- [Andrew] Like how hot is fire?
Are you guys asking me how hot fire is?
- [Lindsay] Oh here they come!
Yummmmmmmm.
A lot of bit of cheese.
(ding)
(upbeat jazz music)
We are in San Francisco at 4505 Burgers & BBQ.
We are about to go make the Frankaroni.
It's one of the craziest food mash-ups in the entire city.
Hot dogs meets mac and cheese
and then they're deep fried together.
People are obsessed with it, let's go pig out!
(upbeat music)
- We've got all of our mise en place set up already.
- You're...what'd you just say?
- Mise en place.
- Okay. (laughs)
So all of our ingredients...
- Super simple recipe.
The Frankaroni is our deep fried mac and cheese
with Tillamook sharp cheddar, our bacon studed hot dogs.
- I do a great impression of a hot dog.
- Mac and cheese and hot dogs just don't mix.
- You have a BBQ restaurant
you gotta have macaroni and cheese.
- Duh.
[Lindsay Voiceover] Let's rewind for a second.
(video rewinding)
Chances are, this was your first mac and cheese experience.
The famous Kraft Mac with it's fluorescent orange powder
was released in 1937 and sold for $.19.
The timing was perfect.
The country was going through a depression
and one rationing coupon scored you two boxes of this stuff.
It's no wonder the company sold
eight million boxes that first year.
Today, we're all still as obsessed with mac and cheese.
Seven million blue boxes are sold every week, globally.
You can eat at restaurants that serve only mac and cheese.
You can eat it like a mozzarella stick breaded in Cheetos,
as a McDonald's sandwich, or on pizza,
as burger buns and apparently deep fried with hot dogs.
Am I going to chop up these babies or what?
- [Andrew] That's the first step,
we gotta chop up those hot dogs.
- How fine? What am I doing?
- [Andrew] You want, like quarters...
maybe I should show you one.
- [Lindsay] Sure.
- [Andrew] We want these pretty small cuz we're gonna do
individual portions of macaroni here.
- [Lindsay] Okay.
- [Andrew] So quarter them up just like that.
- [Lindsay] Okay.
- [Andrew] You can see the chunks of bacon in there.
- Bacon fat, bacon fat.
- [Andrew] We need a little bit of cheese in here too.
- A lot of bit of cheese.
- That's it! Cheese!
- Yummmmmm.
- [Andrew] Definitely get your fingers right underneath
where you're going to cut it.
- [Lindsay] I know...
- [Andrew] That's where they should be.
We do about 200 pounds a week.
- [Lindsay] 200 pounds of cheese a week?
- Now we gotta make our macaroni and cheese.
So we're gonna get our burner going.
- Okay.
- [Andrew] We want to pour in some bechamel.
- [Lindsay] The creamy goodness.
- [Andrew] We're gonna add in some cheese.
- [Lindsay] So how many Frankaronis
are you guys selling a day?
- About 150.
- That's pretty good, that's about 150 more than I sell.
This is looking amaze.
- [Andrew] This is looking like a professional chef knows
how to make bechamel and macaroni and cheese.
- More cheese?
- Whoever said less cheese?
Let's put about half that macaroni in here.
Perfect.
- [Lindsay] Were you a Kraft kid growing up?
- [Andrew] I was a Velveeta kid.
- Whoa, curve ball.
Oh here they come!
Look at those hot dogs.
What's the next step?
- We gotta get them ready for the fryer.
- [Lindsay] And so, how do we do that?
- Top secret.
- Top secret?
(magical chimes)
Whoa, look at that!
The mac and cheese has been transformed into
breaded perfect squares now they're gonna get fried
if you can imagine anything even better
happening to this cheesy goodness.
(techno music)
We have earned this.
The Frankaroni in full fried glory.
Going in...would you look inside of this?
Oh my God, it's falling all over my hand.
I feel like I wanted to not like but I just love...
this is obviously what heaven tastes like.
I may have one more bite. (laughs)
I'm out.
(upbeat music)
Where are we going next?