Departing the Text: A Guide: Finding the Right Hot Dog for You!

Sunday, August 23, 2015

A Guide: Finding the Right Hot Dog for You!

With Labor Day fast approaching and summer ending (and combining ABCWednesday's F,G, and H weeks), I thought I'd post a final hurrah to grilling. In particular a post to grilling and dressing the right hot dog for you.

Happy Grilling. Happy End of Summer... Enjoy!

According to USA Today,

"The hot dog is one of the few foods that's nearly impossible to screw up. You heat it through, tuck it into a bun, squirt on some mustard, and call it lunch. But there's a big difference between not screwing something up and turning it into a paradigm-shifting, transcendental dining experience...But there's a science, if not an art form, behind constructing the perfect hot-dog-eating experience."

Hot Dog History:
According to "Hot Dog History" from the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council,

"Sausage is one of the oldest forms of processed food, having been mentioned in Homer's Odyssey as far back as the 9th Century B.C."

Hot dogs were first introduced in the United States around 1870 when German immigrant Charles Feltman began selling his sausages in rolls (at "3 cents each or 2 for 5 cents (wikipedia.org)" selling them cheap at amusement centers like Coney Island. According to USA Today:

" Charles Feltman is widely considered to be the first person to have applied hot dog to bun, in order to avoid needing to supply plates and silverware to customers at his sprawling Coney Island restaurant."

However according to Stephanie Butler at history.com "Break Out the Buns: The History of the Hot Dog":

"The man most responsible for popularizing the hot dog in the United States was, however, neither German nor Austrian. His name was Nathan Handwerker, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. In 1915 Handwerker worked at a hot dog stand at Coney Island, where he made a whopping $11 a week slicing buns. The hardworking Handwerker lived entirely on hot dogs and slept on the kitchen floor for a year until he’d saved $300, enough to start a competing stand. He was a savvy businessman: knowing his former boss charged 10 cents apiece for dogs, Handwerker charged only 5 cents. Customers flocked to him, his competitor went out of business, and Nathan’s Famous was born."

Top Hot Dog Haunts:

Here are USAhttps://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/best-hot-dogs-around-the-world Today's Top Ten Hot Dog Haunts in the U.S.
Here are Chicago's "13 Best Hot Dogs" (from Chicagoist.com)
Here are the "Nations Best" from Pervaiz Shallwani at Food and Wine
Here's an "International Hot Dog Guide" by Adam Lapentina at Thrillist.com
And now for the "healthiest" hot dogs to eat, please check out:

Anne Harding's suggestions at health.com (http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20511295,00.html)
"The Healthiest and Unhealthiest Store-Bought Hot Dogs" edited by Dan Myers at TheDailyMeal.com

For the home griller, here is a cool infographic on "40 Ways the World Makes Awesome Hot Dogs"
From: http://www.foodrepublic.com/2015/05/19/40-ways-the-world-makes-awesome-hot-dogs/ by Jess Kapadia, illsutrated by Mike Houston