This is a somewhat simple and very delicious sandwich that I enjoyed on a recent trip to Porto, Portugal. The difficulty in making this sandwich is acquiring the very few ingredients needed to replicate it outside of the city or country where it was invented. But, with a bit of know-how and some kitchen gumption, we can recreate similar ingredients at home and make all the components of this delicious sandwich ourselves.
If you’re traveling to Porto, Portugal, and want to try the sandwich I’m writing about: Time Out 5 Best Cachorrinhos in Porto.
I would also suggest reading Eating BIG in Porto from Chicago Chow King.
What is a cachorrinho or cachorro?
The Portuguese word cachorro translates to young dog or puppy in English. I am not a Portuguese language expert, but I have learned the suffix -inho (masculine) or -inha (feminine) is diminutive, which means the root word the suffix would be added to would refer to a small version of what that word is describing. So cachorrinho would mean a smaller puppy while cachorro is just a puppy.
These words are important for the sandwich I’m writing about because, on restaurant menus in Porto, Portugal, they will both refer to something that is sometimes called the Portuguese hot dog or Porto hot dog, or even just hot dog. Note: no actual dogs or chachorros are harmed in the making of these Portuguese sandwiches.
The issue that might arise for any English-speaking people who are familiar with the American hot dog is that this Portuguese hot dog is not a hot dog. Or at least it’s not much like an American-style hot dog at all. It’s a sausage sandwich.
Sandwich Disclaimer: I do not claim to be an expert in Portuguese cuisine, nor am I a native. I’ve only visited Porto once and tried only three versions of this sandwich during my trip. The cachorrinhos that I am making will be as close to an approximation of the ones that you can buy in Porto as I can create in my own kitchen. They’re very tasty, but my recipes will not be perfect copies. Go visit Portugal and find out for yourself!
A cachorrinho is typically made with the base of at least one type of pork sausage that has been removed from its casing, mashed into an extra skinny French-style baguette, and then griddled in a panini press until the meat is fully cooked. The sausage is then topped with creamy and melty cow milk cheese and pressed again until the cheese is melted and the bread is crispy. Often the meat and the bread will be painted with a thin swipe of melted butter blended with piri piri hot sauce or pepper powder to help with the cooking process and add some butter and spice flavors to the whole sandwich.
When the sandwich is fully cooked it is sliced into multiple 2 or 3-bite-sized pieces and served. The point of slicing the sandwich this way is so that it can be shared amongst a group that is sitting socially and consuming drinks. A cachorrinho is fairly small because the bread is small and what typically would happen is that a new sandwich might be ordered for the table when the next round of drinks is ordered.
Cachorrinho are also typically fairly inexpensive so it is normal to see a few friends sitting around a table with beers, a plate of cachorro, and a pile of fries for everyone to share.
Cachorro especial com molho de francesinha
There’s a second style of cachorro that I will also be showing you how to make in this blog post. This option is called Cachorro Especial and I only saw it and ate it from a restaurant/bar called Cervejaria Gazela.
Cervejaria Gazela
Cervejaria Gazela, in Porto, Portugal claims to be the creator of the original cachorrinho or cachorro. My wife and I took a very steep walk up approximately 5,000 stairs from the to Douro River to get to Gazela and very much appreciated the cold Super Bock beer they serve at the bar.
In Portuguese the word cerveja translates to beer and cervejaria is brewery or alehouse. In this instance, Gazela (sometimes called Snack Bar Gazela) is a restaurant that primarily sells sandwiches or small plates with a bar that takes up about half of the room and serves beer (in Porto this typically means Super Bock brand lager), wine, and some simple cocktails.
Gazela’s Cachorro Especial deconstruction photos
During the process of eating this Portuguese hot dog topped with melty cheese and sauce, I did a little deconstruction just to confirm what was going on inside the sandwich. It was a little messy and a lot cheesy but it gave me the impression that it was exactly like the regular cachorrinho sandwiches but covered with cheese and surrounded by sauce.
You can check out a lot more photos and videos of the Cachorro Especial and the regular cachorrinho on Cervejaria Gazela’s Instagram.
Francesinha sauce
The sauce under the Cachorro Especial is a tomato and beer-based, brothy sauce that is typically poured on top of another famous Porto sandwich called the Francesinha. I made and wrote about Francesinha sandwiches a year or more prior to my trip to Porto and I made sure to try the official versions to see how my sauce held up. And it turns out that my sauce was a pretty good representation of what I tried in Portugal. Mine doesn’t taste or look perfectly the same as Gazela’s, but every restaurant in Porto has its own slightly different version of Francesinha sauce, so mine works just fine in that regard. I recreated it for this sandwich to create the Cachorro Especial.
But before we start with the Cachorro Especial, let us make a plain cachorrinho because it’s the base for the special version.
First, the basic cachorrinho
A cachorrinho is pretty simple to make once you have the bread and the sausage. You’ll also need cheese and many cachorro (or at least the ones at Gazela) have a second variety of sausage and they are definitely basting the meat and bread with a spicy butter spread that melts and helps the sandwich brown while adding a tiny bit of heat and buttery flavor to the exterior.
