Turn Leftover Hot Dogs Into A Creative Pasta Salad Inspired By Classic Chicago Flavors

There's a lot to love about Chicago-style hot dogs, particularly all of their delicious toppings — these usually include onion, tomato, relish, mustard, celery salt, a pickle spear, and sport peppers. If you're a fan of this type of dog, then you should know about this fun, unique way to enjoy all of its flavors in a different way: Make it into a pasta salad.

This is the perfect way to use up any extra hot dog fixings, like if you bought too much for a barbecue and don't want to eat traditional hot dogs two days in a row. Or maybe you're just not really a fan of hot dog buns and want to enjoy all of the tasty Chicago-style toppings with a different carb, like pasta. As a bonus, the pasta salad version of a Chicago dog is much less messy to eat.

One of the best parts of this salad is getting to use a mustard-based dressing, which harkens back to mustard being the go-to condiment of Chicago-style dogs. The dressing can be as simple as combining mustard with vinegar, sugar, and vegetable oil. Or, if you're looking for something a bit more involved, try using our mustard dressing recipe, which uses two types of the spread and includes extras like garlic and shallots. Either way, this dressing will really tie the salad together and ensure that it closely resembles a "real" Chicago dog.

While the mustard dressing is essential, it's just the start of this dish. First, you must decide on a type of hot dog. Traditionally, Chicago dogs use all-beef franks, but feel free to switch it up and use chicken or turkey instead. You can even use veggie dogs to make it vegetarian.

From there, all you have to do is choose the toppings you'd like to include. If you want, you can include all of the traditional fixings and trust that it will be one tasty Chicago hot dog pasta salad — just dice up all of the ingredients before adding them. On the other hand, feel free to be choosy. Maybe you don't want pickles in the salad, or you omit the peppers because you're not in the mood for something spicy.

You can also add extra ingredients that you may find in other pasta salads. For example, a classic Chicago dog doesn't include any cheese, but you could add mozzarella or Parmesan to your salad to boost the flavor. Once you've picked out all of your additions, just combine them with your favorite kind of pasta and mix in that delicious mustard-based dressing.