How much can you pack onto a hot dog? More, if you use the tips below (photo courtesy Murray’s). |
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Whether you call it a hot dog, frankfurter or wiener (see the evolution below), if you like the toppings as much as the sausage itself, this tip’s for you.
TOP 10 HOT DOG TOPPINGS
JJ’s Red Hots of Charlotte, North Carolina, offers its toppings list in order of customer preference. At their establishment, the favorites are:
1. Mustard
2. Onions
3. Chili
4. Slaw
5. Pimento cheese
6. Relish/pickles
7. Bacon
8. Sauerkraut
9. Salsa
10. Caramelized onions
There are regional preferences, of course: Pimento cheese is popular spread in the South; and ketchup, which many Americans prefer to mustard on their dogs, is not on their Top 10 list.
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When we were growing up, in greater New York City, the universal choices were mustard and sweet pickle relish (green, red or both), with optional sauerkraut.
HOW TO PACK MORE TOPPING ONTO YOUR DOG
Whatever your choices, how do you get the most of them on top of that dog? Most hot dogs rolls are made to envelop the entire dog, assuming that one might want only a squirt of ketchup or mustard on top.
The options for topping fans were to wedge it into the sides of the roll, or have it spill off the top. Until now. We received this infographic from Fix.com.
Our favorite solution: #1 plus #3. Slicing the hot dog in half is enlightening!
WHAT’S IN A NAME: WIENER VS. FRANKFURTER VS. HOT DOG
Hot dog is the most recent name, bestowed in the U.S. on German names.
Wiener. The hot dog traces its lineage to a 15th-century Viennese sausage called wienerwurst (in German, wiener = from Vienna, wurst = sausage). In the U.S., wienerwurst got shortened to wiener.
Frankfurter. In the 17th century, Johann Georghehner, a butcher from the German city of Coburg, made a slender version of wienerwurst. He brought it to Frankfurt, where butchers sold them as “dachshund sausages.” When the sausage came to the U.S. with German immigrants, it was called either the “frankfurter” or the now obsolete “dachshund sausage.”
Hot dog. In U.S. ball parks, concessionaires walked through the stands shouting, “Get your red-hot dachshund sausages.” The first published mention of the term “hot dog” as a food appeared in print in a September 1893 issue of The Knoxville Journal. While some hot dog historians suggest the “dachshund” sausages were being called hot dogs on college campuses in the 1890s, in 1906, Tad Dorgan, a cartoonist for a Hearst newspaper, was inspired by the scene at a Yankees-Giants game and sketched a cartoon with a real dachshund, smeared with mustard, in a roll. Supposedly, Dorgan could not spell dachshund, and instead captioned the cartoon, “Get your hot dogs.” Many imitators followed.
However… since that cartoon has never been found, and the term also appeared in print in the Yale Record, in nearby New Haven, prior to then [source]. Maybe Dorgan knew of it, maybe not. His spelling challenge is totally believable.
Image courtesy Wonderwoof.com.
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