MoFo Day 8: Vegan Coneys

If you visit Detroit as an omnivore, one thing at the top of every suggested itinerary is to sample the coney island hot dogs (aka "coneys") at American and Lafayette Coney Islands. People have a Coke-vs-Pepsi-type allegiance to the places. I was vegan before going to either, so my preference is American simply because they have salad AND fries, while Lafayette only has fries.

I realize my vegan version is blasphemous to die-hard coney fans, but I think it's amazing. If you want to recreate them, I have just one piece of advice for you: use the cheapest ingredients you can find. Whole wheat bakery buns and Amy's Chili don't work. You need supermarket-brand buns and Hormel vegetarian chili:

 

Procuring those ingredients is the hardest part. The chili is sometimes hard to find, but I did recently see it at the Detroit Meijer. Once you have the ingredients, you just heat up some vegan hotdogs (I used Lightlife because that's what Meijer had) and the chili, spoon the chili on the assembled hot dogs, and add some chopped onion and mustard. White onion is preferable, but I only had red. I also like a ton of mustard on mine. And because in a coney island, these would be served a fried side, I threw in some Ruffles chips.

I've served these to omni's in the past and always had good reviews. Saturday night, I made them for my omni boyfriend (a very romantic dinner) and he cleaned his plate. He actually told me to blog that he liked them, so I'll interpret that as approval.