EP#443: Conductive Cuisine

Episode Transcript
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Parker Dillmann (00:10):
Welcome to circuit break from MacroFab, a
weekly show about all thingsengineering, DIY projects,
manufacturing, industry news,and the conductivity of hot
dogs. We're your hosts,electrical engineers, Parker
Dillmann.

Stephen Kraig (00:24):
And Stephen Kraig.

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

No. Why is it 157, Parker?

So I asked chat gbt 4. I the prompt was if there
was a electrical engineeringpodcast that talked about the
conductivity of hot dogs, whatwould you think the episode
number would be? And it said 150because it suggests that the

(00:54):
podcast has been around for awhile, and the creators delve
into more unusual topics.

That's that's that's funny because it's spot
on the nose. I mean, we've beenaround long enough that we could
talk about conductive cuisine onour on this podcast.

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

No. No. Please go ahead.

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

full on research that we found. It would be a
very long story to get into, butthe engineering team at my work
has been joking about hot dogelectronics for a little bit
now, and one of the guys postedin our team's chat this research
paper of the specificconductivity of hot dogs, and I

(02:06):
had to share it with Parker. Andthen we realized that this
needed to be an episode. And andthis research paper is is
exactly this. It is a full onlike, it's it's beyond a lab
report.
It is a full on paper discussingthe the conductivity of hot
dogs, but not just like a hotdog. This this goes into

(02:29):
different brands of hot dogs andhow the testing is actually
executed. And it and and in theconclusion, 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.
I think you've pretty muchnailed it. I think you pretty
much have come to yourconclusion here. But but yeah.
So this we need to post a linkto this in the show notes, but

(02:52):
it's it's a solid read of thespecific conductivity of hot
dogs.

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 animage of a hot dog that's
smiling, and there's this greatquote. I don't know who Lawrence
j Peter is, but they have a athis quote's awesome. It is the

(03:20):
noblest of all dogs is the hotdog.
It feeds the hand that bites it.

You know, I don't I don't even remember why this
was a thing, because it's doneit's done in in a professional
way to the point where it justdoesn't even feel like a joke.
Like, someone put a lot ofeffort into this.

Yeah. Because it was the the hypothesis was
the longer you cook slash boilthe hot dog, the lower the
current will be because there'sless water. Like, less water
like, water comes out of the hotdog. Right. And actually, they
found it was the exact opposite.
As you boil a hot dog, itabsorbs moisture, which kinda

(04:04):
makes sense from a from aosmosis because a salt a hot
dog's full of salt and nitrites,so and the water is not.

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

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 tothink about through a hot dog.

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

a Well, they measure the zero gauge

they measure hug?

Well, they measure cigars and a gay the
cigars have a gauge. I wonder ifcigar gauge and wire gauge match

up? Wouldn't surprise me.

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

(05:18):
Double hotdog.

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

So I I typed in hot dog gauge into Google.

Is that a thing?

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

What?

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

(06:12):
What do you how long do youthink is the longest hot dog?

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

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

They just kept they just had I guess they had a
continuous casing and just keptfilling it.

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Continuous dog?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I won't say why you couldn't do that.
Yeah. Okay. Now this is silly.
So by the way, there isn't Ican't find a gauge standard for
hot dogs, but there's a hot dogstand called the Willie Dog
cart, and come on, guys.

Perhaps this is just nostalgia talking here. But
when I first moved to Texas, itwas 1996, and the Astrodome was
still a thing. And they solddomedogs. So we'd go see the
Astros play, and you could get adomedog. And I bet you it is a a
a nostalgia thing, but there wasnothing better than a domedog.

(07:56):
Those were so good. Like, it'ssomething about a dog at a
ballgame or a stadium. They justtaste they hit different.

It's all the nitrates.

Yeah. Yeah. Probably.

It's all the preservatives.

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

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

Okay.

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 disassembledkolache. Like, you take the
hoagie and you rip the bread outand then stick the dog in.

