Taking Lunch Into Our Own Hands – Dishwasher Dogs.

Written By: The Gnarly Gnome
All Artwork Created By: ChatGPT to protect the innocent, and hide from the health department.

This article first appeared on 5/16/25 via ‘Drinking With The Gnome’ – the substack/podcast companion to this blog. You should subscribe.

Bars are for drinking, not dining, but what happens when the hunger hits hard and there’s no kitchen in sight? You improvise, you experiment, yes, you turn to science. Maybe you do dumb stuff with commercial dishwashers and hot dogs.

Names, Places, and other identifying details have been changed to protect the innocent

Phase One: Hunger Pains

The warm spring air outside carries with it a touch of cooked food from around the corner… There are plenty of restaurants close by, but we aren’t going to patronize those places – no, we brought hot dogs. I’m joined by two friends, we’ll call them Marcia and Julian. No… that’s too obvious. We should call them Marcus and Juliana. No… that’s also obvious, too.

I was with friends.

We’d been planning this for weeks, simple shenanigans to make sure that no longer would we have to leave our barstools for a warm meal at lunchtime. We’d cracked the code.

Can you cook hot dogs in a commercial dishwasher? These are the questions that either change lives or end them.

Phase Two: Dishwasher Dogs

The planning didn’t just extend to remembering to stuff a pack of hot dogs in your cargo shorts, and a pack of buns in a backpack. This was a complicated mission. You’d be wrong if you thought it was as simple as just shoving your hot dogs in a dishwasher and calling it a day.

The process is one of careful preparation and hinges on well-planned distraction of your bartender. From there, with your frankfurters carefully kept in their vacuum-sealed package, all it takes is a quick toss into the under-counter commercial dishwasher

This is where things went a little wrong. One quick spin through wasn’t enough for a good steamy dog. We now had to have the patience to sit through what ended up being three cycles of the dishwasher – and full disclosure: our bartender now was 90% confused, 10% amused, and entirely too busy to stop what we had started.

Should you choose this path, you may encounter looks and possibly questions. None of the confusion from other bar patrons is too much to overcome with a finished hot dog, though (you remembered to bring the mustard, right?)

The Results Of This Experiment

Hypothetically, if this happened – when we cracked open the steaming package and loaded up the dogs onto their tasty brioche buns (from Aldi… they were fantastic), we were greeted by the tastiest, room temperature lunch that I think I’ve ever had in a bar.

No, the hot dogs weren’t cooked to the temperature that I’d get from a dance on a blackstone, or a spin in the microwave that was likely hiding away in the back had we bothered to ask – they weren’t even as warm as the miserable hot dogs sitting all day in a crockpot at the kids birthday party that I was at 3 weeks ago.

It didn’t matter, though. These were our dogs… from someone else’s dishwasher. It was magical.

A Note For Those Looking To Do This At Home

Hot Dogs are one of those foods that are almost always great. I’m a sucker for all tubular meat products. A dishwasher, though, isn’t the best way to prepare them. The time involved is silly, the method is a little more work than you would ever want for a hot dog, and it’s kind of stressful.

I’d recommend keeping a hot dog roller in your car, so that you can quietly plug it into a corner outlet to cook your dogs instead. A pocket panini press might suffice? A butane torch and a skewer? If I’m being honest, don’t underestimate the power of a sunny windowsill, a piece of foil, and about 45 minutes, either.

It doesn’t matter. Be Gnarly, for science.