Man Bites Dog: Hot Dog Culture in America

This is a book about one of the most humble of all American foods and a very symbol of American culture. In song and story, in all the popular media, the hot dog is celebrated as not just fun food, but as a presentation of how Americans think about themselves. Consider this: the world’s greatest of all immigrant nations is a historical hot dog. Lots of ethnicities are mixed together, seasoned, and stuffed into a sleek, streamlined casing, and then given a joke name, hot dog. Dress the dog in toppings that reflect the country’s various regions, and we have an American icon.

The hot dog story is told by showing the places in which these unassuming sausages are sold and by the people who sell them. Americanness is not just eating any kind of hot dog, certainly not the characterless, home-microwaved types. To fully savor a hot dog gustatorially and culturally, it has to be eaten in its native setting—at stands, ballparks, from street carts, in the good open air of North America. That is what we’ll show.

Two main themes run through the book. One is American ideologies and what hot dogs tell us about them. The second is the world of imagination. Each is connected to the other, and one of the best ways to explain these twins is by looking at hot doggeries in their natural settings.

Under the first category come our assumptions—our standard mythologies—about economics, individualism, and social mobility. It is about how and where we live and, especially, how Americans think about their places in the world. For instance, hot dogs are the great democratic food. Go to a hot dog stand or cart in New York, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Oakland, or Los Angeles, among other cities, and sooner or later a cross-section of local society will appear—rich and poor, laborer and executive, high and low. It’s the same at ball games, where people of all social standing rub elbows while stuffing the same kinds of hot dogs in their mouths between cheers or jeers.¹ Whether carried out in real life or not, social equality is a main American idea that runs through all of our history: it’s what makes us suspicious of social pretension, and what could be less pretentious than a hot dog?

Hot dogs belong to the realm of entrepreneurs and small-scale markets. Hot dog stands are mostly owned by petty entrepreneurs who want to make a decent living. For new immigrants, this was and is a way to rise in the world, to make it in America, the land of opportunity. Many do; some don’t. Here is the American story, told from the very beginning: you, the individual, can make it by pluck and luck. Hot dog places are all about this. They’re also about the neighborhoods in which the proprietors set them. The décor reflects their social and physical environments. A stand in a predominantly Mexican community will look very different from a white bread suburban one. An upscale hot dog stand, such as the great Hot Doug’s with its mixture of standard Chicago hot dogs and exotic sausages, could never exist in the deeply ethnic and local South Side Chicago neighborhoods.

In a way, related to décor and vendors’ expectations, hot dogs are a paradox. They are an industrially made food that is then turned into something individual, just like the décor of a stand or cart. Americans revere the idea of individualism and, at the same time, community. Going into a stand or standing on a street and eating from a cart gives strength to all of these feelings that rise from the experience. Think of it like a hot dog itself, meaty, juicy, and complex, and yet simple because packaged so neatly. Americans love simplicity in their culture, and there is nothing more basic than snacking on the little hot dog—only it’s not that simple.

The second motif is that of the imagination. It is a kind of twilight zone, a middle ground between light and shadow, where hopes, dreams, and culture are expressed by vernacular design and décor. If ever there was an outsider art, the hot dog stand is it.

There’s a reason why hot dogs places have particular kinds of designs. The stands may be simple boxes—or descendants of them—or carts and wagons. Some may be cookie-cutter–designed strip mall restaurants. But almost all are vividly colored, filled with bric-a-brac and with plenty of handmade vernacular art in their signage and logos.

To find out why, go to a hot dog stand and watch the diners. Upon getting their hot dog and fries, an otherworldly expression settles on the diners’ faces. For the moments that they’re in the dining area and eating that delectable dog, each one is out of the mundane world and in another. Whether dining alone or with others, the effect is always the same. Hot dog iconography reflects this fanciful world. Stands can look like hot dogs—images of happy hot dogs begging to be eaten, dancing hot dogs, flying hot dogs, well-dressed hot dogs, and even real dogs dressed as hot dogs grace eating places. Hot dogs are fun in this carnival world. Think Little Oscar and Munchkins, all imaginary, all American themes, and all in tacit opposition to the corporate business realm.

More than only fun, hot dogs to be consumed in public places represent a world as we remember it, or as we would like it to be. Who doesn’t remember that hot dog bought at the neighborhood stand, or maybe even at Nathan’s in Coney Island? Who doesn’t look forward to going to a ball game with family or friends, or maybe a picnic, in anticipation of a perfect world, and all featuring America’s great culinary creation?

DISCLAIMER

Dear Reader: We have tried our best to show the background and culture of hot dogs in America. In traveling across the United States and into Canada we quickly realized that this book cannot be a complete catalogue of hot dog styles. There are just too many hot dog eateries, and many, many more individual tastes to ever get them all in a slim volume, or even a big fat one. You have our deepest apologies. Nevertheless, we hope to have given you the core of the matter: the beautiful hot dog itself, embedded in and embellished with culture.

