Slightly Aggressive Not-Entirely-Vegetarian Carrot Hot Dogs

I'm not your typical garden-variety vegetarian.

Although I have developed some opinions on vegetarianism over the past thirty years, I generally keep that stuff to myself.  I have no axe to grind, no sermon to preach.  However, nearly all of the meat-eaters I happen to meet most definitely have very strong opinions and the desire to hammer them home.  That can be pretty annoying.  Vegans, despite their opposite stance, tend to behave in precisely the same manner.  Also pretty annoying.  

I don't have an issue with what other folks eat so hopefully no one is gonna get all "judgy" because I added Worcestershire Sauce to my carrots  Yes, I do know that it is NOT Vegetarian but only a little bit so I'm gonna try to ignore that factor.  (It contains anchovies, if you must know.)  This is just one tiny minor Veggie infraction.....it's not like I'm gonna eat (yuck!) Jell-O or anything nasty like that. 

My excuse(s):  Two people have recently given me large bottles of Worcestershire.  I like really Worcestershire but I'm not overly fond of soy sauce.  I don't know of any place in town where I might buy Bragg Liquid Aminos.  And I have no idea what Liquid Smoke is; besides, the name of it sounds dodgy.

You see, even though I researched a dozen different recipes online, I simply did Not have all of the required ingredients (like Aminos or Liquid Smoke) for making Carrot Hot Dogs.  I did, however, have a mega-surplus of carrots (as well as the afore-mentioned large bottles of WS) crammed into a very small refrigerator and they need to be eaten.  Carrot Hot Dogs sounded pretty good.  So I scrambled the various recipe ideas all together and vastly simplified the ingredients to suit only what I had on hand, and what I came up with was:

Not-Entirely-Vegetarian Carrot Hot Dogs. 

2 carrots* (roughly the size and shape of hot dogs)
2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar (Braggs)
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon freshly chopped garlic
1 tablespoon Worcestershire

Plunge pared carrots in boiling water and cook for about ten minutes until fork-tender but not mushy.

Mix all other ingredients in a quart-size Ziplock** bag.   Add the carrots when they are slightly cooled.  Make sure the bag is tightly zipped and burp excess air out (and take care not to sploosh the liquid all over the counter the way I did).   Marinate for about 4 hours in the fridge.

Drain off the excess liquid.  Pan fry with a little bit of butter.  Plop the nice warm carrot in a hot dog bun.  Add your favorite hot dog toppings (vegetarian, of course).  And enjoy!



* Note 1:  I only cooked two carrots because this was an experiment, and I did not care to be eating stuff for days if I didn't like the recipe results after all.  Since it happily turns out that I did, I'll try again and next time I'll attempt to freeze the extras to see how that works out. 

** Note 2:  Normally I don't have Ziplock bags but my friend gave me some zip-bags when she cleared out her house so I very gratefully used one, and it was perfect for marinating because I could just turn the bag over in the fridge.  It had the added bonus of being very space-saving--that's important when you live with a dorm-size fridge!

***Note 3:  I didn't have any hot dog buns either and I don't like store-bought bread anyway so I ate my Carrot Hot Dogs happily with mustard and pickles and nothing else.   Thus, there are no pictures of perfectly pretty food.  Sometimes that's just the way things are.


Life is good!  And so are carrots.....even when you have a mega-surplus of them.