If You're All Out Of Buns, Here's The Hot Dog Taquito Hack You Need To Try

We've all been there: flush with hot dogs, but no hot dog buns. Thanks to the age-old quandary of hot dogs and buns being sold in different quantities, it's a frustratingly frequent problem — but do you have some tortillas around? It's not difficult to find recipes for tortilla-wrapped hot dogs, also known as "hot dog taquitos." There is one on the website for Mission Foods — makers of tortillas you can get just about anywhere — that calls for adding chili, cheese, and jalapeño before baking it in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes.

Other recipes call for reaching for the old-fashioned frying pan. One, in particular, calls for the rolled tortilla dog — with shredded cheese and sliced red onion — to be cooked for about 10 minutes in canola oil at high heat. With air fryers all the rage in kitchens nowadays, there are also recipes that show us how to make these taquito dogs in the air fryer for a tasty, crispy result. As it turns out, you can still enjoy a hot dog without a bun, so long as you have a tortilla.

It's worth pointing out that all of these recipes call for flour tortillas. This raises the question — would these recipes work just as well with corn tortillas? WebMD notes that corn tortillas are generally much healthier than flour, packing on average about half the calories, are made from whole grain, and are gluten-free. Corn tortillas also tend to be around 5 to 6 inches in diameter, making them the perfect length for your typical hot dog.

For those of us looking to be precise with our food categorizations, there is an even more pressing issue raised by the absence of corn tortillas as an option. Depending on who you ask, taquitos made with flour tortillas actually aren't considered taquitos at all — they are called flautas. This means that recipes calling for using flour tortillas are providing recipes for hot dog flautas rather than taquitos. 

Some say that flautas actually require corn tortillas, while others say that it's a taquito. Others are agnostic on the matter. In any event, most recipes work with corn tortillas, given that they bake and fry at around the same heat.

Tortillas aren't the only hot dog bun alternatives out there. One of the things that makes the humble frankfurter a beloved food is its versatility. It can be baked inside a pretzel roll or crescent roll or rolled up in a piece of naan bread. It can even be inserted into healthy vegetable bun substitutes, like zucchini and sweet potato. Whether you are more likely to have these around your kitchen than a traditional bun depends on the kind of shopper you are. 

There are also plenty of variations on what you can roll up with your hot dog in a tortilla (or naan, crescent roll, and so on). Anything you can imagine on a hot dog might not always work in a taquito. For instance, throwing all of the toppings found in a Chicago-style dog — including the pickle spear and sport peppers — will likely prove unwieldy. However, others like the bacon-wrapped Sonoran hot dog may transfer well to the taquito dog. Bacon, after all, does very well in the frying pan, oven, and air fryer.