Reddit's Mess-Free Hack For Making Cheesy Delicious Hot Dogs

Chili cheese dogs are undoubtedly one of the greatest hot dog-adjacent culinary inventions the world has ever seen (and tasted), but they can be such a pain to make — and eat. One shortcut you can take is to bake them, but that doesn't solve the problem of keeping the chili contained within the hot dog buns. It seems no matter how careful you are when spooning it on top of the dogs, it will always find a way to leak off, and this issue is doubled when it comes to actually eating them. Lucky for all of us, one poster on Reddit's hotdogs subreddit had a brilliant solution: Carve out the hot dog buns into little bread vessels — boats, if you will — and put down some chili and cheese inside before the actual wiener.

"Chili cheese dog canoes[;] sign me up!" one commenter wrote, perfectly encapsulating the general idea behind the creation (per Reddit). Now the OP, who also shared a carousel of photos to attest to their culinary genius, did end up putting more chili and cheese on top of the dogs; if you prefer to keep them even less messy, you could leave those extra layers off.

Aside from the neatness of these eats, another great thing about baking your hot dogs is that you can prepare a lot of them all at once. Fill a lipped tray or casserole dish, and you have enough food to feed a crowd, and they're all finished at the same time.

The OP for this brilliant chili cheese dog hack on that r/hotdogs thread actually grilled their hot dogs before baking them up. But you don't have to because most hot dogs are already cooked. In fact, you could eat them straight out of the package — but should you? Probably not. So all you need to do to make them palatable is heat them through, which their sojourn in the oven will do. Still, if you prefer the flavor and texture of flame-kissed wieners, then by all means, pop them on the grill and get them all char-y and juicy before they hit the oven.

One commenter had a question about the texture of the buns after baking, wondering if they come out crunchy and hard — hard hot dog buns, after all, produce so many crumbs. The OP assured them the buns stay soft because they covered them initially with aluminum foil. This locks in moisture and, in effect, steams the buns — and it's a lot more efficient than the microwave method. Then, OP clarified, after an initial round of baking with the foil on, they remove it, and put the chili dogs back in uncovered for a short period, to complete the melting of the cheese.