Hot dog

• 1. A Gash In A Roll

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  In 1892, a newspaper described a "hot dog" being quickly inserted in a gash in a roll. That line is one of the earliest printed glimpses of the hot dog, a sausage served in a partly sliced bun. Americans now eat 20 billion of them every year. Yet the basic facts of this food are still argued over. Who first tucked a sausage into bread? Why is it called a dog? And is it a sandwich? The trail starts in Germany, but it does not stay there.

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• 2. Names And Origins

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  Frankfurt, Germany, is where pork sausages much like the modern hot dog first appeared. Known as Frankfurter Würstchen, they have been recorded since the 13th century. They were handed out to the people at imperial coronations, beginning with the coronation of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, as King.

  Vienna, called Wien in German, supplied the other name. The wiener is a sausage made from a mixture of pork and beef. Johann Georg Lahner, a butcher from the Franconian city of Coburg, is said to have carried the Frankfurter Würstchen to Vienna. He lived in the 18th or 19th century. In Vienna he added beef to the mixture and simply called the result Frankfurter.

  Language has kept the muddle alive. In German-speaking countries other than Austria, hot dog sausages are called Wiener or Wiener Würstchen, to set them apart from the pork-only original. Würstchen means "little sausage." Swiss German speakers say Wienerli, while Austrians use Frankfurter or Frankfurter Würstel.

  The word dog has meant sausage since the 1800s. One possible reason is that people accused sausage makers of putting dog meat in their product. In Germany the rumor had some footing, because eating dog meat was common in Saxony, Silesia, Anhalt and Bavaria during the 19th and 20th centuries. Hot dogs occasionally contained it.

  An 1884 newspaper line shows the phrase at work. It warned that "even the innocent "wienerworst" man will be barred from dispensing hot dog on the street corner." The same phrase turned up in other newspapers in 1893.

  That timeline wrecks a popular legend. The story says newspaper cartoonist Thomas Aloysius "Tad" Dorgan coined the term around 1900. His earliest documented use of hot dog dates only to 1906, long after the phrase was in print.

  These sausages then crossed the Atlantic as a German import. In the United States they became a working-class street food, sold at stands and carts.

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• 3. Who Invented The Bun

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  Harry M. Stevens, a food concessionaire, holds one of the strongest claims. At the New York Polo Grounds in 1901, the story goes, the waxed paper used to hold sausages ran out. He reached for small French rolls instead, and the idea stuck.

  A German immigrant named Feuchtwanger, from Frankfurt in Hesse, is said to have started the practice in the American Midwest. The versions differ. In one, he sold sausages on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri, and lent gloves to customers so they would not burn their hands. Customers failed to return the gloves, and he lost money. His wife then suggested a roll, in 1880.

  In another version, Antoine Feuchtwanger, also given as Anton Ludwig Feuchtwanger, served sausages in rolls at a World's Fair. That was either the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis or the earlier 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Again, the gloves supposedly vanished as souvenirs.

  A third candidate is Charles Feltman, a pieman at Coney Island in New York City. In 1867 he had a cart built with a stove for boiling sausages and a compartment that kept buns ready to serve them fresh. In 1871 he leased land for a permanent restaurant. The business grew to sell far more than his "Coney Island Red Hots," as the sausages were known.

  Feltman's cart dates to 1867, which would put it more than three decades ahead of the Polo Grounds story, if it holds.

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• 4. Inside The Sausage

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  Sheep's small intestines make the traditional casing for a hot dog. Sausages in this casing are sold as natural casing hot dogs or frankfurters. They have a firmer texture and a snap that releases juices and flavor when bitten.

  Pork and beef are the traditional meats. A typical recipe adds meat trimmings and fat, flavorings such as salt, garlic and paprika, and cure preservatives, usually sodium erythorbate and sodium nitrite. Cheaper versions often use chicken or turkey, made from low-cost mechanically separated poultry. Changes in meat technology and in what people want to eat have pushed makers toward less salt, more turkey and chicken, and vegetarian substitutes.

  Factories mix the meats, spices, binders and fillers in vats. Rapidly moving blades grind and blend everything in a single operation. The mixture is then forced through tubes into casings for cooking.

  In Chicago in 1925, Erwin O. Freund, founder of Visking, invented a process that changed the product. A long tube of thin cellulose serves as the casing during cooking and is removed before packaging. His new company sold the first of these casings to local Chicago sausage makers under the name "Nojax," short for "no jackets."

  Skinless hot dogs have a softer bite than natural casing ones. They are more uniform in shape and size and cheaper to make. Most hot dogs sold in the US are skinless. Kosher casings are expensive in commercial quantities in the US, so kosher hot dogs are usually skinless or use reconstituted collagen casings.

  Home cooks can grill, steam, boil, broil, pan-fry or air-fry them. Some cut a hot dog into a spiral first. That adds surface area for a better Maillard reaction, makes pockets that hold toppings, and stretches the sausage to fill a commercial bun.

  The sausage also travels without its bun. Sliced up, it goes into dishes such as beanie weinie and Filipino spaghetti.

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• 5. Health Risks

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  The International Agency for Research on Cancer, known as IARC, classes processed meat as a cause of cancer, particularly colorectal cancer. Hot dogs are processed meat. Most contain nitrite or nitrate preservatives, which react with amines in meat to form carcinogenic N-nitroso compounds. They are also high in fat and salt.

  A report from the American Institute for Cancer Research put numbers on the danger. One 50-gram daily serving of processed meat, about one hot dog, raises long-term colorectal cancer risk by 20%. Eating a hot dog every day would therefore raise the probability of developing colorectal cancer by 5.8-7%.

