Welcome to summer, the season for campfires, BBQs, and s’mores. All of these items have a couple of things in common – the need for fire and friends. Brad and I love having campfires throughout the summer and roasting our dinner over the flames. It is a great way to enjoy the outdoors and get a delicious meal with minimal clean up needed. When we have friends over for these campfires, it is fun to step the dinner up a bit so the Gourmet Hot Dog Bar was born.

This post is in collaboration with Duraflame. All opinions are my own. 

How To Host A Gourmet Hot Dog Bar At Your BBQ

Since our firepit is on the downstairs patio I set up the whole food station there as well. In addition to hot dogs, we also had my tropical pasta salad and some fruit salad (and of course we couldn’t forget s’mores for dessert). I found some hot dog boats which were the perfect “plate” for the evening; and since we were right by the food, people could use it both for their hot dog and then later to get some sides.

For drinks, we had both Spa Water with strawberries & mint, and some spiked passion tea lemonade. Both were a hit with our guests and so easy to make in large batches for the BBQ.

The Gourmet Hot Dog Bar is all about the toppings. In addition to the hot dog standards of relish, ketchup, and mustard, we also offered cheese, avocado, salsa, guacamole, sauteed mushrooms, and caramelized onions. Some other great topping options could be chili, crumbled bacon, bleu cheese, and anything else that suits your tastes.

For the campfire itself, we used the Duraflame roasting logs. They come in packs of 4 and easily stack to form a nice campfire for roasting dinner. They are super easy to light which is helpful for campfire newbies; simply loosen the paper around the log and light both ends. Within a couple minutes all of our logs were burning away.

The Duraflame roasting logs created a nice fire for all of us to roast some hot dogs. We were able to easily cook our dogs and get to the delicious toppings quickly.

Aburee decided that she didn’t want a hot dog; however, she still wanted to roast something, so she toasted herself a hot dog bun and had a fun time being able to “cook” her own meal over the fire.

Jaxson was a fan of the campfire as well; he enjoyed watching and warming up with the flames, plus he had a pretty delicious dinner to go along with it. The fire was definitely toasty warm; in fact, each 5lb bundle of 4 logs uses significantly less fuel than a standard 24lb bundle of firewood; while still maintaining more heat per pound. All of the wood used in the making of logs is recycled so Duraflame roasting logs are tree-friendly!

These gourmet hot dogs were pretty awesome-sauce. It was hard not to load them all up with 20 million toppings (another benefit of the hot dog boats). This Gourmet Hot Dog Bar is perfect for summer BBQs as they are so easy to put together and allow each guest to customize their meal.

I hope you all are having a wonderful start to summer and have many BBQs and campfires in your future! Make sure to pick up some Duraflame Roasting Logs for your summer get together.

What type of toppings would you add to your gourmet hot dog bar?