Okay. So for those who are not aware, a
kolache is a South Texas fooditem, I guess. The thing is,
kolaches, I always had them forbreakfast even though it kind of
doesn't make sense for them tobe a breakfast item. It's it's a
piece of sausage or sometimes ahot dog, sometimes with cheese,

(09:02):
and they wrap it in dougheffectively and bake it. And in
the north, they're called pigsin a blanket.
But in South Texas, they'recalled kolaches due to the the
Czech immigrants that came over,I don't know, a 150 years ago or
whatever. And and the namekolache isn't even correct,

(09:24):
because kolache, if I rememberright, it's supposed to be a
dessert item. Like, it has,like, a jam or a cream cheese
kind of filling in it. The oneswith sausages, I think, are
called kobleckis, but everyonejust started calling them
kolaches. And they're like Isaid, it was a breakfast item.
You could go to the donut shopand get a sausage roll
effectively.

And the thing is

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

And you mentioned pigs in a blanket.

Yeah.

Think about a pigs in a blanket, but you know
how everything's bigger thanTexas?

Yeah.

The kolaches are bigger.

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

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

Oh, yeah.

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

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

Blast the kolache? Yeah. So that
basically, they their hypothesiswe're back going back to hot
dock connectivity, this thispaper. Their hypothesis was
incorrect. They absorb waterwhile boiling.
I think they'd mentioned, like,improving the investigation part
where you can try, like,grilling a hot dog and seeing if

(11:06):
that changes it.

Yeah. Another thing that they mentioned in
this so so the setup, they havea hot plate with a, like, a a
boiling water tub effectively.And, apparently, they put
multiple hot dog pieces in thistub and boiled them together and
then would pull them out and dotheir conductivity testing. And
in the improvement section, theywere they were saying, perhaps

(11:32):
doing them 1 at a time andreplacing the water such that
you don't just keep adding hotdogs and adding more salt and
more electrolytes to thisboiling dog water because that
could be influencing future dogsin the in the test.

The hot dog brine, so to speak?

Exactly. Which okay. This this has been an
argument in in Parker and myfriend group for a while of
grilling dogs versus boilingdogs. I am I'm firmly in the
camp of boiled dogs aresuperior.

It's almost as heated as actually, no. I would
say it's more heated than thechili debate.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. The and the chili debate
is do you put beans in chili ornot? Yeah.
And but yeah. So so the so someof the group are into grilling
dogs and some are into, I guess,steaming dogs or whatnot. And
then some some of us are intoboiling dogs. And once again, I
think it's perhaps a nostalgiathing because I think, you know,

(12:33):
growing up, if my mom was awayand 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 stoveand, like, I had boiled dogs
with dad. Like, that was thatwas an old memory of mine.
And there is nothing moredisgusting than hot dog water,
like, after after boiling it. Itis it is vile. That stuff looks

(12:57):
so disgusting. And so I I kindof I I think it's funny that
there is a that there is ascientific study that is
suggesting like, hey, maybe themaybe our problem with this
study is hot dog water.

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

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

Yeah. Soak up the dog water.

Oh, so good. Mc and weenies. Right?

Yeah. It it would, depending on the brand of
hot dogs, sometimes, like, thecasing would shrink, and it
would, like, poof it was reallyweird. You know how, like, a
pepperoni curls?

Yes.

When you cook it?

Well, they think

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.
It's like an inverse of a cupthen. A convex hot dog slice.

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

You know, what's the you know, speak
because this is like this isjust like the resistance of hot
dogs. What is the like, what ifyou start passing AC current?
Like, does does it have, like, askin effect? Like, is the casing
of the hot dog, like, carryingthe most of the current, like,
in in alternating current?

Well, okay. So it it's really funny that you bring
this up because we had thisexact argument at work. Do do
hot dogs have a skin effect? Andthe answer could be wait. The
answer could be yes and no.
Yes from a yes from just a foodaspect, I guess, and no from an

(15:01):
electrical aspect. And thereason why is because we're just
talking about 60 Hertz. If we'retalking about 60 hertz, the
frequency of this thing, thatcurrent is penetrating all the
way to the middle of the hot dogas it goes down. I it's not
going to it's not gonna have theskin effect in the
electromagnetic way that you'rethinking there. However, hot
dogs do have a casing.

