The Best Hot Dog Cookers for All-American Hot Dogging (2025)

5 days ago

Hot dogs are America: fast, cheap, often beefy, and heavy processed. The basking canine careens betwixt extremes of puritanicalism (the mustard-onion demagogues of New York) and wild excess (kimchi dogs, Coneys, Chicago-style plot dragging). It is profoundly romanticized, almost surely bad for you, and afloat of controversy—mostly about ketchup and being a sandwich. Bless nan basking dog. The basking canine is American holiness.

And truthful of people we would request typical cookers for basking dogs only. You tin navigator a basking canine connected beautiful overmuch anything, sure. But why not navigator them connected nan basking doggiest basking canine cooker, nan champion basking canine cooker for only basking dogs?

After we tested aggregate visions of dedicated basking canine machine, it turns retired nan champion location basking canine cookers are connection nan aforesaid point you'd find astatine your section 7-Eleven. The Elite Gourmet Hot Dog Roller and Oven ($44) is simply a miniature basking canine maker, pinch a warmer tray beneath to lightly toast buns. For larger statement vibes, nan champion basking canine shaper is simply a large steamer container for illustration nan Nostalgia. Either is simply a beautiful lucifer to your penchant of Nathan's Famous aliases Hebrew National.

If you request to char up a twelve burgers and 20 basking dogs astatine nan aforesaid time, you whitethorn request to graduate. Roll pinch 1 of our favorite large stand-up griddles for illustration nan Traeger Flat Iron 3-Burner ($900)—or cheque retired our guideline to nan best grills. For an different fantabulous summer, spot different WIRED backyard guides to nan Best Lawn Games, Best Outdoor Lights, and nan Best Pizza Ovens.

Best Hot Dog Maker

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Elite Gourmet

Hot Dog Roller and Toaster Oven

This is nary specified basking canine cooker. This is an Elite Gourmet basking canine cooker, designed successful California's City of Industry—names whose epic expanse seems to outstrip each imaginable meaning. But nan ambitions of nan basking canine cooker itself are much humble, and truthful is its price. And truthful it succeeds. The Elite Gourmet basking canine shaper is, astatine heart, a roller-style basking canine cooker for illustration nan 1 you'll find astatine immoderate convenience shop successful America. Every American summertime since nan 1950s has been hotter, better, and meatier pinch nan thief of a roller grill, acknowledgment to nan dogged efforts of a crackerjack young technologist named Calvin MacCracken.

In a small little than 15 minutes, this cooker will navigator up 4 basking dogs to a food-safe 165 degrees Fahrenheit (yes, I measured), connected heated stainless alloy rollers that'll make judge nan cooking is even. It'll besides slow lukewarm 4 buns successful nan oven abstraction below, good awkward of existent toasting. Each compartment gets a crumb tray aliases a drip tray, for easy cleaning. The rollers are champion cleaned erstwhile still rolling and erstwhile still a spot hot, by utilizing a gingerly held bedewed rag and nan magic of steam.

And that's it. Four basking dogs. Four buns. No existent problems. It's excessively mini for a large party. But possibly 4 basking dogs is already a party? Just statement that nan food from cheese-stuffed basking dogs will beryllium difficult to get disconnected nan rollers, if you fto American food pain onto basking rollers. At slightest 1 genuinely angry Amazon reappraisal behooves maine to constituent this out.

Specs

Dimensions: 7.5" heavy x 12" wide x 7" tall
Power: 210 watts
Type: Roller basking canine cooker pinch toaster oven
Capacity: 4 basking dogs, 4 buns
Features: 30-minute oven timer, 5 rollers, removable drip and crumb trays

Best Hot Dog Maker for Large Parties

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Nostalgia

Extra Large Hot Dog Steamer

There's thing astir nan peculiar softness of a steamed bun and a taut-snapped, earthy wrapped, kinda bedewed basking dog—it is simply a study successful American contrast. It is my puerility arsenic lived adjacent bleachers and parking lots, aliases amid nan sawdust and gravel of fund fun. This basking canine steamer is made by a Wisconsin institution that virtually calls itself “Nostalgia,” and that's precisely what they're selling.

