The Danish hot dog with absolutely everything — because apparently one kind of onion was not enough.
MAKES 4 HOT DOGS
ABOUT 20 MINUTES WITH STORE-BOUGHT BUNS
OR MOST OF YOUR AFTERNOON IF YOU DECIDE TO MAKE EVERYTHING YOURSELF
There are foods that remind you of home because they are complicated family recipes passed down through generations.
And then there are foods that remind you of home because you’ve eaten them standing outside in questionable Danish weather while trying not to drop crispy onions down the front of your coat.
This is definitely the second kind.
Meet the Danish pølse med det hele.
Literally:
a sausage with everything.
And when Danes say everything, we take the assignment seriously.
There is ketchup.
Mustard.
Remoulade.
Raw onion.
Crispy fried onion.
Pickled cucumber.
And somewhere underneath all of that there is technically still a sausage.
Probably.
Pølser have also somehow become one of the foods my friends request most often when they come over.
Movie night?
“Eva, are you making the Danish hot dogs?”
Big football match?
“We could do pølser…”
Someone coming over supposedly just to watch one episode of something?
Apparently this also requires pølser.
At this point, I’m beginning to suspect my friends aren’t actually visiting me.
They’re visiting the remoulade.
And honestly?
I understand.
What you’ll need
For 4 pølser
- 4 Danish røde pølser, if you can find them
- 4 soft hot-dog buns
- 1 small onion, very finely chopped
- 4–6 tbsp crispy fried onions
- 1 large sweet-and-sour pickled cucumber, thinly sliced lengthways
- Ketchup
- Danish-style mustard
- Danish remoulade
And yes:
ketchup + mustard + remoulade.
All three.
This is not the moment to discover minimalism.
First: what sausage should I use? 🌭
If you can find genuine Danish røde pølser, absolutely use them.
They’re the classic choice: fine-textured, mildly seasoned, lightly smoky and famously, enthusiastically red.
Yes.
The colour is part of the experience.
Unfortunately, unless you live in Denmark or somewhere with a good Scandinavian food shop, they may be slightly harder to find.
I live in France now, and telling everyone to book a flight to Copenhagen whenever they want dinner seems inefficient.
So substitutions are allowed.
If you’re in France
Use saucisses de Strasbourg.
They’re probably my favourite easy substitute.
They have the smooth texture and mild flavour you want, and once you’ve covered them with remoulade, pickles and two separate forms of onion, you are heading firmly in the right direction.
Elsewhere in Europe
Look for:
- Frankfurters
- Vienna/Wiener sausages
- mild smoked hot-dog sausages
In the UK
A good-quality frankfurter works beautifully.
In North America
Choose a good-quality pork, beef or pork-and-beef frankfurter, ideally with a fine texture and natural casing.
A normal hot-dog sausage will also work.
I am not sending anyone across the Atlantic for a sausage.
What I probably wouldn’t use
I wouldn’t choose anything very coarse or heavily seasoned if you’re trying to recreate the Danish version.
So probably not:
- Toulouse sausages
- strongly herbed sausages
- bratwurst with very pronounced seasoning
- merguez
Would merguez with Danish remoulade necessarily taste bad?
No.
Would we still be making Danish pølser?
Absolutely not.
Would I eat it anyway?
Obviously.
Homemade Danish remoulade 💛
If you can buy Danish remoulade, wonderful.
Open the jar.
Feel accomplished.
Continue with your life.
But if you can’t find it, this is an extremely solvable problem.
And unlike many problems, this one can be fixed with mayonnaise.
Which I find reassuring.
Danish-style remoulade is creamy, tangy, slightly sweet, herby and full of little crunchy bits of vegetables.
It also has that distinctive yellow colour.
You’ll need
- 3 tbsp mayonnaise
- 1 tbsp crème fraîche
- 1 tbsp plain yogurt
- 1 tbsp capers, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp carrot, very finely chopped or grated
- 1 tbsp pickles, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp chives, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp tarragon or dill, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp shallot, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp peeled green apple, very finely chopped
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp mustard
- 1 small pinch turmeric
- Salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 small pinch sugar
Make the remoulade
Put everything into a bowl.
Mix.
That’s it.
Suspiciously simple.
Taste and adjust.
Add a little more lemon if you want it sharper.
A tiny bit more sugar if your pickles are particularly acidic.
More mustard if you want extra bite.
And please be gentle with the turmeric.
