Ashley Zoch

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Weenie Roast

I read on the internet that you can cook a hotdog in a milk carton. Darren and I decided to try it out...

The ingredients : hotdog, bun, milk carton (empty), aluminium foil, matches & beer. The beer is for drinking.

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Darren holding the 'topedo' - uncooked hotdog in a bun wrapped foil.

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The torpedo is placed in the milk carton and Darren lights the top.

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Away she goes. Darren has his 'playing with matches' cheeky grin on.

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About 10 minutes (and a few re-lights) later we're almost done.

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The finished article. Suprisingly edible...

In our search for perfection, we decided to try a few refinements. Although the first dog was edible, it was still a little cool at the bottom. We had trouble keeping the carton alight as there wasn't much air between the sides and the foil. The foil also stuck to the sides (due to the wax melting?).

Lessons Learnt :
1. There needs to be more space inside to allow the air to circulate.
2. Contact between the foil and the carton should be minimised to prevent 'sticking'.
3. The burn needs to be reasonably fast and even to ensure the whole dog is hot.

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Darren rolling the second dog into a nice compact foil cigar.

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Enjoying a mid-experiment Double Sars.

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Matchsticks were stuck into the bun to keep the foil away from the carton. The match heads also gave the fire a little kick mid-way.

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This carton took a while to get going, but burnt through quite quickly.

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The finished product. Although everything went to plan, this one came out half cooked. The carton burnt too quickly and the foil wasn't close enough to the heat.

Lessons Learnt :
1. There is an optimal distance between foil and carton to ensure the correct heat. We didn't find it.
2. Controlling the burn rate of a milk carton is hard.

Conclusion : With a little practice, you could cook a pretty good hotdog in a milk carton.