When you’re going deep into the creative abyss of controversial mocktail recipes, you need a great carbonation system to fuel your vision. The Drinkmate company sent me one of their OmniFizz devices and it was the perfect tool for my most recent creation – The Sparkling Chicago Dog Mocktail.

Most other carbonation systems will warn you to only carbonate water. Other liquids run the risk of back-flowing into the machine or completely exploding in your kitchen. The Drinkmate system uses a special lid that helps prevent those issues and allows you to carbonate pretty much whatever liquid you want. That’s terrific, because for this mocktail I needed to carbonate hot dog water and the OmniFizz worked like a charm.

Chicago-Style Hot Dogs are iconic, and they have several essential components. You need an all-beef hot dog, yellow mustard, diced onion, neon green sweet relish, a dill pickle spear, two tomato slices, celery salt, sport peppers, and a poppy seed bun. Locals will call this “running through the garden”, and it feels a bit like adding a salad to your dog. I tried to stay true to the spirit of the weiner, but I had to take a few creative liberties.

Here are the steps to make the Sparkling Chicago Dog Mocktail:

  1. Boil a bunch of hot dogs in a modest amount of water. You want the liquid to have a very concentrated hot dog flavor, so don’t drown the dogs.
  2. Pour some hot hot dog water into ice cube molds. I put diced raw onions in one and dill relish in another. Probably should have been neon green sweet relish, but I didn’t have any. Place in the freezer.
  3. Put the rest of the hot dog water (and dogs) in the refrigerator. You need to wait until the ice cubes are frozen, so probably come back to it the next day.
  4. Rub yellow mustard along the rim of a large glass. Roll the rim around in a mixture of poppy seeds and celery salt until you can barely see the mustard. This should be about 3 parts poppy seeds to 1 part celery salt. If you go any heavier on the celery salt you’ll be tasting/smelling it for hours.
  5. Place your ice cubes in the bottom of the glass.
  6. Pour your hot dog water into your carbonation container. Leave enough room for a splash of pickle brine. Carbonate with a couple good pulses from your carbonator. I used the OmniFizz from DrinkMate, but you can use something else at your own risk.
  7. Gently pour your carbonated hot dog water over the ice cubes. Leave enough room for some garnishes.
  8. Speaking of garnishes, I added a full hot dog, a skewer with cherry tomatoes and sport peppers, and then a whole dill pickle spear.
  9. Enjoy!

This was obviously non-alcoholic, but if you wanted to make it an adult beverage I would recommend a shot of Jeppson’s Malört. The drink comes very close to the experience of eating a Chicago dog, and it’s a refreshing departure from most of the overly sweet mocktails you’re going to run into at trendy nightclubs. It’s savory and briney, and it’s exactly the right drink to wind down on a summer day. If you’re interested in the Drinkmate OmniFizz carbonation device, you can find it on Amazon or on their website. I really enjoyed the syrups that they provided with the carbonator, but you can experiment with your own recipes just like me.