MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
30 November 2008
A question of major importance. What do you put on your hot dog? and where's your favorite place to get one? I like mine with chili, cheese, bacon, sauerkraut & mustard. My favorite stand is here, closely followed by here.
I like mine with mustard. Or, mustard and kraut. Or, mustard and onions. Or, mustard, kraut, and onions. Usually just mustard. I like a chili dog. I also like a slaw dog. I usually don't get chili or slaw because it's messy and I can't keep food off my shirt. I get my hot dogs at the ball park.
Standard Chicago-style: mustard, bright green sweet relish, onions, celery salt, tomatoes, and a dill pickle spear. I never knew perfection until I tasted a Chicago dog.
I'm embarrassed to say I've never eaten a hot-dog. But I've had some frankfurters in Germany that just tasted of plastic.
When you say chili-dog does that mean you put chili sauce on it or does the actual sausage have chili as a core ingredient? (cos that sounds more my cup of tea)
Maybe it's just hometown pride, but I'm a big fan of the classic Chicago dog. And for me they're best when wrapped in paper with greasy thin french fries. Shit, now I really want hotdogs. And on a similar tip, a polish with kraut is pretty amazing.
Ketchup, even though that makes my Philly boyfriend cringe, a bit of mustard and relish. I don't much care for hotdogs, but then I've never had one from a stand on the East Coast. That may change my mind.
I feel compelled to mention that I think that hot dogs are nasty.
I am going to paraphrase my husband here, "I would rather get punched in the face than eat a hot dog". His original answer was that he would rather get punched in the face than drink a Coke. Who doesn't like Coke?!
You know, one food stuff Australia doesn't do very well, are hot dogs. We have the obligatory BBQs with a thin sausage in a limp piece of bread, smothered with tomato sauce (not quite ketchup, it's different) and occasionally a few fried onions.
We have pink "little boys" or "footy franks" which are dipped into tomato sauce - and believe it or not, are much closer to a hot dog than the sausage.
We don't have hot dog stands with 'dogs like the ones you linked to.
But BY GOODNESS do I wish we did.
I want one SO VERY MUCH right now.
And I'm with you, eekacat. Softdrinks are crap. ESPECIALLY Coke. Anything that I can use to clean my oven with is not for drinking!
the owner of the second hot dog stand I linked actually refuses to put ketchup on a dog for anyone over the age of twelve. He says it's an insult.
A hot dog stand opened in Fairbanks about two years ago who did this, and anyone under 12 only got one small packet of ketchup "to ween them off of that shit."
A large (7") Polish with everything (meaning Polock Johnny's special sauce and chili), or a Sabrett's with mustard and onion relish, or a kielbasa from Kiszka on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint with spicy brown mustard and sauerkraut the way my mom makes it: in a saucepan, regular kraut, drained; 2 sliced granny smith apples; brown sugar; a few caraway seeds; a little white wine; simmer for a few hours.
Soda in order of preference: Mountain Dew, root beer, birch beer, Dr. Pepper, orange soda.
San Jose (and California in general) doesn't really do hot dogs, there are very isolated hotdog stands and a few Weirschntzels. Hot dogs aren't really part the cultural landscape, like New York or Chicago. Hot dogs, for me, are what you get at a baseball game or a BBQ.
heh. in brazil we put EVERYTHING on the hot dog:
sausage, tomato sauce, peas, corn, mayo, ketchup, mustard, vinaigrette, mashed potatoes, grated parmesan, cream cheese, chicken... (fyi chili is not a brazilian thing)
around here I like the simple polish+onions they sell at 2 am in the street.
I wouldn't do ketchup by itself, but find it's a good balance for the acidity of the Sauerkraut. I don't trust anyone who dismisses something out of hand like that. Freaking elitist hotdogistas. They probably read "The Hot Dog Spectator."
You know, the whole 'you're doing it wrong' thing seems to come out of New York city more than anywhere I know. Only pizza that's good is from New York. Only deli worth a shit is in New York. BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. I say Fuck New York and it's attitude.
There's a whole world out there that does things differently. I have a friend from Iowa that puts Ketchup on everything. It's just how they do it where he's from. When we have lunch together he doesn't say "what the fuck, don't you want to slather ketchup on everything?" He does his thing, and I do mine, and we enjoy our lunch. The only time I come across people who are militant about that kind of thing, they're from New York. Does the whole city have a huge inferiority complex? It's like everything is a competition that they have to "win." Maybe I'm the weird one having grown up in Northern California, and raised by european parents. I like the fact that there's a lot of variety in the world. There is no best thing.
