You want a regular, run of the mill bacon for this. Thick cut bacon isn’t good because it won’t wrap, and the center cut bacon is too small. Regular bacon is just right.

And don’t buy “irregular shaped” bacon either. That won’t be uniform, obviously, and might not wrap the mini hot dogs properly.

The difference between light and dark brown sugar is the amount of molasses added back to it. Dark brown sugar has more, so that’s why it has a darker color.

Dark vs. light brown sugar matters in some baking recipes, but for these bacon-wrapped cocktail wieners, it doesn’t really matter.

Honestly, you don’t need to be particular about what cocktail wieners you use for this recipe. Every brand is pretty much the same size, so you won’t change this recipe if you change the brand you use.

The only thing I wouldn’t do is try to buy full-sized hot dogs and then cut them smaller to make this recipe. You can if you really have to, but you may end up needing more than one package of bacon.

White sugar has no molasses added back into it. That’s why white sugar is more granulated than brown sugar. White sugar doesn’t have the extra moisture the molasses adds.

If you don’t have any brown sugar, you can make it by combining 1 cup of white sugar and 1 tablespoon of molasses.

If you don’t have molasses handy (and honestly, does anyone?), I would advice you head out and buy some brown sugar. This recipe won’t taste right with white sugar on top of the bacon.

Don’t skip the wire cooling rack. When bacon cooks, it leaves a lot of grease behind. If you cook these on the cookie sheet only, the grease will accumulate and either potentially ignite or just burn the hot dogs.

If you use a wire cooling rack, the grease will drip off the bacon and will accumulate on the cookie sheet, which is a lot safer and tastier.

Lining the cookie sheet with a piece of foil will save you a lot of time cleaning. The bacon grease will drip on to the foil. Then, all you’ll need to do is wait for the bacon grease to cool, then you can ball up the foil and throw it in the garbage.

We never have leftovers of these. As I mentioned above, the last time I made these for New Year’s, we had one left. And one of us ate it as we were cleaning up.

But, if for some crazy reason you have leftovers, you can store leftover bacon-wrapped cocktail wieners in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for up to four days.

If you have an air fryer, that’s the easiest way to reheat these. Turn the air fryer to 370 and cook them until they’re heated through, about four miuntes.

If you don’t have an air fryer, you can reheat these in the oven. Set the oven to 350, put the leftover bacon-wrapped cocktail wieners on a foil-lined cooking sheet, and bake for about 15 minutes.

If you don’t feel like waiting, you can just put these in the microwave and heat them on high for about 90 seconds, although that would be my last option because you might lose the shape of the bacon that way and it could fall off your cocktail wieners.