Fourth of July Nacho Pretzel Dogs

This year we've been making an effort to try different things for the holiday meals, and the 4th of July seemed like a great chance to try out something outside our usual repertoire. Grilling is of course a must, but we put an indoor twist on our hot dogs - by making our own pretzel roll buns!

Our homemade pretzels first showed up a couple of years back when we had pretzels at the mall that were pretty unsatisfying. We played around with recipes until finding our perfect combination and had quite a few fun nights rolling out pretzels and dipping them in cheese, marinara sauce, and so on. Eventually we figured these deliciously soft snacks would be amazing for sandwiches, so we started making pretzel roll buns.

Taking that idea a step further, we decided to put together pretzel roll hot dog buns. We have our own recipe we use, but if you'd like a great starting point, you can find a ridiculously highly rated mall style pretzel recipe at this location.

Putting these together isn't too tough, starting off simply by mixing together standard dry ingredients.

Next goes in the wet ingredients and fast acting yeast, at which point it has to sit and rise for a short time.

Once that's done, we get to the actual work: kneading the dough for around 8 - 10 minutes.

After the kneading process, Megan cut the dough into equal portions and rolled them into the approximate length of our hot dogs instead of into the standard pretzel shapes.

As a final step before baking, each bun is dipped briefly in a baking soda water solution.

Finally they get topped in a sprinkling of coarse kosher salt and baked until perfect golden brown!

These are amazing because they are a little crispy on the outside, but tender and fluffy all throughout the center.

Before baking, Megan cut a slit down the center so they'd be easier to pull open and fill with delicious hot dogs and toppings.

Next up we've got to actually get started grilling our hot dogs...but what's in that other pouch there?!?!

Here's our bun-length all beef dogs getting some nice heat marks over our charcoal grill.

As a fun addition, we decided to make a grilled desert as well. Here Megan is flipping over some pound cake we're also cooking on the grill.

Once all the grilling is done it's time to start putting together the hot dogs, starting by cooking and slicing up some bacon.

Here I've pulled open one of the buns and torn out a bit of the insides - which of course I dipped into nacho cheese to chow down on!

That's not mustard there - it's delicious molten gold, otherwise known as nacho cheese sauce! Throw caution into the wind and ladle on as much as you can handle, or as much as you'd care to end up having to wipe off your face and plate later.

Sprinkle on as much bacon as you think your dog needs - which is probably quite a lot!

Here's Megan's finished dog, filled to the brim with awesome cheese and bacon. For a fun twist you could also do relish or any number of other toppings - sauerkraut, thousand island, onions, etc.

After chowing down on our dogs and watching the fireworks, we put together our deserts - grilled pound cake covered in sliced strawberries and topped with whipped cream.