To make pigs in a blanket for a crowd, cut cold crescent dough or puff pastry into strips about 1 inch wide and 3 inches long, wrap each strip around a cocktail frank patted dry with a paper towel, and set them seam side down on a parchment-lined sheet pan. Brush with egg wash, bake at 375°F for 15 to 20 minutes until deep golden, and serve them warm with mustard. Plan on four or five per guest, and freeze half the tray unbaked so the second round comes out of the oven an hour into the party.
They tend to be the first appetizer to disappear at a holiday party, which is the real planning problem. Nobody needs a recipe so much as a system: even strips, a dry sausage, a cold dough and a baking schedule that keeps a warm tray on the table.
Which pigs, which blanket
In the US, pigs in a blanket means a small sausage wrapped in dough. Wikipedia’s article on the dish describes the American version as a sausage wrapped in bread or pastry dough, and notes that the British “pigs in blankets” are something else: small sausages, usually chipolatas, wrapped in bacon, served alongside the roast turkey at Christmas dinner. This post is about the American kind.
The sausage. Cocktail franks, sometimes sold as little smokies, are the usual choice. Full-size hot dogs cut into thirds work too and give a flat, cut end at each side.
The dough. Three good options, each with a different result:
- Refrigerated crescent dough bakes soft, slightly sweet and bready. It is the classic, and it is the most forgiving.
- Puff pastry bakes crisp, flaky and buttery, and looks more like a canapé. It needs to stay cold to puff.
- Refrigerated biscuit dough, each round rolled thin and cut in strips, gives a thicker, fluffier blanket.
Set out the station
For 25 to 30 guests:
- About 120 cocktail franks
- Four tubes of crescent dough, or five sheets of puff pastry (three boxes, with a sheet to spare), kept in the refrigerator until the moment you cut them (puff pastry thawed overnight in the refrigerator)
- 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water
- Everything bagel seasoning or flaky salt, optional
- Two or three sheet pans lined with parchment
You also need a sharp knife or a pizza wheel, a ruler if you want strips that match, paper towels and a pastry brush. Clear the counter. Wrapping a hundred pigs goes fastest as an assembly line: board, then sausages, then the pan.
Dry the franks
Drain the franks and spread them out on a double layer of paper towels. Roll them around and pat the tops. A wet sausage steams inside its wrap, the dough slips, and the seam opens in the oven.
Cut the dough evenly
Unroll one sheet of dough onto a lightly floured board and leave the rest in the refrigerator. If the sheet hangs over the edge of the board, cut it in half and put one half back in the refrigerator. Warm dough stretches and tears; cold dough cuts clean.
Crescent dough usually comes perforated into triangles. Pinch the perforations closed with your fingertips so you have a solid sheet, then cut it into strips. Strips cut from a sheet are more even than the triangles, and they wrap with one neat overlap instead of a bulky tip.
Puff pastry goes straight from the box to the board. Cut it into strips with a single downward press of a sharp knife or a firm roll of the pizza wheel. Pepperidge Farm’s puff pastry handling page gives the same rule: cut straight down, never on an angle, and do not drag the knife.
Aim for strips about 1 inch wide and 3 inches long, enough to wrap around a cocktail frank once with a short overlap. Measure the first few against the ruler and cut the rest by eye. Matching strips mean matching pigs, and matching pigs bake in the same time.
Cut a sheet, wrap it, then fetch the next sheet from the refrigerator. Working in small batches is how pastry stays cold, and a 12 × 9 board suits that pace; the reasoning on how much dough a cutting board can handle at once is in can you roll cookie dough on a cutting board.
Wrap, seal and space them
Lay a frank across one end of a strip, roll it up, and press the overlapping end lightly to seal it. Leave both ends of the sausage showing. Set each pig on the parchment seam side down, an inch apart. The weight of the sausage holds the seam closed as it bakes.
Brush the tops with the egg wash. On puff pastry, keep it off the cut edges; the same Pepperidge Farm page warns that egg wash running down the sides can stick the layers together and stop them rising. Sprinkle with everything seasoning or a pinch of flaky salt. Wash your hands after the egg wash; the CDC advises washing hands after handling raw eggs, flour and uncooked meat.
Bake in waves
Bake at 375°F for 15 to 20 minutes, rotating the pan halfway, until the dough is deep golden on top and underneath. Pale dough is doughy inside. Puff pastry may need a few minutes longer than crescent dough.
Do not bake all of them at once. Put out the first pan as guests arrive and keep the rest ready to go.
To make them ahead, assemble them up to a day before, cover the pans with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Add the egg wash right before they go in the oven.
To make them further ahead, freeze the wrapped, unbaked pigs on the sheet pan until firm, then move them to freezer bags. Bake them from frozen, with no thawing, adding 5 to 8 minutes. A bag of frozen pigs in the freezer turns a second round, or a second party, into twenty minutes of oven time.
Serving
Move the pigs from the pan to a serving board while they are still warm, in tight rows with the seams down. Put the mustard in two or three small bowls rather than one: grainy mustard, honey mustard, or yellow mustard stirred with a spoonful of maple syrup. Small bowls refill without fuss and keep the dipping line moving.
A wooden board makes them look homemade rather than catered. The WONAMU. acacia cutting board is 12 by 9 inches, with room for about two dozen pigs in rows, and its warm, varied grain sets off golden pastry. If the same board did the dough cutting, scrape it clean, wash it in hot, soapy water, and towel it dry before it goes out.
Leave a new pan of pigs out no longer than 2 hours, the CDC’s limit for perishable food left at room temperature. In practice they are gone well before that. For the full plan of refilling a party table in rounds, see how to host a holiday open house, and for where a hot appetizer sits in a buffet line, how to set up a holiday buffet.
The short version
Pat the franks dry. Cut cold dough on a floured board into strips about 1 inch by 3 inches, one sheet at a time. Wrap each frank once, set it seam side down, brush with egg wash, and bake at 375°F for 15 to 20 minutes until deep golden.
Plan on four or five per guest, freeze half unbaked, and bake in waves so there is always a warm tray on the table.
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WONAMU. makes an acacia cutting board designed for daily prep, 12 × 9 inches, acacia, with a perimeter juice groove. Available on Amazon.
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