We’re aiming for:
pleasant Danish yellow.
Not:
high-visibility road worker.
Cover and refrigerate for about 30 minutes before serving if you have time.
It gives all the flavours a chance to get acquainted.
Yes, there is apple in it 🍏
I know.
Trust me.
The green apple adds just a little freshness and sweetness without making the remoulade actually taste like apple.
You are not creating mayonnaise fruit salad.
Everything is fine.
This quantity makes enough for around 4–6 hot dogs, depending on how seriously you take remoulade.
My friends take it very seriously.
So four.
And now… homemade hot-dog buns
This part is entirely optional.
Buy your buns.
I support you.
There is absolutely no shame in buying bread made by someone whose actual job is making bread.
But I know some of you.
Some of you will look at a perfectly reasonable twenty-minute hot-dog recipe and think:
“But what if I turned this into a three-hour project?”
This section is for you.
I respect you.
I am also slightly afraid of you.
Soft Homemade Hot-Dog Buns
Makes 6 buns
Yes, you only need four.
The remaining two are compensation for making your own hot-dog buns when supermarkets exist.
You’ll need
- 300 g strong white bread flour
- 5 g instant yeast
- 20 g sugar
- 5 g fine salt
- 180 ml lukewarm milk
- 1 large egg
- 30 g unsalted butter, softened
- A little milk for brushing
- Sesame seeds, optional
1. Make the dough
Put the flour into a large bowl.
Add the yeast and sugar.
Add the salt on the opposite side of the bowl.
Apparently yeast and concentrated salt need boundaries.
Add the lukewarm milk and egg.
Mix until you have a rough dough.
2. Knead
Knead for about 8–10 minutes, until the dough starts becoming smooth and elastic.
Then gradually knead in the softened butter.
At first, the dough may become sticky and look as though you’ve made a terrible mistake.
You haven’t.
Probably.
Keep kneading until the butter is fully incorporated and the dough becomes smooth again.
Bread enjoys testing your confidence.
3. First rise
Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl and cover it.
Leave somewhere warm for approximately 1–1½ hours, or until doubled in size.
This is an excellent time to make the remoulade.
It is also an excellent time to make coffee.
I recommend doing both.
4. Shape the buns
Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces.
Shape each piece into a smooth elongated roll, roughly the length of your sausages.
Place them on a lined baking tray with a little room between each one.
Cover loosely.
Leave to rise again for about 40–45 minutes, until noticeably puffed.
5. Bake
Preheat the oven to:
190°C / 375°F
Brush the buns lightly with milk.
Sprinkle with sesame seeds if you want them.
Bake for around 15–18 minutes, until golden.
Transfer to a wire rack and allow them to cool.
Try not to immediately eat one warm with butter.
Actually, no.
You made six.
Eat the bun.
Now let’s make the pølser
Once you’ve gathered your sauces, sausages, vegetables and possibly spent half the day making bread, the actual hot dogs take approximately five minutes.
Cooking is funny like that.
1. Warm the sausages
Traditional Danish pølser are often gently heated in water rather than aggressively boiled.
Heat a saucepan of water until it is very hot and close to simmering.
Lower the heat.
Add your sausages and let them warm gently for around 5–8 minutes, or according to the instructions on the sausages you’re using.
Don’t let the water boil violently.
The sausages may split.
Nobody needs sausage drama during movie night.
You can also pan-fry or grill them if that’s what you prefer.
I am Danish.
Not the sausage police.
2. Warm the buns
Warm the buns briefly in the oven or toast them very lightly.
You want them soft and warm.
Not crunchy enough to remove the roof of your mouth.
3. Prepare the toppings
Finely chop your raw onion.
Slice the pickled cucumber thinly lengthways.
Put the crispy onions into a bowl.
Try not to eat all the crispy onions while waiting for the sausages.
This instruction is mostly directed at my friends.
And me.
Assemble your pølse med det hele
Put one sausage into each warm bun.
Then add:
ketchup
mustard
remoulade
Scatter over:
finely chopped raw onion
and then:
crispy fried onion
Finally, add slices of:
sweet-and-sour pickled cucumber
Admire your creation.
Notice that there is now considerably more topping than structural support.
Pick it up carefully.
Lose three crispy onions immediately.
This means you’ve done it correctly.
About the cucumber 🥒
If possible, use sweet-and-sour pickled cucumber, sliced thinly, rather than very sour little cornichons.
