This hotdog isn't getting near my buns! (Ye Olde Oak 8 Hotdogs)

Member Name: thehonesttruth

Product:	Ye Olde Oak 8 Hotdogs
Date:	20/10/07 (93 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap, fast, kids like them

Disadvantages: taste yuk, some unsavoury ingredients

The hot dog has been a favourite convenience food of mine for as long as I can remember. When I was a teenager, and my parents worked leaving me to fend for myself food wise in the evenings, a tin of hotdogs was a quick, easy, no fuss meal that I could do myself and that my friends wouldn't turn their noses up.

As I got older, I started to favour the frankfurters you can buy in the chiller section, and for many years stopped eating the tinned hotdogs in favour of these.

However, a recent decline in finances has led to me having to cut back and buy cheaper alternatives of my favourite products. So, I grabbed a can of these from my corner shop for 60p. The can has a photo of the hotdogs on it, as well as a small image of a tree, and Ye Olde Oak in old fashioned writing. The use by date for my can was Jan 2008, so these do have a pretty long shelf life.

So, a couple of days later, I was watching a movie when suddenly I heard a loud growling noise. After checking to see if perhaps there was a rabid dog hiding behind my sofa, I realized that in fact, the growling was my stomach, so, pausing the DVD, I trotted off to the kitchen in search of something quick and tasty. My eyes caught sight of the tinned hotdogs, and after a check in the bread bin to make sure I had finger rolls; I began preparing my favourite tasty childhood treat.

Cooking is simple. Open them (the tin has a handy ring pull,) bung them in a pan, in the brine they come with, and cook for five minutes until heated thoroughly all the way through.

The sausages are an orangey brown colour, about 10 cm long, and puckered at the ends .Cutting into one reveals a pink centre.
They really dont smell of much, except a vague smokey smell.

Now, maybe as with so many things, my childhood memories were better than the real thing (I thought the blobby song was a great childhood memory until I heard it again.) or maybe I'd been spoiling myself with the chiller section frankfurters, but these tasted nothing like I remembered.

I found these far too soft, the texture too smooth and yet somehow rubbery, and the taste not nearly meaty enough and somehow musty. Eating these, it's hard to detect a recognizable pork flavour. Overall, I found these bland and pretty flavourless, the metallic aftertaste also being rather nasty.

My daughter quite happily gobbled down her share, although she did make the comment that these were neither as tasty nor as large as the frankfurters we normally use. So it does seem that these would still be received well by children as a quick snack.

The tins ingredient list states that these contain 48% pork, and 12% "mechanically reclaimed chicken". Never having heard the term before, I decided to look it up, and what I heard didn't endear me to the product. Look away if you have a delicate stomach, the next paragraph isn't the most appetizing.

Mechanically reclaiming chicken is a process that begins after the main cuts of meat are removed from an animal, in this case, a chicken. The carcass of that animal is then fed into a machine that, basically, resembles a kind of washing machine, which, with the addition of water, is then spun about so vigorously that any remaining meat separates from the bone, and goes through a sieve like device, and comes out as a kind of pink paste. Other material, such as small bits of bone marrow. Cartilage, nerves, etc can also come off and through the sieve too, which is why they measure the calcium content before including it into foods.

Now, I like my chicken to BE chicken, not chicken and other stuff, so I have to say, this put me off the product even more than the taste, and I definitely won't be buying these again. While I have no doubt my daughter wouldn't object to eating these, I prefer to give her (and myself) food that is higher in taste and in quality, so, it's back to the chiller frankfurters for me.

With six in a can, this could share easily between 3 as a snack, maybe between 2 as a light meal, if added to finger rolls.

Good Points: Cheap, easy to cook, long shelf life, fast.
Bad Points: Bland and flavourless, nasty aftertaste, and "Mechanically Reclaimed" chicken.

Would I recommend these? Actually, I would recommend you AVOID these. They taste awful, and the processing aspect isn't too tasty either. There are people that say "You get what you pay for" and, when it comes to the sausages I stick in my buns, I have to agree

Summary: one to avoid