(15:23):
And the casing itself could behave a different conductivity
than the, I guess, you could saycore material of the hot dog.
And and that alone could causecurrent to flow separately from
it. The other thing that's kindof fun about this experiment is

(15:45):
that compared to different typesof food, hot dogs are remarkably
homogeneous, Like, they areground to a complete pulp, and
then pushed inside of thiscasing, such that the current is
not going to experience any kindof discontinuities in the hot

(16:05):
dog or areas of differentdensities. It's going to be
uniform all the way throughoutthe dog. Right?
So what's funny is you can makea handful assumptions about your
analysis of the conductivity ofhotdog such that, like, say, if
you cut a hotdog in half andlook at the cross section,
current would flow uniformlythroughout that coin of hotdog,

(16:28):
I guess, is is one way to thinkabout it.

I'm just dying here.

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

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

And you can

just, like, buy a standard for

You can buy NIST peanut butter.

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

Oh. I would not be surprised.

Well, if you type in n I s t hotdog, the
national hotdog and sausagecouncil, which is hotdog.org.
Really? Wow. How did I not yoube a hot dog ambassador, Steven.
What?
How do I how do I sign up forthis? It's hotdog it's hot

(17:20):
hyphen dog dot org.

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

They have etiquette about eating hot dogs?

Wait. How do you hot dog ambassadors. Oh, it's a
contest. Oh, wow. An ambassadorreceives a life time appointment
as a hot dog ambassador.
A wiener warrior t shirt. Okay.Oh my god. How did we get in on
this? Oh, well.
It's it's already over for thisis for last year. Okay. We're

(17:53):
gonna have to jump on this forthis year.

Okay. So I went to the NIST shop oh, I love
this. Shop.nist.gov. Nice. Sosee if you can get hot dogs.
No. There's no hot dogs.

Type in sausage. Yeah.

Let's see. Sausage? No. So peanut butter
might be I wonder what kind offood there is.

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

(18:46):
certified peanut butter.

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

Oh, really?

104 yeah. Called for 840 it's a SKU 1548
b. Typical diet. Well, that's inthere.

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

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

A cow liver is on here.

There's a lot of weird stuff.

Yeah. This is super weird. Oh. Wait. Wait.
Wait. Wait. Okay. I found anadjacent thing. It's called Meet
Homogenate, which is basically-It's not spam.
It's just Yeah. Exactly. It'slike ground up just lifts and
other parts. Yeah.

That's that's not spam.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sure. Well, I guess if if you're eating that,
it's part of a typical dietthen.

Yep.

That is funny.

Adult nutritional formula. How's that
any different than typicaldiets? You know what? I'm not
gonna click what's in that. Ilove how oh, there's some
ingredients guide for hot dogson the national hot dog and
sausage committee.
Council, I should say.

So in this sorry. Back to back to this report real
quick. The typical values ofresistance that were found for
hot dogs. And and just to beclear, the way they actually the
method they did here was notfull hot dogs. I think they were

(21:40):
pieces of hot dogs.

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

5 centimeter segments. Yeah. And and I had

a they had a specific word for it, though.

Nuggets. Nuggets. So so in fact okay. So we
actually had some moreconversations about this at
work. Because a hot dog tapersat the end, you would want to
create 1 standard dog piece.
So you had to previously define,like, what is a length of dog

(22:09):
that you're willing to measure.The so so yeah. These were cut
into cylinders. Right? Now theresistance of a 5 centimeter
chunk of hot dog on the low endwas 55 milliohms, and on the
high end is 93 milliohms.
So there's not a huge shift inresistance from one test to

(22:35):
another. Now that 55 milliohms,excuse me, was after what is it?
240 seconds of current flowingthrough it. So, effectively, you
know, 240 seconds of beingcooked. And that 93 milliohms
was after 30 seconds of beingcooked.
So, yeah, there there is ashift, not maybe not 50%, a

(22:58):
little bit less than 50% shiftbetween those numbers. I wonder
if that's how that stacks upfrom brand to brand. Like, if
you go get a Hebrew National andyou compare it against the
ballpark, are they all gonna bein this range or are you gonna
see a huge wide variety ofresistance values based off of

(23:18):
them? And could you just purelyfrom taking a hot dog, from
testing its resistance, couldyou identify flavors of a brand?
So in other words, like, if youif you tested some dogs and you
were like, oh, this is a this isa, a 100 milliohm dog.
I know it's going to be thiskind of brine, and I know it's

(23:40):
gonna taste like this, or it'sgonna have this kind of snap to
it. That, I would love to seethat kind of conclusion.

