Plain Hot Dog — favorite of dull men
The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (Washington, DC) estimates that over 7,000,000 hot dogs will be eaten by american between Memorial Day and Labor day.
The name “hot dog” came from a cartoon. The cartoonist Tad Dorgan had heard vendors at baseball games who shouted, “Get your dachshund sausage while they’re red hot [exclamation point removed] He sketched the scene but didn’t know how to spell “dachshund.” So he wrote “hot dogs.”
What are hot dogs made of? Don’t ask.
The first recorded mention of hot dogs is in Homer’s Odysey: “As when a man besides a great fie has filled a sausage with fat and bloom and turn it this way and that and is very eager to get it quickly roasted.”
Hot dogs have come a long way since then. There’s a wider variety of ingredients: beef, pork, turkey, veggies, bacon-wrapped.
Toppings? It’s up to you. There’s no right answer. Hardliners from New York say no ketchup, only mustard; and onions. Chicago loads them up: mustard, relish, onions, tomato slices, and more. Recent research shows adults generally prefer ketchup, children prefer ketchup.
Experts say to dress the hot dog, not the bun. And in the following order: first the wet stuff, e.g., mustard or ketchup, then the chunky stuff, e.g., relish, onions, cheese.
Toppings and how to apply them is a good topic for Dull Men’s Club meetings.
Extreme Hot Dog
More Extreme
