers, we agreed our plan had somewhat backfired! 

At last, the competition started: we had to serve 100 identical hotdogs to festival goers and an additional six for the judges. I came a little over-prepared, and we pushed out over 150 dogs.  We quickly became the crowd favorite.

Gustav, Michael, and I busy at work in our small hot dog trailer. Here, Gustav took our wieners out of hot water, placing it in our fresh toasted buns. Michael came along with the caramelized onions and green tomatoes and I finished them off with the mayo, glass kale, and garnish.

I relied heavily on all my F. Dick equipment for this contest - the bread knife was a work horse for those home-made buns!

Finally, the Master of Ceremonies called for all the chefs to come to the stage for the winning announcement.  As I began to make my way out of the trailer, Michael he grabbed me by the shoulder.

"No, screw that! We don't move until they call for the butchers!"

He was right. This was our fight and that of the Butchers' Manifesto: 

We are not chefs. 

We are butchers.

In order to BRING BUTCHER BACK, we had to be recognized.

We held our ground. Shouts of "Vi Slagter!" ('We are butchers' in Danish) started to ring out from the crowd until finally, the "butchers" were called to the stage.

In the end, the top prize went to Team Japan, and rightfully so - their dog was killer. They loved Michael's Bacon Snaps so much that we gave them the rest of the bottle as an additional prize. You can see them celebrating with it on stage.

Team Japan taking the stage as the winning team of the Top Dog Charity contest - Congrats guys! Photo Credit: Copenhagen Food Festival.

,This was a great experience with lots of wonderful memories - we competed against some talented chefs. and were judged by some of the top chefs in the world. After the competition, I snuck over to the judge's table to get a picture with Ramus Kofoed, winner of the 2012 Bocuse d'Or - essentially, the Olympics of fine dining. Ramus also owns and operates Geranium, a three-star Michelin resturant in Copenhagen.

The experience was made possible by Michael Museth. It technically was a Butchers' Manifesto event, but he pushed for me to be on stage. For this, and all the other incredible opportunities he has given me, I am deeply appreciative.

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SIDENOTE: A few weeks after the hotdog competition, Mads Cortsen competed in the Danish National Hotdog competition. His setup was hospital themed - he looked like a bloody surgeon while serving up his hotdogs and guess who got to make the buns?

Haven Festival

Folks, I had a busy 2017 and I didn't keep y'all updated on my doings. Now that I am back in Texas, I want to give everyone a little recap of the past six months.  Let the "Ten Thoughts on My Ten Months in Denmark" begin.

An incredible shot caught by Lasse Christian as I adjust the spit at Haven Festival.

2017 marked the birth of Haven Festival, a collaboration between musicians Aaron & Bryce Dessner, Mikkeller brewing, and the famed Danish restaurateur Claus Meyer. Held in an industrial sector along the harbor in Copenhagen, the festival featured a rockin' lineup, quality beer, and some damn good food.

Michael got the call from Claus Meyer’s team – they wanted to feature Folkets Madhus as one of the select organic food vendors and they requested some live fire cooking. We were given a large tent and a ton of metal fencing to create a fire ring. We roasted eight lambs that weekend over open pits then transformed them into burgers. Both the Press and festival goers crowded around our pits to enjoy lamb burgers and to snap a picture of the guy with the cowboy hat and rattlesnake boots. 

The going joke that weekend was that I was the second most photographed person, next to Iggy Pop.

Applying a "sop" to the roasting lamb ensures juicy meat at the end of a long cook.

Time to cut up some lamb!

Michael and I also got to speak about the Butchers’ Manifesto on one of the small stages. Michael told the story of how the Butchers' Manifesto came about and I gave short account of my travels around the globe.

Oh, and I met Claus Meyer. His list of restaurant accomplishments is highlighted by noma, which was rated the best, as in numero uno, restaurant in the world for four times. He must have thought our setup was pretty cool because he put up a picture of the lambs and me on his Facebook page.

Claus has already contacted Folkets Madhus about Haven Festival 2018 - He wants to triple the amount of meat over the fire... I might just have to make my way back to Copenhagen for that!

Claus Meyer stopped behind our tent for a quick burger - I had to grab a picture with him. 

An incredible sunset on Haven Festival in Copenhagen's harbor.

We Are What We Eat

Folkets Madhus on a chilly winter morning. 

I’ve called Folkets Madhus home for some time now.  Its name translates to "the people's food house." My job description and the company itself is sometimes hard to describe due to the vast array of gastronomic activity going on around here, but here are just a few:

-Børn Mad – production of schoolchildren’s lunches for the municipality of Copenhagen. 
-Private Events – catering for weddings, birthdays, and special events.  One of my favorites is corporate team building cooking classes.
-Butchery – wholesale fresh meat and charcuterie production.

I want to give you a glimpse into Børn Mad – the real workhorse/backbone of Folkets Madhus. Though the name sounds like a bitter 80’s hair band, it's pronounced “bourne-me.”

The Børn Mad crew of Folkets Madhus - I'm pushing for good food, not smoking! 

The Børn Mad crew is responsible for 700-800 meals each weekday. At maximum capacity, the kitchen can crank out over 1600 meals per day. Every morning, the team arrives around 5:45 AM to begin the day’s work. Over the next eight hours, they prepare various healthy meals and individually pack them into lunch boxes.  Then, these freshly made lunches are delivered to schools around the city.

Freshly fried fish cakes.

What kind of healthy stuff? Hummus, beetroot salad, liver pâté sandwiches, pasta, and fish cakes.  Sources of vitamins and fiber are always included.  Fresh fruit and vegetables such as carrots, cucumbers, or bell peppers top off each box. Once or twice a month, the school kids get freshly baked pizza – but not the kind that comes out of a Dominoes or Digorno box. These pizzas are topped solely with tomato sauce and pesto.

Each lunch box is carefully packed and then delivered to the school.

Healthy, right? Over 90% of the ingredients used in Børn Mad are certified organic.

The green leaf logo in the right hand corner signifies an organic product in the EU.

The Danish school children have it pretty good. I remember school lunches from my childhood – mostly unpleasant memories of “mystery slop.”  My late grandmother worked in the lunchroom so you know I’m being kind.  She always complained that the government shouldn’t feed that crap to kids.

The Danes love their rye bread!

Children’s food should be the starting point when tackling America’s obesity problems.  And our great country definitely has problems - about 40% of the American population is considered obese. Compare that to Denmark’s average of 14%. What are they doing that we aren’t?

Danes don’t feed crap to their kids. Let’s start there, America.
 

License to Kill - a Way of Art

Magazine: Faces

November 2017

A lot can get lost in translation, but thanks to a good friend, this German article reads something like this:

This guy makes food real again as it is not about all the fancy hipster stuff (small portions, big money) but REAL meat, sausages, mince in a high-quality way.  He is an ethical caveman who wants to show the art of proper slaughtering (with all the blood and bones). He loves animals and believes in treating them right which also includes the way in which they will be slaughtered.  He has DVD’s to teach slaughtering which includes his “dance” and arty way of cutting a whole animal into the right pieces.  His dream is to have a ranch (as he is from Texas) and set up a school for proper slaughtering. They call him the Calvin Klein Model with the charm of Crocodile Dundee.

Fleischer-Handwerk

FH FLEISCHER-HANDWERK

FH is a German magazine specializing in production and sale of artisan meat and sausage products.  I am honored to be included in their May 2017 edition.