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

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

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

(24:22):
They recommend steaming hotdogs, not boiling. Oh, okay. Why
is that? Because boiling cansplit the hot dog.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. I know one of the big
things about from HotdogEnthusiasts is that the case
snap is one of the big things.Like, when you bite into it, you
want that mouthfeel of the thethe case.
The best part about this isParker is just losing it on the

(24:54):
other side over here.

You said hot dog enthusiast.

Oh my god. Oh, we're having

too much fun with this.

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

I I love it.

Okay. Okay. So let let let's let's move on real
quick. You had you had mentionedearlier about cooking dogs with
AC. So there is a gadget thatwe've run into that does use AC
current for cooking dogs.
Why don't you introduce thegadget, Parker?

Yeah. The the the presto hotdogger. I love the
name of this thing. And I lovehow so bigclive.com. So weird
that's his channel name.
Bigclive.com. He's doneexperiments with this device and
not actually taken apart. It'sliterally like a a wire that

(25:59):
goes into your AC socket at yourhouse, and it goes right into
the hot dog. There's, like,there's nothing in the heat.

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

Yeah. Across mains. Yes. Yep. And it's like
it holds I think it holds, like,6 hot dogs.
It holds a pack of hot dogs, andit's got a little lid so it you
can keep all the the juices fromexploding all over the place.
Yeah. So my question to youthough, Stephen, is is that a
pure way to cook a hot dog?

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

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

Oh, about that method. Got it. That method of
cooking a hot dog. Okay. I'venever electrocuted a hot dog and
eaten it.
So I I I can't I can't speak toit fully, but the I think from
what I I watched the video ofthe hotdogger, the presto
hotdogger, and they come outlooking similar to boiled dogs.

(27:10):
They don't plump. They do,however, release a ton of steam.
So I'd I I would be worriedabout them drying out too much
and getting kind of tough. Butoverall, I would say I would
have to try it, but I'mskeptically optimistic.

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

yeah. If you found out that there was
something that was amazing about72 and a half volts going
through a hotdog

particular brand of hotdog.

Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.
Maybe. The the okay. The thingthat's funny about this gadget
is it is about as simple as youcan get. Like it has a bottom
tray and 2 what do you even callthem? Just things down in there

(28:14):
that have spikes on them.
Like, big conical spikes. Andyou take your dog, and you you
you you form like a like an archArch. Out of your dog. And, you
stab them into this thing, andit doesn't make it doesn't make
contact until you put the lidon. So there is safety, sort of,

(28:35):
involved in this product becausethe lid itself is what plugs
into the wall and it hascontacts that when you close the
lid it makes contact And and andthey claim that the original
presto dogger claims it'll cookyour dogs in 60 seconds.
Which the funny thing about thatis, if you're grilling dogs, you

(28:59):
can grill a dog in 60 seconds.You're not really saving a lot
with this and as long as yourstandards are pretty low, you
can microwave a dog in 60seconds. Right? So I don't know.
Like, did this No.
This is what me scratches anitch that wasn't there.

This is really funny. We bring up microwaving
hot dogs. So what me and my daddo is we'll take sausage and hot
dogs, and we'll we'll pan frythem or grill them. So if we
have the grill on, like, we'recooking, like, steaks or
something, we'll just throwsausage or hot dogs on on, like,
the side. Right?

Sure. Okay.

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

Yeah. It's a fast meal.

Yeah. But it it's you microwave it after the
fact. But you you it'sinteresting because a lot of
these products are alsoprecooked, so you're cooking it
again on the grill and thencooking it again in the
microwave.

It's really cute. My my nephew when he was young,
we used to ask him if he want ahot dog, and he would just be
like, no. No. I just want a dog.He didn't want you to cook it.
He wanted it to be cold. So hedidn't want a hot dog. He just
wanted out of the package andjust give it to him. Yeah. He
was into that.
But frozen? No. Not frozen, butlike, you know, you have a hot

(30:30):
dog pack in the fridge. Hewanted it. He liked cold hot
dogs.
So he didn't want a hot dog. Hejust wanted a dog.

He just wanted a dog.

Yeah.

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

Yeah. No. Yeah. No. That's yeah.
Chaotic neutral. Right? LikeChaotic neutral is just dog out
of the pack. Open the package,put it in the mouth. Right?

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

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

Oh, chaotic evil.

