Ever wonder why hot dogs are called hot dogs?
Well wonder no more: You'll often hear that the name "hot dog"
comes from a cartoon drawn by T.A.
Dorgan during a New York Giants baseball game at the Polo Grounds around 1902-1906 (date
varies depending on who's telling the story).
At this game, he supposedly observed a vendor, Harry Stevens, selling "hot dachshund sausages".
Dorgan, being inspired by this, drew a dachshund in a hot dog bun, but didn't know how to spell
dachshund, so just wrote "hot dog".
So is any of this true?
Nope.
To date, no record of the cartoon in question has ever been found, but whether it ever existed
or not doesn't matter; the term "hot dog", referring to a form of sausage in a bun, had
been commonly known at least 10 years before Dorgan supposedly drew that cartoon, if not
a lot longer.
You see, the first documented references to "hot dog" were in a September 28, 1893 Knoxville
Journal and in an October 19, 1895 edition of the Yale Record that contained a reference
to "The Kennel Club", which was a lunch wagon on campus that sold hot sausages in buns,
which were referred to as "hot dogs" at this point.
So where did the term "hot dog" actually come from?
Dating back at least as early as the 1880s, it became common to call sausages "dogs",
seemingly owing to the fact that people never knew exactly what meat was included in the
sausages they were buying.
Around that time, there were a lot of rumors that horse and dog meat were being commonly
used to make sausages (there was even a song about this written in 1860 and the first documented
accusations of dog meat being used in sausages is from 1845).
Though the university student's clearly didn't invent the name, it is thought that it was
college students that popularized it as referring to hot sausages in buns.
As alluded to, around this time, lunch wagons serving hot sausages in buns became common
on college campuses (the bun being added so people could eat the hot sausages while they
walked between classes).
These lunch wagons were somewhat similar in quality of food to modern day "roach coaches",
so the students took to calling them "dog wagons" with their product being "hot dogs",
referring to the rumor that low-quality sausages were made from dog meat.
As to the origin of the hot dog itself, it isn't known exactly when somebody first got
the bright idea to put sausages in a bun.
However, the first historical reference of sausages themselves goes all the way back
to one of the first books ever written, Homer's Odyssey which states, "As when a man besides
a great fire has filled a sausage with fat and blood and turns it this way and that and
is very eager to get it quickly roasted...
" While it is unlikely that the practice of
putting sausages in some sort of bread only happened recently (bread being a staple food
throughout history and sausages being relatively popular in many cultures), the first recorded
instances of sausages being sold encased in bread come from around the mid-20th century
where various German immigrants sold frankfurters with milk rolls and sauerkraut on the streets
of New York City.
There are numerous stories of people having claimed to be the first to put their sausage
in a bun… but nobody knows for sure which, if any, are
true.
A common theme among all of these stories is that the idea behind the bun was to be
able to serve the hot dogs to customers on the streets without the customers burning
their hands on the hot sausages and providing a convenient holder of sorts for the sausage
and any toppings without getting your hands messy.
Moving on from there, if you’ve ever wondered how hot dogs are actually made, well, wonder
no more: After the steaks, chops, breasts, ribs, thighs,
hams, tenderloins and briskets are removed, there's a fair amount of gristle, fat and
offal remaining on a butchered animal, and early on, humans being rather non-wasteful
with any potential food item historically realized these leftovers could be put to good
use.
One of these products is the sausage which became the hot dog, a classic of pre-cooked,
processed meat.
The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council (NHDSC) notes that hot dogs, whether regular, turkey,
pork or beef, begin with "trimmings."
A purposely-vague word so customers don’t vomit in their mouths at the thought of the
product, trimmings come in lots of shapes and sizes.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), to quote, "The
raw meat materials used for precooked-cooked products are lower-grade muscle trimmings,
fatty tissues, head meat, animal feet, animal skin, blood, liver and other edible slaughter
by-products."
Yum!
Incidentally, because of the butchering process, the leftovers used in products like hot dogs
often have a fair amount of bacteria, and so pre-cooking helps eliminate that issue.
In addition, pre-cooking has the added benefit of helping to separate the remaining muscle
meat, fat and connective tissues from the head and feet bones, as well as just generally
makes the trimmings more manageable.
Because of the different sizes and types of carcasses, there are different pre-cooking
times for different animals (and different parts), although it typically occurs within
the range of 150 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit or 65-87 degrees C.
This brings us to the main production process.
Like many other products, such as bologna and liver sausage, hot dogs and frankfurters
are created by the aforementioned leftovers which once processed a bit are officially
dubbed "meat emulsion," also called “meat batter”.
Higher quality products are made from top quality meats and no chemicals.
Examples include kosher, all beef hot dogs that have no by-products, fillers or artificial
colors or flavors.
Less expensive types of hot dogs will have chemicals, fats and water binding agents added,
and for many of these, the production process is simple:
First pork and/or beef trimmings are ground up in a machine and then extruded through
a metal sieve-like device so they resemble ground hamburger meat.
At this point, ground chicken trimmings (if any) are often added, and together, the mixture
is blended (emulsified) until it looks like meat batter.
Now salt, ground spices and food starches are added, along with some water and corn
syrup or another sweetener.
Toward the end of the process, more water is added, to get the batter to the proper
consistency (no one wants a dry wiener).
The batter is then pureed again, as well as having the excess air vacuumed out.
Next the emulsified meat is pumped into casings (usually cellulose but sometimes natural),
and the strings of dogs are hung on racks and fully cooked in a smoke house.
Sometimes hardwood smoke is added for flavor.
Later, the dogs are showered in cold, salted water, and then, if cellulose casings were
used, put through a peeler to remove the casings (natural casings are left on).
Remember here, "natural casings" means the intestine of an animal that have been thoroughly
cleaned and processed.
Finally, finished dogs are inspected by hand, and only "flawless" tubed meat is routed to
yet another machine where the dogs are grouped for packing and eventually to store shelves
the world over.