I found two YouTube videos that should show you a video representation of how to make cachorrinho sandwiches.
Keep reading to see photos and read about how I made mine and get recipes for all of the components. First, we need bread.
Skinny French bread
Cachorros are served in skinny French baguettes and so that is what I made. I started with my French baguette recipe and instead of shaping it into 3 large baguettes, I opted for 8 small and skinny baguettes about 9-ish inches long when shaping the dough (before final proofing) they were about the width of a Bratwurst or smoked sausage.
They rose and doubled in size, but they need to be fairly small so that one sausage link fits properly across them.
The bread in this sandwich is a huge part of the experience. I would say at least 60% of the texture and enjoyment is derived from the crunchiness of the exterior of the bread that is lightly grilled and pressed with a small spread of butter. But the interior of the bread also needs to be a little chewy in order for all of the ingredients to come together and work.
If you can’t or don’t want to make your own bread, you’re going to have to go to a good deli or bakery and you’re going to probably have to settle for a different shape of the bread. This isn’t the worst thing, it’s just going to be a slightly different experience than the one you might get at restaurants in Porto.
Remember when shaping the rolls for this recipe that I suggest shaping 8 dough portions instead of 3 large fifteen-inch rolls.
French-style baguettes
A crispy, crusted bread roll that is still soft and chewy in the middle. Perfect for a sub-style sandwich where you need big bread crunch or even sliced thinly and served toasted with olive oil alongside meat and cheese on a charcuterie board.
Get RecipePork sausage
Getting the sausage exactly like the version they have at Gazela is going to be impossible. I will just say that upfront. They use two different sausages in their sandwiches one is fresh and the other appears to be smoked and/or maybe spiced a bit heavier with pepper spices. The flavors of the cachorrinho that I experienced were tender, grilled pork sausage that was, a bit garlicky and it was very savory.
Portugal’s most commonly used sausages are linguiça (leen-gwee-suh) and chouriço (show-rhee-soo). This is different than the chorizo that you might find in Central or North America. I found some good Portuguese sausage content that helped me understand it a bit more and it pointed me in the direction of making linguiça for this sandwich.
Alternative sausages
I did find a website where you can order what they are calling Authentic Portuguese chourico or linguica, but it’s all fully-cooked which will not work the same in this sandwich that typically starts with raw uncooked sausage. I’m sure these sausages are good, but they won’t be quite the same. If you don’t want to make your own sausage but would like to attempt this sandwich I think you could probably get away with a pretty simple uncooked Italian sausage link. If your meat market has a sausage that is a bit garlicky, grab that.
The sausage recipe I used
Because I figured I would try to make my own sausages for these cachorrinho I opted to use this linguica recipe. I have made sausage before, but I did not really feel comfortable creating my own recipe of a sausage that I had very little experience eating. The final sausage is fairly garlicky and it has a bit of spice due to the pepper/paprika powders in the sausage mix. It’s a good sausage and I figured since I was just making one variety of sausage, I would try to find a solution that would both bring a little spice and bring some fresh sausage texture to the sandwich.
I think the sausage recipe that I found worked really well. As I wrote above, this isn’t a perfect copy of the Gazela cachorrinho, but I feel that altogether it all worked well with the bread and sausage that I felt it was well worth sharing.
I’ve made sausage before, but this was the first time documenting it for this blog. Overall, it’s not a hard process, it takes some time and patience to make sure all the meat is fully ground and incorporated with the spices. And then it takes even more patience to get hog casings loaded up with extruded sausage. I think all together it took me about an hour from start to finish and then I had a few dishes to clean.
I bought a third party metal grinder and sausage stuffer that works with my Kitchenaid stand mixer. This tool worked pretty well, and the grinding and sausage stuffing process was pretty easy. Making sausage is fun!
Cheese
I’m not 100% sure what cheese is used in a cachorro but it melted well and was creamy and very likely a Portuguese cheese like Flamengo. Flamengo seems to be a popular cheese for use in sandwiches in Portugal. The word Flamengo translates to Flemish in Portuguese and is thought to be very similar to Dutch Edam. I couldn’t find any Flamengo cheese so I bought some Edam and also some sliced Gouda since that is also a Dutch cheese that seemed to be similar to the cheese I experienced at Gazela.
Both cheeses fit the purpose of being very melty when cooked inside the sandwich but Edam had a lot more flavor. In the future, if I make cachorrinho again I will be happy with either cheese.
Now that we have all the ingredients it’s time to build and make a Porto hot dog.
Cachorro building process
Here are some photos of building this sandwich. Some of the build process occurs during grilling, but we’ll cover that a bit down below.
Grilling process
Other than the bread and meat, there are three more ingredients involved in the grilling process. One is cheese and we’ve already discussed those options. The other two are butter and hot sauce that are combined and melted to make a slightly spicy butter sauce that you can spread on the fully cooked meat and on top of the bread to make sure it gets all crispy and flavorful on the outside. Gazela also drizzles a little bit of this sauce on the completed sandwich right before serving.
