One day while trolling through social media a post came up of Finnish foods I needed to try. I was curious as I figured it would be some of the things I already knew of like Karjalan Piirakka or Leipäjuusto. Those things were listed but what else I found was Nakkikastike or Hot Dog Sauce! Intrigued, I started Googling recipes for it. Most of them were in Finnish. So with the help of my wonderful friend in Finland and Google Translate I translated a recipe that I thought looked the best.
While I have never had Nakkikastike in Finland, I had nothing to base the final results from. I think it came out pretty good. The kids even liked it! It doesn’t really use hot dogs; well I guess you could, but more of a sausage. I just used a smoked sausage. Serve this with boiled or mashed potatoes. I even ate it over rice the next day for lunch and it was good!
Another thing the Finns do is use bouillon. A few of the recipes I have translated call for bouillon and water. While you can certainly use that, I just substituted beef stock for the amount of water it called for and omitted the bouillon. I used 800 ml of broth instead of 8 dl (800 ml) of water and bouillon.
The last thing is to add the thickener. The recipe calls for 1 dl of cream (or milk) to 1dl of flour. This made a thick paste and as you can imagine when I added it to the sauce it was lumpy. But when you let it simmer for 20 minutes the lumps cook out (I whisked it often) and it thickens up nicely.
So give it a try…it’s really good.
Nakkikastike (Hot Dog Sauce)
Ingredients
- 580 g Sausage (I used more)
- 1 Onion
- 1 tbsp Oil
- 8 dl Water
- 1 tbsp Bouillon*
- 1 3/4 dl Ketchup approx. 3/4 cup
- 3 tbsp Yellow Mustard
- 1/2 tsp Ground Pepper
- 5 Whole Peppercorns I omitted this
- 3 tsp Paprika
- 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 dl Cream ( or Milk)
- 1 dl Flour a heaping 1/3 C should work as an equivalent
Instructions
-
Dice onion and cut sausage.
Add oil to large skillet and cook the onion and sausage until the onion is soft and the sausage has some color
Pour in water*, bouillon*, ketchup, mustard, and spices. Mix well.
In a glass mix the cold cream (or milk) and flour. Mix until all lumps are gone. Stir into sauce. Boil at low heat, stirring often, for 20 minutes.
Serve with boiled or mashed potatoes.
*Instead of using water and bouillon I substituted 800 ml (8 dl) of beef broth.
Note: A Deciliter (dl) is the equivalent of 100 ml. Most liquid measuring cups have milliliters markings on them that’s why I didn’t convert them for you.
