Show-You Wieners

Ok. How about a recipe today? I was reminded of this recipe a few days ago when someone asked me if there was any combination of ingredients that we might consider strange that actually tastes pretty good. These are called Show-You Wieners and the recipe has been in my family since before I was born. My grandparents on my mother's side were from Japan but my grandfather studied business in New York and then started his own soy sauce factory in the little town of Columbia City, Indiana. This was back in the 1920's so no one had ever heard of soy sauce and he was basically greeted with "What is this black stuff?" In order to get his product accepted he invented different recipes and held dinners so that people would become accustomed to this new taste and one of the recipes is this one. Shoyu in Japanese means soy sauce so the naming is a play on words. As I child my brother and I loved to eat this and my children have grown up loving it too. Not long ago, Takumi e-mailed me from the States asking me for the recipe.

Show-You Wieners

• 1 or 2 packages of wieners or hot dogs or whatever
• Slice wieners into bite size pieces
• Put into sauce pan
  
• Add water (1 cup?)
• Add soysauce (1/2 cup?)
• Add sugar (4-8 tablespoons?)
• Add sweet rice wine, Mirin (1/4 cup?)
• Simmer until quite boiled down
• Serve over white rice

You can see the amounts are pretty vague. Flavor to taste but too much soy sauce can make them too salty so go easy on the soy sauce. In last night's case I added green onions just because someone gave me a huge bundle and they were taking up space in my kitchen. You can also skip the rice wine since I doubt very much my grandfather had access to that in Indiana nearly 90 years ago. Don't tell my Japanese friends but my brother and I (and my kids) like to put butter on our rice and pour the hot, sweet sauce and wieners over it!