Yeah. Absolutely. K. Wait. Wait.
It would be chaotic evil if if,like, in this video that, was
posted, you don't run it on a120 volts. You run it on 240 and
and just completely obliteratethe dogs.

What what's the other one? It's like what the
other alignment charts? It'slike, like, functionally, I
think, and then chartfunctional.

I'm not I'm coming up as a blank. I really
don't know what you're talkingabout.

No. You've seen these before.

I got I mean,

I'm I'm

sure I have.

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

Okay.

That's probably a better alignment chart for for
this. Because, like, trueneutral would be, like, boiled
dog.

Yeah. I could see that. Yeah.

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.

You you're right. Kinda like what you're saying
earlier, like, the pure way ofcooking a dog.

Yeah. But also it's, like, functionally in the
form. Right. Those alignmentcharts are always great. We
should make one of those forI'll I'll actually I will make
one of those for the featuredimage of the spot.

Yeah. The banner image. Right?

The banner image will be a alignment chart
of cooking hot dogs Becausethere's all because there's
there's there's the prestohotdogger, but we have a an
instant hot dog device that wasput into our, it it was an
instant hot dog device for itwas on YouTube that used

(33:13):
thermite to cook a hot to boil ahot dog, basically. I think we
talked about that before,though, on the podcast.

Have we? The the the video for this is is
fantastic. It's about 30 minuteslong, and it's it's worth every
minute of it because it goespretty deep into the engineering
and, actually, the chemistry offinding like the right mix of
thermite for cooking a dogproperly. And and the end of it
is they come up with like asurvival dog kit where you have

(33:49):
you have the apparatus thatcontains a dog and ever whenever
you whenever you want it, youjust ignite the thermite. Okay.
At the beginning of the episodethough, they they mentioned
something and I really thoughtthey were gonna go this route,
but I also don't know how likethis would be a hell of an
engineering challenge. Theymentioned that they the original

(34:10):
thought was to have a hot dogthat acted like a glow stick
where you crack the hot dog andthen it just starts cooking, and
and then you can eat it. But howyou could do that and still make
it food safe is Yeah. That's thechallenge. Right?
Yeah. They they tried putting

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

Rifle not rifling. What what's it called
when when they drill like, theydo the long drill of of rifles?
A bore? Yeah. But Rifling.
That it's called rifling. It iscalled Well, rifling is adding
the the spiral rifles on it. Ithought it had a deep deep
drill, something like that. Idon't remember. But yeah, they
they did they were doing thatwith hot dogs and trying to

(34:56):
replace the core with somethingthat could cook the dog.
And they ended up just likecharring everything they tried.

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 tooeasy. Because you could just,
you know, DC to AC converter, aPresto hot dog, dogger, and now
you have a portal like, aninstant hot dog on the go.

What's coming to mind? You know you know the
little wall packs that you usefor rechargeable batteries. I'm
thinking Oh, yeah. Yeah. Butthey

just got hot dogs in the house. Yeah. Yeah.
Where it has, like, the springloaded clip on the end? Yeah.
I'm gonna be honest.

Load up your trip your your double and triple a
dogs into it and just click abutton and it cooks up.

Cooks your dogs up.

Honestly, that okay, the chemistry behind the
thermite stick that they madewas fascinating, and that's
really cool. But I think you'reright. Electrically is
considerably easier, especiallygiven the research that was
already done on the specificconductivity of dogs and what it

(36:15):
takes to cook them. On top ofthat, if you had an electric
cooker like that, you could haveit solar charged. So so so you
could recharge the battery andbe ready for the next dog.
Right?

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

Yeah.

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

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

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what if we went we
combined this this paper, thisresearch study. Right?
Because they were they put it inthey were boiling the dog.
Right? But so what you do is youand it's combined with this
other the instant hot dogdevice. So it's a chamber of
water. So you put the hot dog inthere, and at the bottom is a

(37:14):
spike.
And it's you spike the hot dog.And then on the other end is the
other spike. Right? When youpass 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 itcalled?
The the fuel rod? Yeah. Right.Because passing electricity, but

(37:35):
then the the water keeps it thetemperature under control to a
certain extent. Oh, that'sbrilliant.