You know, the whole 'you're doing it wrong' thing seems to come out of New York city more than anywhere I know. Only pizza that's good is from New York. Only deli worth a shit is in New York.
eek, I agree with you for the most part about that attitude (although I do believe that thin-crust NY pizza is better than Chicago deep-dish), but I am militant about the ketchup on hot dogs thing. I actually don't even use ketchup on my fries. The only thing I do like ketchup on is egg sandwiches, oddly.
Two possibilities: Chili, cheese, mustard, and chopped onion, if it's a place I like the chili; if not, mustard (spicy brown, please -- the yellow stuff's for pretzels), relish, and sometimes kraut.
The celery salt sounds interesting, but I don't get the Chicago pickle wedge thing. It's more pickle than dog. And slaw can be good with chili.
If it's a dirty dog from an NYC cart, I go with the hot onions. I find their weird orange color delectable. One of the few things you can still get for a buck. And a grape soda.
Eekacat, New Yorkers have to justify putting up with other New Yorkers, so they search carefully for things about the city that are worth bragging about -- diamonds in a bedpan.
But really, people from all over engage in that shit, say Chicago for instance (it's not called the Windy City because of the weather), and people of all sorts will tell others there's only one way, like Seattle coffee douches, but most people just let the boosters boost, because that's their thing and it's harmless and well-intentioned, if annoying. Lots of New Yorkers are just like you, probably even weirder, having grown up in New York, and been raised by parents from wherever, or having grown up wherever, and found themselves moving to New York.
Meaning, don't splash me with that tar, please.
I hate to say it, jon, but eating ketchup on egg sandwiches disqualifies one from talking shit about others' ketchup use.
I never could go in a bedpan. I sat on one before surgery for an hour once. They refused to let me use the john once I was in pre-op. They had to settle for emptying my bladder with a catheter once I was knocked out in surgery. I bet I filled the bag.
Chicago has a pretty serious "FOOD: UR DOIN IT WRONG" thing going on too, definitely. I will say that I tend to prefer Chicago-style for most foods, with the total and complete exception of pizza -- New York pizza really and truly is infinitely superior. Second fave, for me, is actually St. Louis style.
The only time I come across people who are militant about that kind of thing, they're from New York.
You haven't tried to feed Northern (sweetened) cornbread to a Southerner, I take it.
Or Manhattan clam chowder* to a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander.
Or East Coast sourdough to someone raised in San Francisco, where different wild yeasts romp through the air.
The list goes on. Lots of people have a specific, regionally restricted notion of the "right" way to cook or serve something.
*Even as I'm making fun of regional snobbery, I swear I had to restrain myself from putting big scare quotes around clam chowder. Because, y'know, regional snobbery.
I had a girlfriend once who was visiting my parents' house with me. My mom was making scrambled eggs for our breakfast. The girlfriend, in a rather peremptory manner, insisted to my mom that scrambled eggs weren't made right if you didn't stir in a little milk. My mom made the scrambled eggs with milk just for her.
When I dumped that girlfriend a few days later, I said, "Let me tell you how to shit."
"Kokt korv med mos" sometimes known as "en halv special" - one boiled hot dog, two scoops of mashed potato, and only mustard on top (no ketchup, bostongurka, fried onion or shrimp salad, thankyouverymuch). It'll look something like this. When I'm further north (and it's available) I'll get a tunnbrödrulle, that's two boiled hot dogs, mashed potato and again, only mustard, inside thin bread rolled up. Fits more mashed potato.
I eat slaw dogs from Tony's about once a week or so. Mustard, slaw and that secret brown "hot dog sauce". Two of them and an order of fries and that's a satisfying lunch.
If I lived closer to town, I'd eat the Special Dog at Pete's Famous, which features the Sauce Which is Not a Sauce Yet Neither Is It Chili Though It Resembles Both, which is delicious. With a Grapico, of course.
My go-to hot dog fixins are ketchup, mustard, relish and cheese. I'm open to variations, though, and I love a good knife-and-fork chili cheese dog every now and then.
As for the great ketchup debate, my take is this: Hot dogs are one of the great populist foods of our culture. Their history is all about feeding the working class, cheaply, while they were either on the go or having a day at the beach.
They are the people's food.
The people can put whatever the hell they want on them, if you ask me.
Yesterdog remains my favorite hotdog place. I have fond memories of going there with my dad almost every Saturday when he'd pick me up from my mom's house for the weekend in the early 1980s. Back then I'd get a Cheddardog--just chili and cheese. As I got older it turned into an Ultradog extra pickles no onions. Then I added onions on. Today I'd get a Killerdog, which is chili, cheese, ketchup, mustard, pickles, onions and kraut.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
