Janet Riley: Hi! I am Janet Riley. I am President of The National Hotdog and Sausage Council, and today I'm going to teach you how to make a fresh twist on a classic Chicago hotdog. This is called the Char-Dog Chicago Salad. You can either prepare your green salad ahead of time and take it with you to your tailgate and then add hotdog or if you cooking it in at home you can make the complete recipe like I'm going to today right in my kitchen.

For this recipe you'll need one pound of hotdogs and beef franks are preferred in Chicago. 2 cups of chilled icebergs sliced into strips, 8 ounces of chilled shredded cabbage or purchased slaw mix, 1/3 cup of chopped white onion, 2 tablespoons yellow mustard, 1 tablespoon cider vinegar, 3 tablespoons of canola oil, 1/2 teaspoon of poppy seeds, 1/2 teaspoon of celery salt, 3 tablespoons of diced kosher dill pickles, 1 cup thin tomato wedges, and 4 tablespoons of sweet pickle relish.

So let's place our hotdogs on the grill. It's good to know that hotdogs are actually a precooked meat product. So, really what you need to achieve is a steaming hot hotdog, and of course, you want to get those char marks to give hotdogs extra flavor. While our hotdogs are grilling let's go ahead and toss our salad. So we're going to need our iceberg lettuce, some cabbage, and chopped onions and let's toss those altogether.

Next, we're going to whisk together our dressing. So we're going to need some vinegar, some oil, some poppy seed just like we have on a Chicago hotdog bun, and of course the topping for a classic Chicago dog which is celery salt. Now we whisk together our dressing and then we set it aside and now we're going to remove our grilled hotdogs.

So now we have a nice plate of char grilled hotdogs and next I'm going to take these hotdogs and I'm going to cut them into bite size pieces and I'm going to add them to the salad. This is going to be great. You can add hotdogs to taste. So we'll mix those in and toss the lettuce, cabbage, and onion to with the hotdogs and now we're going to do final preparations for dressing.

This is an important point. We're going to add classic Chicago style yellow mustard and we're not going to add ketchup, because no one, no one puts ketchup on a hotdog after the age of 18. So we whisk this together we add it to the salad along with the chopped dill pickles and we toss.

Now before we serve we want to garnish it with some nice red tomatoes. They're a key ingredient in a Chicago dog and in a char grilled Chicago salad. Of course, we're going to add Chicago's famous green relish. This is going to make it not just tastes good, but look good. So there you go, a new twist on a Chicago classic. There is something for everyone at this tailgate.

One last reminder, you can make the salad ahead and bring it to you your tailgate and add the grilled hotdogs or if you're cooking at home you can make it all at one time like I just did. Your guests will sure to enjoy this classic.