On hot dogs: The unassuming star of the summer
or: How I learned to love this brown tube of cased meat
Let me admit this right at the top: Yes, I know this thing is a monstrosity. A food item in which you are encouraged to know fewer details about what exactly you are putting into your body is never a good sign.
If it did not already exist, there’s no way you could invent it today. Nobody would be buying a brown, slightly slimy tube of meat that carries the name of an animal people want to pet and love and take to parks, not eat.
Simply put, the hot dog is not something I should like as much as I do. Because in reality, I adore them.
I don’t know why I love these things. I don’t know why after spring has sprung, I begin to have a hankering so severe I will go to a baseball game to be in a socially acceptable setting for me to eat three or four of them in one sitting.
When the temperature goes above 75 degrees, how did this meat thing become the greatest thing on a roll? Or is it a bun? Or does it even matter?
Why do I crave this tubular shape of already partially cooked meat? A cylindrical culinary wonder which only needs to be heated over a flame or on a skillet or in an oven or (if needs must) in boiling water and put on a roll before it is ready to be slid down my gullet. And how does even that sound appetizing to me?
What kind of cased meat spell am I under? How did these 'sausages for beginners' become the best and worst thing in the world to eat?
How did the hot dog, without any of the flavors of the Italian sausage – which can be hot, sweet, or mild – the seasoning of bratwurst, the spice of chorizo, the kick of andouille, or the rich, smokiness of a kielbasa become the poster boy of food for the quintessential American summer day?
Perhaps therein lies my answer: Why wouldn't a sausage especially designed for mass appeal come to dominate? Isn’t that natural free-market selection?
And just as the taste was made non-offensive, the name was altered from frankfurter. Which was presumably dispatched when the powers that be decided something called a frankfurter sounded too foreign to American consumers or connotated something with a strong flavor or seasoning which would upset our simple stomachs. (Of course, my Brooklyn-born grandmother still calls them franks because some things are never meant to change.)
So we ended up with a strange name and the encased encapsulation of… well, blandness.
And in a weird twist of fate, that’s what makes the hot dog so special: They’re not actually that good.
No hint of flavor intrigues, let alone overpowers your tastebuds. The hot dog is nothing more than a vessel for toppings and flavor combinations. It is the best kind of star player at the center of a gastronomic experience: The hot dog is here to let its teammates shine.
Naturally, this is when things get weird around the hot dog.
This is where things like ketchup, liquified, melted cheese, and yellow mustard get involved, much to my disappointment. And to others, sauerkraut, onions (both fried and raw), relish, and spicy brown mustard enter the fray.
Former college football coach Mark Richt once delighted a gaggle of sports reporters with a graphic NSFW description of something he called Hot Dog Delight: Cut the hot dog longways, lay flat on toasted bread, cover in American cheese, melt in a toaster, then slather in beans before finishing it by drenching it all in ketchup. He suggests “devouring” this with a fork.
Every part of my body is screaming "NO!" at the thought of this. And Richt certainly has laid out the case for his indictment in Flavortown’s version of The Hague.
But at the same time, this urge has stolen too much of the hot dog’s mighty thunder. Suddenly the hot dog is too like America: We’ve got rules! Regulations! Demands! Debate! CONTROVERSY! Fodder for local news anchors to tsk-tsk in some canned faux-banter before tossing to a commercial.
The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council (which I did not make up for this and is a very real thing) has a list of 14 do’s and don'ts for proper hot dog eating etiquette. Shame on them.
We took something simple and endlessly fussed about it until the entire thing became less about enjoyment and became a tiresome debate with deeply dug-in factions. And for what? Just because? For the takes?
I am not without fault. My sin was advocating against ketchup and yellow mustard and, of course, my own contribution to the asinine l'affaire du sandwich.
In one of his earliest television programs, Anthony Bourdain, a food snob of the finest order but without any pretentiousness, had a fine take on what he would be fine with on his American cased meat.
"Now, I don't need onions or sauerkraut or any other nonsense," Bourdain said. "I'm a purist, so mustard is good enough."
The key phrase here: “good enough.” This humble vessel of meat needs just the bare essentials to bewitch your mouth.
If there are onions, I’ll have them. Sauerkraut? That’s divine. No kraut, but there is relish? Terrific. The only mustard you have is yellow? Fine. It is hot out here and I just wanna eat a hot dog.
In spite of the gatekeepers’ rules or the debate about whether it constitutes a sandwich, the hot dog survives because this modest Frankenstein’s monster of a foodstuff rises above the petty squabbling by simply being nothing better than any other food we eat.
Because we’re not trying to impress. We’re not trying to knock any socks off. We’re trying to enjoy a piece of meat encased in its carbohydrate conveyor.
The hot dog is the star of the summer because it is a blank canvas waiting for us to supply the magic of Hot Dog Summer.
Ben Krimmel is a writer from Baltimore who lives in New York.