Few days later another football game came on TV and my mind flashed back to that great tasting hotdog. I hadn't eaten the whole pack yet, so I headed back to the kitchen to duplicate that great hotdog. It shouldn't have been a problem, I still had the same premium hotdogs and buns I used to make that hotdog I enjoyed with such lust just a few days before... Wrong! The resulting hotdog was terrible by comparison. I didn't get it, it was the same hotdogs, the same buns and only a few days had passed, why was this hotdog so bad? After careful analysis I realized it was the BUN! It had become stiff and dry.

Then I remembered all of the times I heard other guys say "The best hotdogs are at the ballpark" or "Street cart vendor hotdogs taste much better than the hotdogs made at home?" I started wondering, what's the difference? Could it be the bun? So I did a little research and found that most commercially prepared hotdogs use buns that are kept in bun warmers or freshened by bun steamer (depending on how long the buns need to be waiting on deck for a customer). Most people make their hotdogs at home with cold buns they pull directly out of the bag. That’s when it hit me, I'm already boiling the hotdog why can't I steam the bun at the same time? By the way, that’s exactly how hotdog street carts work, in one compartment the hotdogs are heated in hot water while the warm water vapors keeps the buns soft and fresh in a connecting compartment.

The first thing I tried was putting a flat cheese grater on top of my pot and placing my buns on top. It didn't quite work right, since the steam was just rising up only the bottom of the bun got steamed and the hot dry air raising up along the side of the pot dried out the ends of the bun. The results were just fair.

What I needed to do is get the bun down inside the pot so I could put the lid back on forcing the steam to circulate, just like in moms bun steamer. My first idea was a little platform that hung from the rim of the pot about halfway down on adjustable hooks, this would allow it to work with different size pots. The problem was I wouldn't be able to get my hotdogs out from below without removing the hot steaming platform.

That’s when I had my "A ah moment", it came to me in a "flash of genius" (sorry inventor's jargon). If I added a cross shaped opening long enough for hotdogs to drop through and wide enough for tongs to open up, grasp and retrieve the hotdogs from below the steaming platform, I might have something. So I built a crude prototype and tried it out. I had no problem retrieving the hotdogs from below and the resulting buns were fantastic, soft and warm just like they use to come out of moms old bun steamer.

Looks like we have a winner!