Pigs-in-a-Blanket

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Pigs-in-a-Blanket are a very easy appetizer. For small kids, they can be a whole meal. Most people hate to admit they still like them.

The basic concept is pork wrapped in something. Some people's mums, particularly in Western Pennsylvania, called cabbage rolls stuffed with rice and ground pork "pigs in a blanket." Some people call breakfast sausages, cooked on their own, and then wrapped in cooked pancakes a pig in a blanket. Occasionally, a street vendor has been spotted selling something they call a "pig in a blanket", which turns out to be a hot dog wrapped in a flour tortilla. In New York City, it's wieners in a crust.

In most people's minds, though, it's small sausages wrapped up in pastry. The sausages used are small breakfast or cocktail-sized sausages. Some versions use hot-dog wieners.

The truly energetic make a small amount of yeast-risen dough, like a plain bread dough, that they let rise once, then punch it down and roll it out to make the "blankets" from. Others make up a mix such as Bisquick, or make baking powder biscuit dough. You can also use pie crust dough. Mixing up your own dough allows you to add some grated cheese to it.

Perhaps most people, though, take the shortcut of using Pillsbury's Refrigerated Crescent Roll dough as the dough. In fact, many people wouldn't think Pigs-in-a-Blanket were authentic if they didn't.

However you arrive at your dough, you then roll out thinly (the Pillsbury's is already rolled out for you), then cut it into rectangles, about 5 inches (12 1/2 cm) by 2 1/2 inches (6 cm.) If you are going to use cheese, it seems to work best with hot dog wieners. You cut cheese slices into about 5 strips per slice, make a slit about 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) deep the length of the wiener, and insert a cheese slice into that slit. Other people like to be more generous with the cheese, and wrap an entire slice of processed cheese around the wiener. Processed cheese slices really do work best with this. Then, put the wiener or sausage on a rectangle of dough and wrap the dough around it.

You can seal the sausage in the dough completely, so that none of the meat shows, or have the two ends of the sausage or wiener peeking out. It is best to consider a complete seal if there is a lot of cheese involved that might leak out and burn.

Place them on a cookie sheet with the edges of dough facing down, so that you don't have to pin it in place. They are cooked for about 15 minutes at 400 F / 200 C or until they brown and puff a bit. It is generally best to let them rest for a few minutes before serving, rather than serving them the second they come out of the oven, so that people don't burn themselves on the meat within.

For children, they are served with ketchup and mustard (and a side salad, if you can get them to eat it.)

A step up on fanciness in some people's books, making them for adults, is using all beef wieners, and mixing a little green relish into the ketchup, and a little honey into the mustard, and using the Pillsbury's Cornbread dough (available only in America.)

You can make them with gourmet sausages. Cook the sausages on their own first, either in the toaster oven or on the grill outside, then cut them into 4 or 5 pieces, then wrap them up in the dough.

You can also cut wieners up into bite-sized pieces. You should get about 4 to 5 out of each wiener. Cut on the diagonal to add more visual interest. For the dough for these, roll out your crescent triangles a little thinner, then cut into 3, and that should be the right amount of dough for each bite-sized piece.

Pigs-in-a-Blanket are not the same as cocktail wieners. Those are small wieners, served with no dough on them.


History
The oldest definition of Pigs-in-a-Blanket, dating back to the 1800s, was oysters, seasoned with salt and pepper, rolled in a slice of bacon, pinned together with a toothpick, and grilled, broiled or fried until the bacon is cooked, then served hot on toast. This is the recipe given in 1882 by Maria Parola, co-founder of the Boston Cooking School, in her cookbook, "Miss Parola's New Cookbook." Mary J. Lincoln, the other co-founder of the Boston Cooking School, gave the same recipe in her "Boston Cook Book." She also gave the French name of "Huîtres au Lit", meaning "oysters in bed." The odd thing about this was that the pig (e.g. the bacon) acted as the blanket, rather than being in a blanket. And, it makes them the exact same as "Angels on Horseback."

They became popular in North America in the 1950s, as meat wrapped in dough.

For a short time in the 1970s, Pillsbury sold them canned, ready to cooked in the chiller section. They were wiener pieces in dough, ready to bake. They weren't a success, though: however, easy they were to make, it may for that for housewives skipping that 2 minute assembly was just a step-too-far for their esteem.

Language Notes
For the plural, most people probably want to write "pigs in a blanket", realising that "in a blanket" is just the descriptor, but then, technically, that implies two or more sausages or wieners in a blanket, which isn't the meaning meant at all. If the word is the entire phrase, "pig in a blanket", then the plural is that with an "-s" on the end, "pig in a blankets." But, "a blankets" sounds weird, even to the sloppiest English speaker. What is common is "pigs in blankets". That's the plural Nigella Lawson plumps for.

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