  The institute's warning campaign drew fire. Fox News, a conservative news organization, called it "attack ads." A group called the Cancer Project went the other way and filed a class-action lawsuit demanding warning labels on packages and at sporting events.

  Bacteria are a separate worry. Listeria monocytogenes sometimes turns up in hot dogs and can cause serious infections in infants and pregnant women. It can pass to a developing fetus in utero, or to an infant after birth. Adults with suppressed immune systems can also be harmed. Although hot dogs are cooked during manufacture, packaged ones should still be heated to a safe internal temperature.

  Choking is a hazard for the youngest eaters. A US study found that hot dogs caused 17% of food-related asphyxiations among children younger than 10. Slicing greatly reduces the risk. It has even been suggested that redesigning the size, shape and texture of the hot dog would make it safer.

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• 6. American Standard

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  Since the 1920s, public events and sports have given the hot dog cultural and even patriotic status in the United States. It is closely tied to baseball and to New York City, and over the 20th century it spread across the whole country. Its traditions include the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

  In American speech, hot dog can mean the sausage alone or the sausage plus bun. Nicknames include frankfurter, frank, wiener, weenie, coney and red hot.

  Wandering vendors work the aisles of baseball parks, and some parks have signature dogs. Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles sells Dodger Dogs, and Fenway Park in Boston has Fenway Franks. Elsewhere, stands and trucks sell boiled hot dogs along streets and highways. Convenience stores keep them warm on rotating grills, and children's menus often list them.

  Costco, the big-box retail chain, sells a yearly average of 135 million hot dogs at its food courts, at a notably low price. Fast-food chains usually skip them. The reasons are a shorter shelf life, more complex toppings and cooking, and customer expectations that do not match.

  A 2005 survey by the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, part of the American Meat Institute, ranked the toppings. Mustard led with 32% of respondents. Ketchup took 23%, chili 17%, pickle relish 9% and onions 7%. Other choices include sauerkraut, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, cheese and chili peppers.

  Taste follows geography. Southerners showed the strongest preference for chili, while Midwesterners showed the greatest affinity for ketchup.

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• 7. Names That Mislead

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  Michigan hot dogs and white hots are popular in upstate New York, while Coney Island hot dogs are popular in Michigan. American hot dog styles are often named for the region that supposedly inspired them, not the region that eats them most.

  New Jersey has a deep-fried Italian hot dog with sauteed bell peppers, onions and potatoes. Rhode Island serves hot wieners, or weenies, under the misleading name "New York System." Texas hot dogs are spicy variants found in upstate New York and Pennsylvania, and as "all the way dogs" in New Jersey, but not in Texas.

  In the Philadelphia area, a Texas Tommy is a frank topped with melted cheese, often cheddar, and wrapped in bacon. The Chicago-style hot dog comes on a poppy seed bun with mustard, fresh tomatoes, onions, sport peppers, bright green relish, dill pickles and celery salt. The New York dog is a natural-casing all-beef frank with sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard, and onions are optional.

  Washington, D.C., has the half-smoke, made half beef and half pork and both grilled and smoked. It is often served in a hot dog-style bun with chili, cheese, onions and mustard. Ben's Chili Bowl, a cultural landmark, is among its famous sellers, as is Weenie Beenie in Arlington County, Virginia.

  In Canada, Skinner's Restaurant in Lockport, Manitoba, is reputed to be the country's oldest hot dog outlet in continuous operation. Jim Skinner Sr. founded it in 1929. It serves European-style foot-long hot dogs, 30.5 cm, with natural casings made by Winnipeg Old Country Sausage in Winnipeg.

  In most of the world, a hot dog is a sausage in a bun, but the type varies a great deal. In New Zealand, a hot dog is a battered sausage, often on a stick. North Americans call that a corn dog, and in New Zealand the bun version is the "American hot dog."

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• 8. Arguments And Records

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  In 2015, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council declared that a hot dog is not a sandwich. Merriam-Webster has said the opposite. Hot dog eating champions Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi side with the council, as does Nathan's Famous, host of a significant eating contest.

  United States Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg weighed in too. She said a hot dog might be categorized as a sandwich, but it comes down to how a sandwich is defined. She noted that the bun is a single roll not sliced all the way through, much like a submarine sandwich.

  On the 4th of August 2006, the All-Japan Bread Association marked its 50th anniversary at the Akasaka Prince Hotel in Tokyo. The centerpiece was a hot dog 60 m long, resting in a bun of 60.3 m. Shizuoka Meat Producers prepared the sausage, while the association baked the bun and coordinated the official measurement.

  On the 31st of May 2012, Guinness World Records certified the most expensive hot dog at USD 145.49. The "California Capitol City Dawg" was served at Capitol Dawg in Sacramento, California. It started with a grilled 18-inch all-beef, natural-casing frank from Chicago, on a fresh-baked herb-and-oil focaccia roll spread with white truffle butter. Toppings included French whole-grain mustard, moose cheese from Sweden, and bacon from New Hampshire. Proceeds from each three-pound super dog went to Shriners Hospitals for Children.

  Eating contests supply the other records. Joey Chestnut ate 83 hot dogs in 10 minutes at the "Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef" event on the 2nd of September 2024. Takeru Kobayashi held the record before him. Miki Sudo holds the women's record of 48.5 hot dogs in 10 minutes, set on the 4th of July 2020, ahead of the previous holder, Sonya Thomas.

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