Because we know that there are so many opinions about everyone’s favorite hot dogs, we invite readers to contribute to our blog, www.manbitesdogbook.com. Also see our website.www.hotdoggeries.com. Sharing ideas about hot dogging is always great, especially rational ones.

THE BASIC HOT DOG

All living, breathing Americans know what hot dogs are, or think they do. Whether they call them frankfurters, franks, wieners, weenies, tube steaks, coneys, grillers, shaggy dogs, or just plain dogs, everyone knows that hot dogs are tubes of meat, placed in buns with toppings. ¹ They have always been the quintessential public dining treats—long before the rise of hamburgers—sold on streets, at fairs and festivals, at picnics (weenie roasts), and in fast food venues. From hot dog stands to service stations, hot dogs are everywhere American food is served.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a specific definition of them, to wit: hot dogs, also called frankfurters, wieners, or bologna, are made of very finely chopped (comminuted) raw skeletal meats from various livestock, mixed with seasonings, curing ingredients (that add color and flavor), and other semisolids, that are stuffed into casings, in which state they are cooked and smoked. Hot dogs are link-shaped and come in various lengths and diameters, hence tiny cocktail franks and jumbo half-pounders at Las Vegas’s Slots-A-Fun Casino.

Like their namesakes, dogs—in the sense of the original domesticated wolf dogs and not the many genetically manipulated breeds we have today—few pure or natural hot dogs exist in the real world. Some artisanal makers, like Gilbert’s Craft Sausages of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, are close. Gilbert’s product is made with beef sirloin, beef, and water, with small amounts of salt and natural flavorings, in a beef collagen casing. This is ideal for high-end hot dog places, but most hot dogs fit the simple USDA definition. By far, most of them are skinless, meaning that the chopped meat is stuffed into an artificial casing, cooked, and then the casing is stripped off. It is a process invented in Chicago in the 1930s that is now the industry standard.

Nor are all hot dogs entirely made of nothing but meat. By rule, they are allowed to contain 10 percent water, 3.5 percent nonmeat binders and extenders such as dried milk or cereals, and 2 percent soy protein. As for fat, the substance that carries flavors, it adds a kind of texture, and even a fat flavor, and can be up to 30 percent of the total ingredients. A 2-ounce hot dog, the normal size, might be only 1.1 ounces of actual meat. Oddly, turkey and chicken hot dogs have no such restrictions on fat, so in theory they can contain far more of the substance than normal hot dogs.²

Some hot dogs are hybrids of highly processed meats and nonanimal protein substances, but other hot dogs are wholly nonmeat (aside from the small numbers of unavoidable insect parts allowed by law). Manufacturers of vegetarian products, such as Yves, Hain, Tofurky, and Field Roast, produce sausages whose central protein ingredient is either wheat gluten or soybeans (tempeh or tofu) or both. All of them need binders to hold their shapes, so Tofurky’s franks label shows them containing water, vital wheat gluten, organic tofu puree (water, organic soybeans, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride), expeller pressed non-hexane extracted isolated soy protein, expeller pressed canola oil, spices, sea salt, onion powder, evaporated cane juice, pepper, natural vegetarian flavors, natural smoke flavor, granulated garlic, xanthan gum, konjac flour, carrageenan, wheat starch, natural caramel color and annatto. Water, the first ingredient, goes toward the product’s low calorie counts.³ These kinds of sausages are not confined to home use or health food dining spots, but they are increasingly part of menus at newer, trendy hot dog places, especially in California and New York City. Vegetarian hot dogs are one of the best sellers at Vicious Dogs in Los Angeles, a place that caters to many young people. As for flavor, in a test of several major brands, Consumer Reports noted: The dogs were so off the mark (‘they seemed to just mimic real food,’ said one tester) that even a vegetarian might find them hard to swallow.⁴

Hot dogs/sausages have other iterations. Some years ago Texas A&M University’s agriculture department experimented with fish hot dogs. The result was a product that was described as canned tuna fish in a tube.⁵ In parts of Chicago’s South Side the mother-in-law dog is a local delicacy. A cornmeal-based tamale (not using traditional Mexican masa but Mississippi cornmeal grits, tamale style) is served in a hot dog bun with the usual Chicago condiments. The dish is a carbohydrate fiend’s dream, but at least one stand serves it with an actual meat sausage in the middle of a split tamale.⁶ Even Swedish (or Slovak) potato sausages usually served with a thick, dill-laced cream sauce have been known to appear in the middle of a bun. Like Italian or Polish sausages served on buns or bread, these might not be called hot dogs, but they are analogs, eaten and thought of in the same ways.

If lots of products are called hot dogs, then what are the common elements? Among them are the cultural power of the name, and the tubular shape. The world has other foods that come in generally oblong shapes. The tamale is a stuffed food, and cevapcici is a sausage-shaped chopped meat product familiar in the Balkans. Both can be served as street food, and they appear in the United States, but they just do not have the cachet of meaty hot dogs and will never really replace them in Americans’ minds.

