Hot Dogs and American History

Hot Dogs and American History

Are Hot Dogs American? What is American? Well, very little originated here but when America gets a hold of anything we take it as our own and do it in a big way and our own way. America was a vast market for savvy, enterprising merchants.
So the name hot dog is probably more American than the actual sausage which came from Germany and Vienna. So to this day we have a long list of names with the ‘hot dog” being the most common and the most American. The name weiner is another name for vienna and frankfurter is still used.
I had an all beef frank today on this 4th day of July. I googled and learned that 50 million hot dogs will be eaten in the USA today. I learned that an all beef sausage is called a frank and is more heavily spiced and a weiner is usually all pork, so I had a frank which I was clueless but now I am better informed and so are you, probably. I also read that eating a hot dog every day increases the risk of cancer. I still love these darn sausages and will eat them anyway, nitrates and all and so will many other Americans. They just fit us in so many ways.
I was in Frankfort Germany and I had a sausage in a bun and it may have been better than our American version, but it was different. So, we do have our own American version even though I used a fancy mustard and whole wheat bread, I still ate my frank, hot dog, whatever it is called; with great relish. Though I did not eat real relish which is also very common.
The “hot dog” may have contained real dog or named after the dachshund dog and the calling out the word “hot as enticement, but a hot dog is the first and best fast food available and has been around for hundreds of years.
Does anyone really care about this hotdog business? I do and nothing is more typically American than the hot dog. I know it has issues, but I am going to love it anyway since this is where I live.

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Responses

  1. First Night (New years eve),on Boston Common…Looking at the ice sculptures..checking out the skaters on the Frog Pond…Got my arm around my Passy ,so she doesnt slip and fall…and…Eating a Hot Dog !…Heaven!,How I miss it all (sigh).

  2. When I came to the US in 1948 a well meaning person insisted I have a hot-dog. It was piled with every kind of garnish you could imagine. I ate it….even though I didn’t care for it. I was ill for three days. That was over 60 years ago and I haven’t eaten another hot-dog since then. In an effort to become Americanized I have eaten quite a few hamburgers over the years. Maybe if the hot-dog had been on a bun without all the trimmings I would have liked it.

  3. I see Rose with a little help I may quicken you appetite for ** Würstchen **??

    So gets started: a Frankfurter is a sausage out of pure pork which has been in the smoke for some time.
    Weiner:: ( Wiener ) are sausages half pork and beef.
    The hot dog is a german invention which were brought to market 1480. And as far as it concerns American food I’ll have to say the Americans are worlds leader in fast food
    compositions. Michael

  4. Well, Michael, we have a contradiction or our countries are different in the meat used for Frankfurter. I just ate one on the 4th and it was all beef and that is what i read in Wikipedia. We also have kosher ones and they don’t use pork.
    I loved the sausages in Germany but here we have evolved.