Cornichons will work in an emergency, because I refuse to gatekeep hot dogs.
But the sweeter cucumber gives you a more recognisable Danish flavour.
About the mustard
Danish hot-dog mustard tends to be relatively mild and slightly sweet.
If you can’t find it, use a mild yellow mustard.
I wouldn’t choose an extremely strong Dijon here unless you particularly enjoy your mustard announcing itself before every other ingredient.
Which, to be fair, is a very French problem.
Eva’s extremely official topping philosophy 🇩🇰
People have opinions about how a proper pølse should be assembled.
How much remoulade.
Which sauce goes first.
Where the cucumber belongs.
Whether there is such a thing as too much crispy onion.
There isn’t.
Food traditions are wonderful because everyone eventually starts speaking as though their grandmother personally received the recipe on a stone tablet.
My rule?
Make the first one traditionally.
Make the second one exactly however you want.
Yes.
There should be a second one.
Eva’s emergency sausage hierarchy
🥇 Danish røde pølser
★★★★★
You understood the assignment.
🥈 Saucisses de Strasbourg / good Frankfurters
★★★★☆
Very respectable.
Denmark approves.
Probably.
🥉 Ordinary hot-dog sausages
★★★☆☆
The toppings are doing important work here.
Merguez
????????
We have left Denmark.
I would nevertheless like to be invited.
For the people making absolutely everything from scratch
So.
You made your buns.
You made your remoulade.
Perhaps you also pickled your own cucumber.
Maybe you’ve decided to fry your own crispy onions.
At this point, you have successfully transformed Danish street food into a weekend baking project.
Congratulations.
Somewhere in Copenhagen, someone just walked up to a pølsevogn, ordered one and started eating approximately forty-five seconds later.
Both approaches are valid.
One of you simply has considerably more washing up.
The Friends Test ❤️
I don’t actually remember when pølser became our unofficial movie-night food.
It just happened.
One evening, I made them.
Everyone liked them.
Then the next time we organised a film night, someone asked:
“Are you making those Danish hot dogs again?”
Apparently that was enough to establish a legally binding tradition.
Now they appear whenever there’s a big sports match too.
Someone brings drinks.
Someone brings snacks.
I make pølser.
This is the system.
Unfortunately, my friends have now developed preferences.
One wants extra remoulade.
One barely wants any raw onion but requests approximately their own body weight in crispy onion.
Someone always steals cucumber slices while I’m assembling everything.
And there is inevitably a person standing beside me saying:
“Can I have more of the yellow sauce?”
The yellow sauce has a name.
But yes.
You may have more remoulade.
The slightly dangerous part is that they now request them before they’ve even arrived.
I’ll get a message:
“Movie night Friday?”
Then, approximately fourteen seconds later:
“Pølser?”
Apparently I have created expectations.
Why I love making them
They are hardly the most complicated thing I cook.
They aren’t particularly elegant.
They are almost impossible to eat without wearing at least one ingredient.
But I think that’s partly why I love serving them.
For me, pølser taste like Denmark.
Then I moved somewhere new and started making them for new people.
And now my friends associate them with crowded sofas, films we’ve already seen six times, shouting at sports matches, bowls of crisps on the coffee table and someone inevitably asking if there are any sausages left.
A little piece of home became part of our evenings here.
Food is very good at doing that.
The Hungry Redhead verdict
Difficulty with store-bought buns: ★☆☆☆☆
Difficulty if you make absolutely everything yourself: ★★★★☆
Danish nostalgia: ★★★★★
Movie-night suitability: ★★★★★
Sports-night suitability: ★★★★★
Appropriate number of onion preparations: apparently two
Remoulade importance: non-negotiable
Chance someone asks for extra crispy onion: 100%
Chance someone steals cucumber while you’re cooking: also 100%
Chance of finding crispy onion in the sofa tomorrow: we don’t talk about that
A pølse isn’t fancy food.
It isn’t supposed to be.
It’s warm, messy, slightly excessive and deeply comforting.
And somewhere along the way, something that used to remind me only of home became something my friends here now ask for whenever we spend an evening together.
I think that’s one of my favourite things about cooking.
Sometimes you bring a little piece of home somewhere new.
You feed it to people.
Then you feed it to them again.
And eventually it becomes part of their memories too.
Which is lovely.
Even if I’m fairly sure they’re mostly coming over for the remoulade.
Good food, warm stories, questionable decisions. ❤️
xo,
Eva