It's Easy to Make Meals with Pigs in a Blanket

It's easy to make meals with pigs in a blanket. 

• Dress up the pigs--hot dogs, brats, or sausages. We usually split the dogs and stick a wedge of cheese down the center.
• Wrap them in dough. It can be bread dough or biscuit dough. It can be from a mix or refrigerated dough from the grocer. Wrap them in refrigerated crescent rolls. That works too.
• Bake them. Freeze any leftovers for another meal.

The advantage of bread machine mixes is that you can push a button and go. You can set a timer.

Wrap the dogs in the dough, let the bread rise, and bake them in the oven. You can eat them hot or cold. You can reheat them in the microwave.

I’m talking about hot dogs or brats baked in bread dough though you can make pigs with cocktail sausages, with refrigerator dough, or biscuit dough.

And before you start, let me share with you our favorite breads for pigs:

• Cheesy Salsa Bread Machine Mixes (Makes pretty, orange-colored pigs)
• Black Russian Bread (Pumpernickel Bread) Machine Mixes (Makes cool, charcoal-colored pigs)
• Diego’s Jalapeno Cheese Bread Machine Mixes (pigs with a kick, about 5-6 on scale of ten.

By the way, these bread machine mixes also make scrumptious hamburger buns. 

The Basic Pig Recipe

Making and prepping the dough is not quick because you must let the bread rise. But if you have a bread machine, it doesn’t take much—you can do something else while the bread is rising.

If you don’t have a bread machine, use your stand-type mixer and the dough hook.

Choose the dough setting; it’s program 8 on most machines. It only takes a few minutes, but the machine needs about an hour and half to knead and let the dough rise in the machine.

After you get the dough from the machine, roll it out, slice it, wrap the pigs, and let the dough rise. Again, it’s not quick but you don’t have to invest much of your time.

Choose from over 60 breads for your blankets

The Recipe

• Any bread mix of your choice
• 18 hot dogs (can be halved for smaller pigs) or 36 sausages
• 2 tablespoons dough relaxer (optional for more manageable dough)
• Mustard (or preferred dip or spread)
• Sliced cheese (optional)

Directions

1. Mix the bread dough according to package instructions in a stand mixer with a dough hook for about five minutes or until the dough becomes smooth and stretchy. Or use your bread machine.
2. Roll the dough to 1/4-inch thick. Let it relax for ten minutes and roll it again if needed. Cut it into circles or rectangles sized to wrap around your hot dogs.
3. Cut a slit in each hot dog lengthwise and put the sliced cheese into the slit.
4. If you want to use a condiment, such as mustard, spread it onto each dough piece, leaving a clean border along the long edges to squeeze the dough together. Place the hot dog in the center.
5. Wrap the dough around the hot dog, pressing the edges together where they overlap, and repeat until each pig has a blanket. Let it rise for about 30-45 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.

Bake at 350°F for 10 to 15 minutes or until the dough just starts to brown.

A Catalog of Pigs and What to Do with Them

Let your imagination rule. For us, it's hot dogs and brats. For my dad, it was Vienna sausages. I'm not even sure what Vienna sausages are. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, where there is a world of German and Scandinavian towns, there are sausages everywhere. Make what you know and like.

We do half- dogs. That makes them more finger foods and appetizers. We split them and add a stick of cheese. Mustard on dogs work but you can use any sauce or condiment.

As I write this, there is a new blanket of snow. It's winter. Give me a good, hearty soup from clam chowder to a bean soup. A pig and a soup is perfect this time of year.

In the summer, I'll take pigs on a picnic. For me, potato salad always works with pigs.

It's hard to go wrong with pigs in a blanket. They work all year with almost anything. Make extras. That's the start of the next meal.

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Making Pigs on the Grill

You’re missing some summer fun if you’re not baking on your grill. It’s not hard if you have a cover on your grill (although you can rig a large pan or bucket to place over the food and act as a cover). Some grills have a thermometer. Different grills bake differently. You just have to learn your grill.

The biggest challenge with many grills is the heat more intense closest to the flame. The lid captures the heat to mimic an oven. The heat naturally rises and few grills have a fan to circulate the heat.

If your grill is too hot on the rack closest to the flame, and most are, there are several remedies you can try to see what works best on your grill:

• Turn the heat down low so there is just a flicker of a flame. The lid will still capture the heat enough to bake.
• Take two large baking sheets and stack them together. Then place the bread pan, pizza pan, or other pan on the double sheets. The large baking pans force the heat to travel around the sheets and the double pans provide insulation between the sheets even though the edges are open. If you slip something between the sheets to hold them, say one inch, apart, you will create more insulation.
• Put something under the pizza pan to hold the food further from the heat. A couple of bricks will do.

It sounds like a lot of trouble. It’s not. And it’s worth it. You only have to figure it out once.

Now that you have it figured out, you can bake your pigs just like you do in the kitchen.