Yeah. And and here's the thing. You still get
a boiled dog. It's just Youstill get a boiled dog. It's
just the what's funny is in thissituate if you if you put dogs
in a in a pan and put them onthe stove, the method of cooking
them is the heat gets into thewater, which then heats the dog.
But in this situation, we havethe spikes, the dog heats the

(38:07):
water. Right? Yeah. It's it'sit's a little bit backwards. But
the nice thing about that too isif you need to cook more than 1
dog, the second one wouldn'ttake as long because the water's
already, you know, it's alreadyyeah.

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

Light bulb limiter. Put a light bulb in
series with a hot dog, and thatthat limits the amount of
current that the dog can consumefrom mains directly.

It's cleaning up all those electrons.

Yeah. Yeah.

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

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 itmean when a dog is cooked?
Because they're precooked.
You're really just warming them.Right?

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

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

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

Yeah.

I'm gonna try I'm gonna try the reverse boiled
dog idea. So using the dog asthe element, And so it's like
the Presto hot dog maker and butit reg it's self regulating
because it's in a it's in thewater bath. I bet you that would

(40:09):
work. I bet you it would. Unlessunless, like, you might have to
it might be a point where, like,the water becomes more
conductive than the dog becauseof all the dog water.
That might become a problem.

Yes. Yes. You're you're right. And at that point
but that's self regulating.Right?
Because then the temperaturewould decrease at that point
because you're just passing allthe current through the water.
So so you you Well, no.

Because it would because your electrodes
are in the water too. So itwould just jump around the dog.
Yeah. I guess it would just heatup I guess it would just heat up
the water and it also didn'theat up the dog. Right.

But but the the what is it? Specific heat. The
specific heat of a dog has gottabe different than the specific
heat of water. So they so if ifgiven long enough, they reach
some kind of equilibrium. Right?
And maybe, just maybe, thatequilibrium point is the
tastiest dog you've ever had.Yeah. We might be on to

(41:12):
something here, Parker. I mean,I wonder

So I'm wondering about the power
calculation here. So, like, thePresto is on a 120 volts times
it's probably like, how muchpower is that Presto cooker
make? Presto hotdogger powerconsumption. I mean I can't
believe I can't believe I'mgoogling this.

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 centimeterchunk of dog.

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

(42:09):
costs.
That's the experiment. So theyact he's running an exp or they
are running an experiment ondifferent oh, how much it costs
different ways to cook a hotdog. Oh, okay. Like, charcoal,
gas grill, electric stove. Oh,charcoal stove.

Most expensive for sure.

Electrocution of a hot dog is the cheapest
way.

I'm not surprised.

You can cook 19 and a half hotdogs for 1¢ on a
presto hotdogger. That's theeconomical way.

For 1¢.

But, you average a 126 watts. Cooking a
hotdog on a on a presto. So a100 so you're actually only
putting about an amp into thedog. That's a lot lower than I
thought.

That is a lot lower given the resistance
values that were measured inthat paper.

Yeah. I wonder if they were using higher
voltage to measure it. Whatvoltages were they?

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

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

So what are you saying wait. Are you saying the
DC resistance and the impedanceof a dog are that different?

I bet you they are way different.

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

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

Yeah. This has been stupid for long enough.
Yeah. Thanks to all of those whoare still hanging on listening
to this. Yeah.
We we got to have fun with thisone.

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

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

That is how they market them.

True. That is true.

My favorite way, even though I I like
grilling them. I I actually likepan frying.

Pan frying is good too.

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.
Yep. Slices of it, at least.

Make little coins and dog.

Coins and dog. I like that coins and dog.

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

dog. Yeah.

Alright. Let's go ahead and wrap this up. So once
again, thank you for listeningto the very end. So that was
circuit break from Macrofab. Wewere your host, Steven Craig.

And Parker Doman.

Take it easy.

Later, everyone. Thank you. Yes. You
are a listener for downloadingand listening to our hot dog
cooking podcast. Tell yourfriends and coworkers about
Circuit Break the podcast.
Well, we usually talk aboutelectronics, but this time pot
the hot dogs. If you have a coolidea, project, or topic, or
unusual way to cook hot dogs,and you want us to discuss it,

(45:40):
we'll we'll gladly talk abouthot dogs dogs again for another
hour. Let Steven and I and thecommunity know our community
where you can find personalprojects, discussions about the
podcast, engineering topics, andnews, and ways to cook hot dogs
is located atform.macfab.com.

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