What makes the hot dog familiar, endlessly amusing as an object itself, to say nothing of lewd jokes, is the shape. The hot dog is a classic example of form following function, in architect Louis Sullivan’s memorable phrase.⁷ Since intestines are long tubes, stuffing them makes for cylindrical objects. The hot dog, wrapped meat defined by closure at each end, is an exemplar of industrial products, though invented in the preindustrial age. They are mass produced in a single shape and function as a portion-controlled food. In fact, they might be the first such product in America. Hot dogs are easy to handle and convenient to prepare, hence they are perfect for street food vendors and consumers alike. Like many other factory-made prepared foods that followed, they embody the industrial processes that produced them. Eating a hot dog is really absorbing the history and current practices of America’s entire food production systems.

HOW HOT DOGS ARE MADE

There is a folk saying, often attributed to Otto von Bismarck, apocryphally, and used in politics: It’s like sausage. You don’t want to know how it’s made. Many sausage eaters agree or are indifferent, but inquiring minds—to cop a phrase—want to know what they are and what is in them. And if sausages, hot dogs specifically, are industrially produced, then they also are the products of industrial history. As manufactured items, made by hand and machine, sausages are dressed in lots of cultural ideas, not the least being the fear of what is in them and the effects of their consumption on diners.

DANGEROUS DOGS

A political cartoon in the Chicago Daily Tribune of November 1, 1884, depicted political figures standing at the edge of a pig mire watching a pig with James G. Blaine’s (the Republican presidential nominee that year) face on it. Standing on the bank is Carl Schurz, German-born, the great and utterly honest reformer, and although he is a Republican, he is an opponent of Blaine’s. A thin figure with a beard says, A pig is the true embodiment of everything that is excellent, it makes the frankfurter wurst, and both, like me, you must take on trust.⁸ Most of us take hot dogs on trust of their federal inspection laws, even if we don’t trust our political leaders.

Americans’ relationships with industrially made foods have always been uncertain. The old advertising phrase untouched by human hands is meant to portray an image of gleamingly stainless steel machines, sanitary beyond hint of corruption by germs.⁹ By that definition, hot dogs ought to be considered ideally safe foods, but in reality they are not seen as such. Anthropologists who have written about food in human cultures often observe that some foods are considered less desirable than others, to the point of taboo in some cases. Consider pork in Jewish and Muslim food practices, or less formally, eating canines and felines in most Western societies as examples. In anthropologist Mary Douglass’s memorable phrase, the division is purity versus danger.¹⁰ Hot dogs lie somewhere between those poles. Americans are told by the meat industry that the products are bacteriologically safe and protected by government regulations. When purchased in stores they seem to be hygienically packaged and labeled, so no dog or cat, lungs, and lips could be ingredients. But, historical memory lingers in folklore. That is, Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, with its horrific description of unsanitary sausage making in a giant Chicago meat packing house in 1906, is the way that many people still view sausage making. Herbert Scott’s poems Ham and Red Meat, the former about maggoty meat, among many other horrors, are testimony to a wariness about meat in general in America.¹¹

Apart from ethical questions about eating animals, health is the main consumer concern about sausages in general, hot dogs in particular. In former days, unclean ingredients were both legitimate worries and the subjects of mordant jokes. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, advocates of healthy eating have brought hot dogs into low repute, no matter how many Americans consume them. The main culprit, according this view, is fat, but other ingredients might be just as dangerous. Sodium nitrite and nitrate are among them. A detailed and well-researched study published by the World Cancer Research Fund in 2010 shows that sodium nitrite can lead to carcinogenic N-nitroso compounds (NOCs) in the [rodent and human] gastro-intestinal tract.¹² The report does not say that eating smoked meats absolutely will cause cancer in individuals, but organizations such as the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)—and many vegetarian websites—have declared that a fact. The PCRM put up a large billboard at the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Indianapolis showing an open cigarette box filled with grilled hot dogs. One billboard in Illinois declares: Hot Dogs Cause Butt Cancer, with an image of a male patient in a surgical gown opened in the back to reveal his posterior and holding a hot dog in his hand. Actually, the USDA considered banning nitrites in the 1970s, but decided not to do so, stating that small amounts in food were no danger to the public. That decision has never appeased critics, but it has pleased the processed meat industry.

Since the later decades of the twentieth century, cholesterol has become the great Satan of America’s health industry. In voluminous literature and almost daily imprecations in the popular media, saturated fats are held responsible for all kinds of deadly ailments from clogged arteries to obesity. Naturally, hot dogs are on the grill, as it were, because the meat versions contain goodly quantities of bad fats. USDA regulations allow not more than 30 percent fat content in a hot dog; that is, in the standard 2-ounce hot dog a half ounce will be saturated fat. In a petition to the USDA in 2004, Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest demonstrated that 1 percent of the total American consumption of these