I bought the Portuguese piri-piri sauce that I used on Amazon, but you can use your favorite hot sauce in this situation. You want more butter than hot sauce. I used a ratio of about 3 to 1 butter to hot sauce.
Panini press
We’ve owned a version of the Cuisinart Griddler for a very long time. My parents gave it to us as a Christmas present more than 10 years ago. It works great for a quick panini-ed sandwich and I’ve used it in sandwiches for this blog like the Cuban sandwich many times but I almost always have the flat griddle plates in the machine. This sandwich requires the grill plates because we want to get grill marks on the meat and the bread.
If you do not have a panini press you can still make this sandwich but you’ll have to do the meat grilling a little differently. You will have to use a grill pan or a cast iron skillet and flip the meat and bottom slice of bread over to cook the meat on the hot surface. I would use something heavy like a second cast iron skillet to put some weight on the bread to press the sandwich a little, but the sausage should cook through all on its own. Then you’ll have to close the sandwich with cheese inside and press it again to finish the cooking process.
The following photos and captions should explain how I grill this sandwich with my panini press/Griddler. First, we add the bottom half of the cachorrinho with the uncooked sausage facing up and close the panini press to cook for about 5 minutes.
The spicy butter spread helps add exterior flavor to the final cachorrinho and brings a crispy texture to the griddled bread. You can also do it the way they do it at Gazela and drizzle a bit more of the sauce on top of each sandwich right after slicing and before serving.
Porto’s cachorrinho sandwich photos and recipe
This is a good sandwich, it’s fun to eat, and it’s savory, melty, and crunchy. The flavors and textures are on point and make for a good, sharable sandwich if made correctly. Check out some photos of the finished sandwiches with the recipe just down below.
Don’t stop scrolling when you find the recipe though, because the second version of this cachorrinho sandwich is further down the page.
Cachorrinho sandwich (Portuguese hot dog)
A Cachorrinho or Portuguese hot dog is a great sandwich that you'll find on lots of restaurant menus in Porto, Portugal. It's a fairly simple sandwich but it does require some specific ingredients. Please check the notes below the recipe directions for more information about certain ingredients. Also you can read the associated blog post for photos and more tips.
Ingredients:
Spicy butter sauce- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 teaspoon piri piri hot sauce (or your favorite hot sauce)
- 1 skinny baguette (about 9 inches long - see notes for recipe)
- 6 to 8 ounces of uncooked linguica sausage (see notes)
- 1 to 2 slices of gouda cheese (or provolone)
Suggested Equipment
Directions:
Spicy butter sauce: Add butter and hot sauce to a small microwave-safe bowl and microwave for 20 to 30 seconds or until the butter is fully melted. Stir to make sure everything is incorporated well.
Cachorrinho: prepare a panini press and set it to high. If you do not have a panini press you can cook this sandwich upside down on a grill pan or cast iron skillet set over medium heat.
Slice your baguette, remove the casing from the uncooked sausage, and spread the meat on the bottom slice of the baguette.
Once the panini press is warmed and ready, add the bottom slice of baguette with the sausage spread on top and cook for 4 to 5 minutes. At this point, the sausage should be fully cooked and it should have some nice grill marks.
With a brush or spoon, paint some spicy butter sauce on the cooked sausage and then layer on 1 to 2 slices of cheese that has been broken in half to fit on top of the meat. Cover with the top of the baguette and close the panini press again.
Cook the closed sandwich until the cheese starts to get nice and melty, probably another 3 minutes or so. Open the panini press and paint some more spicy butter sauce on top of the bread, close the press and cook one more minute.
Remove the sandwich from the panini press to a cutting board and slice the sandwich into 6 to 8 slices to make it ready for sharing.
Notes:
Baguettes: I use my French-style baguette recipe to make this cachorrinho recipe. Instead of following the recipe shaping instructions to make 3 fifteen-inch baguettes, I instead shaped 8 baguettes that are roughly 8 to 9 inches long. This makes the size of the bread much closer to the small skinny baguettes they use in Porto for cachorrinho.
Linguica sausage: I used this linguica sausage recipe from Hunt Gather Cook and it made a really good sausage. I don't think it was necessarily that accurate to the sausage in the Cachorrinho but it was close enough for me. If you don't want to make your own sausage, you can make this sandwich with pretty much any type of uncooked pork sausage, you should just remove the casing and make a roughly 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick consistent layer of sausage on the bottom slice of bread before grilling.
Cachorro Especial photos and recipe
Here’s my attempt at recreating the Gazela Snack Bar Cachorro Especial. It’s a fantastic sandwich but it does take a bit of effort to get on the plate. Go to Porto and when you get back you won’t have to hit me up for the recipe because it’s just down below.
Cachorro Especial (Special Portuguese hot dog)
A copycat recipe for a super tasty sausage sandwich known as the Cachorro Especial from Gazela Snack Bar in Porto, Portugal. Please check the notes below the recipe directions for more information about certain ingredients. Also, you can read the associated blog post for photos and more tips.
Get RecipeCheck back next week
No one knows what I’ll be up to next week. Spoiler alert: it’ll probably be ham. Maybe it’ll be ham in yet another language or it might be English. We’ll see.