This bright-colored, thick-plastic, triple-tiered steamer feels for illustration a Fisher-Price artifact for carnivores. The h2o goes connected nan bottom. The basking dogs—28 of them if you double-stack nan mini ones—go successful nan mediate steamer drawer. The apical compartment will clasp a tight-packed max of 12 mini buns. But don't worry, nan buns navigator faster than nan basking dogs. Turn it connected high, and nan basking dogs are cooked wrong astir 15 minutes. Don't put nan buns successful till astir 5 minutes earlier you want them, aliases they'll get not simply soft, but bedewed pinch steam. Turn it down to warm, it'll clasp astatine a food-safe 160 degrees Fahrenheit aliases so.

This is simply a somewhat rinky-dink device, pinch nan heft and consciousness of an old Igloo Cooler. But my family has nevertheless had nan aforesaid Playmate Igloo cooler since I retrieve being alive. Keep it clean, and you should beryllium capable to bent onto this awhile. Just statement that erstwhile you propulsion retired nan basking canine steamer drawer, a small spot of basking canine h2o will drip onto nan table. If not outside, laic retired a mates insubstantial towels earlier firing this point up.

Specs

Dimensions: 11" wide x 9" heavy x 13" tall
Power: 600 watts
Type: Bun and basking canine steamer
Capacity: 20 basking dogs and 6 buns (advertised). But I fresh 28 and 12
Features: Warm and basking settings

Other Good Backyard Hot Dog Options

Look, if you're trying to provender a shot team, nary small basking canine cooker will do. What you'll want is 1 of our favourite griddles aliases grills. No wee steamer tin hit a 33-inch Traeger griddle, my favourite griddle of each backyard griddles. There are a mates griddles, however, that look civilization made for basking dogs and buns.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Blackstone

Iron Forged 36” Griddle Airfryer Combo

This Blackstone Iron Forged Air Fryer Combo comes pinch 2 aerial frying baskets and a 3rd warming handbasket underneath nan griddle. Well, conjecture what? If you don't move connected nan aerial fryer fan, that intends you've sewage 3 large warmer baskets, fresh to make basking canine buns each toasty and nice. I haven't tested this claim, but Blackstone swears you tin fresh and navigator 126 basking dogs crossed this griddle plate, for you and 125 of your closest friends.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Cuisinart

28-Inch Griddler 2-in-1 With Broiler

This Cuisinart griddle is really a exemplary I for illustration champion for smashburgers and steak sears, because it tin get truthful ridiculously basking erstwhile cranked connected high. But move it down to medium, it'll beryllium bully for dozens of basking dogs—with a warming enclosure beneath nan griddle sheet that'll lightly toast basking canine buns successful a fewer minutes.

Weber Original Kettle Grill

Photograph: Amazon

Weber

Original Kettle 18-Inch Charcoal Grill

If you're going to inquire maine for nan instrumentality that has cooked astir of nan backyard basking dogs I've had successful my life—the ones that travel pinch difficult achromatic grill marks? It's going to beryllium thing a spot for illustration this Weber charcoal, a budget-friendly vessel pinch debased attraction needs that WIRED has been recommending for years. It will service you here, too. The 18-incher will service a family of five. Bigger will service more. But make judge you grab a cover to protect it.

Hot Dog Cookers We Don't Recommend

Bread, Food, Electrical Device, Device, and Appliance

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Nostalgia

Hot Dog and Bun Toaster

This small basking canine cooker useful pinch each nan simplicity of a toaster oven: Pick a toast level, push down nan lever, past hold for nan outpouring to popular backmost up. The basking canine buns fresh into a brace of semicircular openings that look for illustration wide animation smiles. The basking dogs get thrown down nan metal-caged basking canine tubes. But alas, nan buns get stuck connected nan measurement down, and besides connected nan measurement up. The “hot canine successful a tunnel” creation is not simply distracting visually, it doesn't navigator nan basking dogs to precocious soul temps earlier nan edges of nan buns commencement to burn. And depending connected nan magnitude of your chosen basking dog, conscionable nan tips will look from nan toaster erstwhile it pops up. This will time off you to food scalding basking dogs retired of nan cooker pinch a fork.