Did you know you can use your slow cooker to make hot dogs?

With a pack of sausages to use up, I made hot dogs in the slow cooker. These slow cooker hot dogs and onions were cooked quite quickly and enjoyed straight away!

I’ve cooked slow cooker hot dogs before, but with different sausages, today I was cooking a pack of Aldi Butcher’s Select Cumberland Sausages, there are eight sausages. I’d not got round to eating them and they needed to be cooked/used up, but I didn’t have time to stand and watch over them… so I popped them into the slow cooker, along with a couple of onions that were the last of the bag and needed using up.

Best Way to Cook Sausages for Hot Dogs

I’ll accept that a slow cooker is not the best way to cook sausages for hot dogs – I’d prefer to fry them, or oven bake sausages, but I didn’t have the time and these needed using up without me having to stand over them and wait.

I’m not saying this is “THE way” to cook sausages for hot dogs, but it’s an option at times, for some people… so, why not 🙂

Ingredients:

• 1 pack of 8 sausages
• 2 small onions, chopped

How to Make Slow Cooker Hot Dogs & Onions

1. Line up the sausages on the outside of the slow cooker; this one is a 3.5 litre slow cooker.
2. Place the chopped onions in the bottom of the bowl.

3. Place the lid on the slow cooker and turn the slow cooker to HIGH for 15 minutes, just to get it started.
4. Turn the slow cooker down to LOW for 1½ hours.
5. After 1½ hours see how the sausages are cooking; judge if the sausages look like they’re ready to be turned round*. I just knocked the sausages down, rolled them in the fat, then put them back up vertically.
6. Once the sausages have been turned round and re-positioned vertically, leave the slow cooker on LOW for a further 1-1½ hours until the sausages are cooked.
7. Remove the sausages and onions from the slow cooker and serve.

*I made a mistake today and got distracted, so didn’t turn the sausages round in time, so they are a little overdone 🙂 Every sausage, every slow cooker, will take a longer/shorter time, so it’s important you don’t forget you were cooking, like I did 🙂

How Long Does it Take to Cook Hotdogs in a Slow Cooker?

3 hours is how long it’s taken to cook a packet of 8 sausages in a 3.5 litre slow cooker; times will vary a little. If I cook these sausages like this again I’ll be cooking them for about 2.75 hours.

Refrigerate or Freeze Leftover Sausages

I only used three of the sausages and all the onion, which I served in a part-baked baguette.

The remaining five leftover sausages I wrapped up and put in the fridge; the sausages will keep for 2-3 days in the fridge, ready to be eaten as sausage sandwiches, or added to another dish.

If I’ve not eaten the sausages within two days I might put them in the freezer; I try to avoid freezing food else it just clutters up the small freezer with a selection of random bits and bobs; I prefer to try to eat food before it needs to be frozen.