Ah, summer, the season for hot dogs. From local ballparks and backyard grills to the best roadside stands, you’ll find a range of dogs that reflect family traditions and local cultures.
Debates about its history as well as the proper condiments abound. Both Frankfurt, Germany (hence the name frankfurter), and Vienna (the wiener) claim to be its birthplace. Did German immigrants first bring this sausage to New York in the 1860s? Some say the dog was first named dachshund sausages because of their long, thin shape, and that the term evolved to hot dog because dachshund was just too hard to spell.
Some accounts credit German baker Charles Feltman with selling this sausage in a bun from his Coney Island stand to beachgoers back in the 1860s as a convenient meal that did not require plates or cutlery. And longtime employee Nathan Handwerker quit in 1916 to open a rival hot dog shop, Nathan’s Famous. Decades later, Nathan’s launched the first July 4th hot dog eating contest, a tradition that continues to this day with a record set in 2021 of 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes.
In Chicago, Oscar Mayer launched his own hot dog empire in the 1880s. Mayer became an industry innovator by inventing a machine to mass-produce one of America’s favorite foods, streamlining packaging and creating the quality control standards needed to make them widely available.
Now, hot dogs — easily cooked at home, over campfires and in outdoor venues — are eaten on the move with friends and embody summer’s carefree vibe. Americans eat an estimated 7 billion of them between Memorial Day and Labor Day, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. The biggest hot dog holiday is July 4th, when Americans collectively eat around 150 million hot dogs. President Franklin D. Roosevelt served a hot dog on a soft bun with mustard to visiting British monarch King George VI, who was so enchanted that he asked for seconds.
The classic U.S. hot dog is made with all beef, but hot dogs also can be fashioned from a variety of meats, including pork, chicken and turkey, and these days you can find vegetarian hot dogs made of soy and beans and tofu. The best? Those plump all-beef dogs in natural casings that snap at first bite.
Regional variations are endless. There’s the Chicago dog, an all-beef hot dog in a poppyseed bun with bright yellow mustard, equally bright green pickle relish, chopped onion, sliced tomato, dill pickle and pickled peppers. Then there’s the New York dog with sauerkraut, brown mustard and diced raw onions. In Arizona, find a Mexican variation with pinto beans, salsa, mayonnaise and bacon.
Hot dogs have not lost their appeal. I’m seeing a renaissance of wild and wonderful creations lifting vendors to culinary destinations: the Papaya King in New York City, Pink’s Hot Dogs in Los Angeles and Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C. But when this New Jersey girl thinks of the best dog, I hark back to the ones my dad cooked on the grill, split down the middle, juicy and crisped, cooked alongside sweet princess corn slathered with butter. You can’t go wrong with corn and dogs, ever.
