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Dogs' Raw Deal Are hot dogs America's most underrated meat?

| August 21, 2019 8:51 AM

By KEITH ERICKSON

For Coeur Voice

Oh, the misunderstood hot dog.

A summertime barbeque staple, Americans gobble them by the billions. They’re versatile, tasty and affordable.

But frankfurters are also an easy target for scorn from meat lovers who raise their eyebrows as they question the contents of the tubular fare while burger eaters relish at the thought of devouring more predictable patties.

So what’s the beef with hot dogs?

“When it comes right down to it, hot dogs are just not an exciting meal,” said Zachary Mehaffey, owner Triple B Backhills Barbecue, a popular Coeur d’Alene-based food truck. “When you’re going out for a meal, nobody exactly says, ‘let’s go get hot dogs.’”

Despite their unsavory reputation, Americans are chowing down on hot dogs like never before.

According to the National Hog Dog and Sausage Council (yes, there is such an organization), Americans consumed 20 billion hot dogs in 2018, an uptick of about 4 percent from the year before. That works out to about 70 hot dogs per person each year.

Idaho residents are ahead of the curve, eating an estimated 93 hot dogs per person annually, according to the council.

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“When it comes right down to it, hot dogs are just not an exciting meal. When you’re going out for a meal, nobody exactly says, ‘let’s go get hot dogs.’”

--Zachary Mehafey, Triple B Backhills Barbecue

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At his Best Avenue food truck, Mehaffey entices customers with a super decked-out frankfurter curiously called the Junk Yard Dog. “It’s one of our No. 1 best sellers,” he says.

The all-beef hot dogs are topped with pulled pork, mac and cheese, pineapple and drizzled with famed Triple B Backhills Barbecue sauce, Mehaffey says, and they’re a steal at just $7.37 (including tax!).

While specialty hot dogs are a hit locally, your standard cylindrical meat sticks are a tough sell in these parts. Mehaffey speculates it’s a regional thing.

“It’s not like the East Coast where hot dogs are just sort of an established food,” he said.

While hot dog joints aren’t as common out West they do have a niche, particularly with the younger crowd, says Laura Smith, manager of Messy Jesse’s burgers in Spirit Lake.

“A lot of kids will eat a hot dog before a hamburger,” Smith says.

For the more mature taste buds, Messys offers Rippers, a quarter-pound 100 beef deep fried hot dog split down the middle topped with heaps of cheese, onions, relish and sauerkraut for the adventurous.

And when the sun shines, so do the Rippers. “I’d say we sell twice as many in the summer, Smith says.

Satisfying appetites for centuries, hot dogs are believed to have been “invented” in the late 19th century by American observers of German immigrants, who ate sausages on buns. The Americans joked that the sausages looked suspiciously like the Germans’ dachshunds, according to Bruce Kraig, a hot dog historian and professor emeritus at Chicago’s Roosevelt University.

When it comes to culinary hesitation over weenies, it all boils down what’s inside. People’s main beef with hot dogs is exactly that: the beef.

Which parts of an animal, whether sow or cow, are being used in these tiny tube steaks? Admittedly, it ain’t that pretty. According to the FDA, hot dogs can be made of pork, chicken, beef, turkey or a combo thereof.

And virtually any meaty part of the animal may be used. Despite the gray area of exactly what’s inside the hot dog, to think that the contents may be unhealthy is simply a bunch of baloney.

If you just can cast aside the “what’s inside” apprehension, Mehaffey says, hot dogs can be a delicious and satisfying meal.

“When it all comes right down to it, hot dogs are just a great traditional food,” he says. “How can you go wrong that?”

HOT DOG DATA

•Hot dogs as we know them today likely date to 15th Century Austria and Germany. The first hot dogs in the United States were likely sold from a cart in New York’s Bowery. Charles Feltman opened the first Coney Island Hot Dog Stand in 1971.

•According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a hot dog — which has an official definition — must be no more than 30% fat and no more than 10% water. The typical hot dog has about 15- calories and 5 grams of protein.

•Consumers buy $3 billion worth of hot dogs each year just in supermarkets. At the ball park, more than 18.3 million will be eaten this season. The average hot-dog vendor’s bin at a ballpark weights 40 pounds.

•Mickey Mouse’s first on-screen words were “Hot dog!”

•Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, 35, won a record 12th Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog-Eating Contest in Coney Island, New York, this July 4 by mowing through 71 hot dogs in 10 minutes, coming three short of his own record of 74 set last year.