I came across a foodie video about corn dogs yesterday. First I'd ever heard of them, but apparently they're a 'thing' in the US, Korea and elsewhere. Who knew?

Anyway, it was the method used to form chilli corn dogs illustrated on the Chefclub TV website that caught my attention as I thought it looked ideal for preparing foolproof seekh kebabs that wouldn't fall apart. There is a video describing the recipe and method, but you'll have to sign up to the site to see it all.

Essentially, the method of forming the 'dogs', or kebabs as I'll now call them, is to use a home-made sausage machine:

1. Prepare the mincemeat mixture as usual.
2. Cut a plastic water bottle in half.
3. Stuff the top half of the water bottle with the mincemeat.
4. Place the cut end of the bottle over a suitably sized plunger (a glass jar was used in the video).
5. Push the bottle down onto the plunger until the meat reaches the bottle mouth.
6. Insert a skewer down into the mincemeat.
7. Push the bottle down onto the plunger to force the meat out.
8. Snip off the kebab once the skewer is clear of the bottle top.
9. Refill the bottle as required and repeat.

I grabbed a couple of screenshots just to illustrate the method.





I'm going to give it a bash myself next time I do kebabs.

Clever !  Now how long before a so-called "celebrity chef" starts allowing his name to be used on a cheap Chinese mass-produced version which will then sell for around

Makes me think along the lines of bottle length piece of plastic waste pipe, screw on end cap fitting to make cleaning easy with a reducer to 28mm pipe to squeeze it out, like a mastic gun setup, then write Gordon Ramsay on it.

Well, if it's got the initials "GR" on it, it'll be a snip at

I described this idea to my wife, and she said "Why not use a piping bag

Looks good! Just further to the original post, I came across this on Amazon for

And no "celebrity chef"  branding, so a sensible price

I wonder how they do it in Lucknow or Istanbul. 

Having recently attempted, succeeded and then discarded the idea of home sausage stuffing, I'd say the hand forming of kebabs for home consumption is still a pretty good idea.  There is a lot of mucking about and cleaning up of any reusable equipment, even for 1 or 2 dozen kebabs.  At least the original drink bottle is disposable.

I doubt I'll be going down this path any time soon,