The Texas Rangers’ New Pickle Corn Dog Is An Abomination

We are rapidly approaching Major League Baseball’s Opening Day 2018 and that means the final preparations are being made at ballparks around the country for the start of the interminably long baseball season.

Part of those preparations is introducing the media to the new food items that will be sold at the stadium, thus spreading the word to the fans by way of tweets and Instagram posts. Baseball stadium concession stands have evolved well beyond selling just hot dogs, nachos, peanuts and other classics. Those are still there, but the various concessions companies (of which there are three or four that dominate the MLB landscape) have taken it upon themselves to try and one up each other with strange and gluttonous food concoctions.

At this point, it’s become “how do we combine these foods into one item,” which leads to things like the Braves a couple years ago trying out the Burgerizza, which was literally a giant burger patty between two personal pepperoni pizzas as the bun.

The epidemic of ballpark food mashups has spread to almost every stadium, and on Monday we were introduced to the latest abomination courtesy of the Texas Rangers: The Dilly Dog.

What you are looking at right here is a pickle that has been hollowed out and stuffed with a hot dog, dipped in corn dog batter and fried. I get where the general idea comes from. Corn dogs = good. Fried pickles = good. Hot dogs with pickle relish = good (for some people). The problem here is about tenfold, but I’ll focus on a couple.

One, the pickle to hot dog ratio is waayyyyy off. There is far more pickle than hot dog, which means the flavor profile has strayed from “relish on a hot dog” into uncharted waters of pickle flavor on a dog. That pickle is too thick for this to work. Second is the texture, which has to be just awful. Think about the hard crunch of biting into a pickle and then think about the snap of biting into a good hot dog, and now think about how awkward it’s going to feel in your mouth when you have to do both of those things in quick succession. I refuse to believe that is a quality experience.

Finally, I want you to think about the poor soul whose job it is now to stuffing pickles with hot dogs. I don’t think anyone in the process of coming up with this idea thought about this gentleman or lady who is now spending their day shoving hot dogs into pickles to be battered and fried, because if they had we wouldn’t be here right now staring at this abomination.

I am almost always one to hold judgement on gluttonous creations until I have tried them, because the initial thought is always “that’s disgusting,” but sometimes the execution works — see, the Three-Point Bloomin’ Onion. However, I feel fine rejecting this pickle corn dog outright on the grounds listed above. Do better, Rangers.