Today is the Fourth of July, so what better way to celebrate our nation’s independence than eating copious amounts of meat.

You can read my ode to the hot dog over at The Sporting Blog. Leading up to the Fourth I’ve been concerned that I’ll fall into a food challenge (I never back away from a food challenge) and eating more hot dogs than anyone else sounds like a grand plan, but it all but eliminates the ability to put down one of these suckers over the weekend.

The bacon burger dog.

Those fans of The Cosby Show might remember the bacon burger dog. It’s a hot dog and a burger, with bacon, on one roll. Now, on this clip they show the sandwich on a kaiser roll, which makes me think either the hot dog was cut in two, or the dog was just loosely placed on top of the burger. Either way, that’s not the way to go. Shame on you, propmaster.

We made these one time when we were kids (honestly it takes about 15 years to recover from one of these) so I think I made a few errors in preparation I’d suggest you correct if you make the BBD.

Step One:

Get hot dogs and wrap them in bacon. (Note: other people wrap their bacon on at the end, which may provide a nicer texture to the cooked bacon. Since both the dog and bacon are fully cooked, we went for bacon on the inside. That said, while eating it the bacon didn’t have as crispy a texture as one might want, so you could stand to fry your bacon first to get a little more crispiness if you wanted to keep it on the inside. Oh, and this is a Hebrew National dog and turkey bacon.)

Step Two:

Use enough ground beef for one burger per sandwich (probably 1/4-1/2 pound). Season meat to your liking for a regular old fashioned hamburger. We used 95/5 meat, which is really lean and cooks up nice. Plus, this is artery clogging enough.

Step Three:

Form seasoned beef around the bacon and hot dog (again, one might want to surround the dog with meat and then wrap in bacon. Your choice. For me, I haven’t eaten any bacon (even turkey) in at least five years, so it was an out of sight, out of mind situation.

Step Four:

Add fire. I like to keep a tiny bit of the hot dog exposed to allow some heat to get inside and get to the dog and bacon. Rather than flip these suckers, you kind of roll them until browned on all sides.

Step Five:

Add cheese. You may want to add the cheese before the cooking process to help gooify the meal. If so, you can add the cheese around the dog and/or bacon and then cover with ground beef. That way, the cheese will permeate the beef throughout the cooking process. For this, we decided to make it more of a traditional burger style. (Note: There are many ways to make this, so you may want to swap the bacon

and cheese -- cheese inside bacon outside -- which might soften your cheese even more and will surely crisp your bacon. We may have made a rookie mistake on that one.)

Also, the bun is really important here. We got Wawa Short Hoagie buns which fit the sandwich perfectly. This will not fit in a traditional hot dog or hamburger bun. Also, while we’ve had the long-standing ketchup or mustard debate on dogs, because the burger is on the outside, we suggest ketchup. Oh, and your favorite bottle of beer, if

for nothing else to make sure your arteries don’t totally clog.

Step Six:

Enjoy. And happy Fourth of July everyone. New shows back next week.

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