Get Your Recipe for Gluten-Free Amusement Park Corn Dogs!

Cinde Little writes the Everyday Gluten Free Gourmet food blog and teaches cooking classes in Calgary, Alberta where she lives with her husband. Her son is currently attending the University of Victoria. Cinde became interested in gluten free cooking in 2009 after a friend was diagnosed with celiac disease. As a passionate home cook she encourages everyone to just get in the kitchen and cook. Food restrictions are real and learning to accommodate them is an important skill.

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Part of the fun of amusement parks is eating food on a stick. For people on a gluten-free diet, many of these popular foods are off limits. What if you could make them at home? Everyday Gluten Free Gourmet shows us how!

Ingredients

1 cup gluten-free cornmeal
1 cup gluten-free flour mix
3 TBSP sugar
4 TSP baking powder
1/4 TSP salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or milk
1 egg
12-16 gluten-free pork weiners
12-16 wooden skewers or popsicle sticks
condiments – mustard, ketchup etc

Instructions

Heat oil in a deep fryer or wok to 350°F.
Measure milk in a 2-cup measuring cup then add egg. Mix to combine.
In a large bowl whisk cornmeal, gluten free flour mix, sugar, baking powder and salt.
Add wet ingredients to the dry and stir until combined. The dough will be quite stiff. Add a tablespoon of oil or more milk if it is too stiff to work with.
Insert a wooden skewer into each wiener stopping about half way up the wiener.
Using your hands wrap the dough around the wiener to completely cover it. Repeat until all the wieners are covered.
Gently drop the corn dogs into the oil 3 at a time. Cook for 3 minutes until golden brown. Repeat until they are all cooked.
If the oil goes above 350°F turn the heat down and wait. The corn dogs will brown too quickly at a higher temperature and the dough will not be fully cooked.
Drain on paper towel and serve warm with mustard and ketchup.

The Weiner for Corn Dogs

Gluten free wieners are readily available so choose the ones you like. During my recipe testing it was decided that European wieners had too much snap and all-beef wieners didn’t have the right taste. The best quality pork wieners we could find were our favourite.

The Cornmeal Batter for Corn Dogs

I tried dipping the wieners in a thin batter but there wasn’t enough of a coating for this corn dog. In the end I preferred this recipe with more of a dough than a batter. I wrapped it around the wiener and the result was a crunchy corn crust, the kind I think you might find at an amusement park.

Tips About Deep Frying at Home

When you live with a restricted diet life gives you plenty of food-related opportunities to feel left out. So don’t do that to yourself at home. Whether you want to make calamari or corn dogs you can do it. It doesn’t matter if you deep-fry every week or only a few times a year, you simply need a way to do it.
For me, that system is in my wok. I love Asian food and cook it often so I own a wok. I think you should too because you can cook a lot of healthy dishes in a wok, and when you want to use it as a deep fryer you can do that too.
It’s your kitchen so you decide. What kind of fried foods do you like and how often would you deep-fry at home? Then buy yourself a nice flat bottom wok or a dedicated deep fryer.

Deep Frying in a Wok

I deep fry without a deep fryer. Many years ago I created a set up using my wok and I still do it that way. A simple flat bottom wok is excellent for all sorts of Asian cooking but it is also perfect for deep-frying. In my house the wok lives in the cupboard above the fridge. I couldn’t live without it.
A wok gets wider as it goes up so requires less oil than a frying pan or large pot. My wok came with a long handled strainer but a slotted spoon also works to turn and remove food from the oil. A deep frying thermometer is inexpensive, easily clips onto the rim of the wok and is a helpful little tool for occasional use.
After you enjoyed the calamari the oil will have cooled enough to put it away. Set a 4-cup pyrex measuring cup in your sink making it easier to pour the oil into it. Set a strainer over the measuring cup to strain out the food bits. At this point leave the oil in the cup until completely cooled before pouring it back into the jug it came in. With a marker label the container for DEEP FRYING and store it for another use.
Deep-frying isn’t a daunting task if you have a good system for storage. I use the same oil a few times over several months before I throw it away. Learn more about deep-frying here.

Whether you use a wok or a deep-fryer these are some of the recipes I occasionally make at home: