Arizona. As grand as its canyon.

A bit of meat with lots of toppings.

Arizona is home to 35 national parks, national forests, parks, nature areas, and recreational areas. Arizona is also home to two of the top rated waterfalls in the US: Grand Falls and Havasu Falls.

But what food? Arizona is settled right on border of Mexico so it gets influences from both the United States and Mexico. Like Arizona's cultural influences, our States on My Plate meal is also a fusion between the US and Mexico. It has a bit of everything: hot dogs, bacon, beans, avocado, and pico de gallo. What is it? The Sonoran Hot Dog.

This summer, my Uncle Bruce and Aunt Janelle invited us (as well as my grandparents) to spend a weekend at their family cabin. I came up with the idea: my grandma DeGrote loves reading my SoMP blogs and I thought everyone would love to have one of my world-famous States on My Plate meals. So we decided that’s when we would make Sonoran Hot Dogs. Since mom was in charge of the meal planning for the weekend trip, she slated our hot dogs for dinner one of the nights we were there. I sure hope everyone likes them.

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Toppings, toppings galore.

Our Sonoran Hot Dogs are just a little bit of meat with a ton of toppings.

We first started out by dicing up our tomato and red onion (which stained my finger purple for three days and isn’t concerning at all), then mixing in fresh squeezed lime juice and cilantro to make our pico de gallo.

The dogs also call for avocados, baked beans, mayo, and crunched up potato chips. We sliced our avocados and got our beans ready.

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What's shakin', bacon?

We started the hot dogs by wrapping any old hot dog in bacon. We then put our bacon-wrapped hot dogs on the grill. We flipped them every few minutes or so (dad wasn’t timing the grilling this time, it's crazy!). When we were flipping the dogs, the bacon was coming off, of course. But, since I’m a perfectionist, it really got to me. A chef's tip: cooking the bacon a bit first and THEN wrapping the dogs helps out a lot.

When the dogs were close to being done grilling, we toasted the dog buns on the free half of the grill. Me and mom headed into the kitchen and left dad and Grandpa DeGrote (aka Papa) to wrap up the dogs and buns.

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Like it's state, the Sonoran Hot Dog is very diverse.

Everything was ready! We built the dogs for those who wanted the “real deal” (like the adults) by putting the bacon- wrapped hot dog into the bun. We then put our avocado into one half between the dog and the bun and sprinkled some beans on the other half. Then we sprinkled some pico de gallo on and topped it all off with some crunched up chips and a drizzle of mayo. For those that didn’t want everything, we let them build their own.

Our Sonoran Hot Dogs were a great success! Like my Grandma DeGrote said “Every bite tasted just a little different”. We all loved our Sonoran Hot Dogs.

Want to try them out for yourself? Here's the link: Sonoran Hot Dogs

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