June 11, 2026 • 51 mins
From baseball games to picnics, from street vendors to haute cuisine, the humble hot dog is an American icon. But where did it come from, and how did it get so popular? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the origins of the infamous dog, how it got its name -- and why so many people have so strong opinions about what should or should not go it.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Hot Dog who is that? Our
super producer, mister Max Williams Hot Diggity Dog, Chocolate Starfish,
Chocolate Starfish, then the.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hot Dogs flavor water.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
That's none other than mister Noel Brown no Diggity wonderful
co host brother and podcast arms, also the research associate
for today's episode.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
And and the friend, the front person of olymp Biscuit
cover band. I've been keeping that from you, guys. That's
what I do on the weekends when no one's looking. No,
I'll be rolling. They hate him. Well, no, that's different.
I roll and rolling, rolling, rolling. Uh, and you're been
bowling bowling, bowling, balling. He already said that, You did
(01:17):
say that. I'm just fitting it into the whole Limp
Biscuit motif. I'm fucking at the top because we are
indeed talking about we're talking sausage. Yes, yes, hot dogs.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Indeed as you may as you maybor call, they're a
pretty big deal in the US culture. But the story
doesn't really start there, does it.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Does it? Ever? You know maybe maybe sometimes.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Maybe sometimes maybe sometimes, But it's it's funny because I
was thinking about your research here not too long ago,
when I was in a hurry to make dinner, and
I said, you know what, I'm gonna make a couple
of dogs.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I'm gonna do it right.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I'm gonna have some some relish, I'm gonna have a
little bit of onion, a little bit of chili, got
nasty with some cheese, and I thought, oh man, this
is such a great this is such a great food stuff.
But I think maybe we start here. I don't know
(02:23):
about you, man, but I've always been mystified by the cylindrical,
tubular dare we shay phallic shape of the hot dog must.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Happen, We must have been, but we will know it's true.
You can't really look at a hot dog and not
think that, at least for a hot second. And it
all goes. It all comes back to guts, man, It's
all about guts. Hot dogs do to your point, Ben,
(02:55):
And you can't hold a thing like that in your
hand not wonder about the story lineage of such a
delicious and handholdable snack. And most historians do trace their
origins to German sausages. But the idea of the sausage
of making a cylindrical meat product goes further back than that,
(03:17):
goes back, in fact, to sausages before the hot dog.
The hot dog's ancestor is, of course, the humble sausage,
and a lot of records, historical records reference a sausage
like food that first appeared in ancient civilizations, including the
Greeks and the Romans. It was achieved this shape that
(03:40):
you've mentioned, Ben, by stuffing minced meat meats of various
origins into animal intestines. That's the casing the snappy bit
on the outside. And nobody likes to think of that, No, Adam,
I don't really care. I think we you and I
all both we'll eat it. We'll eat a gut from
time to time. Mm hm Yeah, I like a little
(04:01):
tripe in my in my fa And you know, this
was a way of creating a longer shelf life for
the meat in question by stuffing it inside this kind
of edible pouch.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, because think about it, folks, you've you've got the
animal that you've already slaughtered, right, your sheep, your goat,
your pig, your cow, et cetera. And you have the
food that is prized, right, the protein you would eat,
but then you're thinking, how do I get all this
back in one place? And so it makes sense that
(04:39):
you would have the intestines and look at them and say, oh,
I can the guiver a perfect package here.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
A perfect package. Indeed, Ben, no, you nailed it. And actually,
if you're looking for some other sausage related episodes of
Ridiculous Sisty, we got two that come to mind. One place,
Richard Blaze, for sure, that was more bacon oriented. Well, no,
it wasn't a bacon versus sausage. That's true in his
episode of Food Court that you and I did. But
(05:08):
we also did an episode pretty early in the history
of this show about botox, the vacullinium toxin that was
derived from spoiled sausages, and also about sausage intestine type
casings used to create early Zeppelins. And you can find
both of those in the feed. But we are talking
(05:29):
specifically about that aha moment that usually comes along with
an oopsie of some sort, right, yeah, yeah, the aha oopsie,
and this in this case, it happened at the behest
of the Roman emperor Nero, whose chef goes by the
name of Gaius, may have accidentally stumbled upon the method
(05:52):
of creating a casing out of animal guts. God, this is,
you know, a legendary myth kind of thing. But Guias was,
you know, overseeing his kitchen, was preparing these roasted pigs
for some sort of you know, presumably debauched bacchanalia.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And they were supposed to be starved for a whole
week before they're killed.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Right. I didn't know this. No, I didn't know that either, Ben,
And that that is I guess a way of I
guess is that sort of like a veal, It makes
the meat more delicate or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Maybe it's we've all eaten Chiplin's before. Maybe it's a
matter of hygiene.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Could well be Ben, But as the legend goes, Guyas was,
you know, overseeing his kitchen. And by the way, fabulous
article from history dot com, the Extra Long History of
the hot Dog that I'm pulling some of this information from.
Very clever. We love our writers. Over your history. Stephanie
Butler wrote this one from ancient Roman sausage to Nathan's
(06:53):
Coney Island hot Dog, The history of tubular meat may
stretch back millennia, she writes. So god Bias was overseeing
the preparation of these starved animals, and one of them,
it would seem, was roasted without being cleaned. So, in
other words, all of the offal and the stuff that
(07:14):
you know inside the cavity had not been pulled out
as customarily would be the case before roasting them. And
when he popped the thing open, outspilled a cornucopia of
gutty parts.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
M Yeah, this guyas we could only imagine, encounters something
like when you open a package that's been delivered and
you see all the little puffs of air, right, the
plastic air puffying or the styrofoam or what have you.
(07:48):
He sees all this packaging essentially, and because the intestines
are empty, as the pig had been starved for a week,
and because they are puffed up from the heat, they
clearly look like contators. And he has this light bulb
moment way before light bulbs are invented, where he apocryphally exclaims,
(08:11):
I have discovered something of great importance. And so he's
got a bunch of like wheat and spices, right, because
he's top dog chef.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So he.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I'm laughing because he literally stuffs the intestines with this
minced meat and the spices and this wheat as filler.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Is it twisted or genius or geniusly twisted.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I think it's both, man.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I think it really is. I mean, it's the kind
of story we always hear when it comes to like
the first person that figured out how to eat the
snotty insides of a crustacean and then found it to
be delectable, or the mushrooms that you know killed you
are made just see crazy stuff until you found the
one that just tasted.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Nice, right right. And we do know thanks to hotdog
dot org. Hot dash dog dot.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Love that that exists, as we typically do with these
very specific orgs. I love the Internet, man.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
What we learned from our friends over at hot dashdog
dot org is that sausage is indeed one of the
oldest forms of processed food. It's even mentioned in the
Odyssey by Homer not Honda, dating back to ninth century BCE.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Ben, have you heard a lot of this kerfuffle that's
being made about the Christopher Nolan Odyssey coming out?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Dude, I was just reading about some of that, people
seem to be skeptical. I think there was a trailer release,
but I'm a sucker for a good a good piece
of mythology.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, I love a sword and sandals kind of thing.
But I think the issue is that Nolan is pretty
you know, infamous for being a stickler for details, for
like historical details, and he has you know, said as
much about this project in his press runs. But it's
my understanding that there is not anyone of note that
is of Greek lineage that has been cast in the film.
(10:09):
And also there are some questions about like the type
of bronze, whether they could have like bronze that was
made to appear jet black, whether that was a process
that was even popular at the time. So there's some
people that are getting a little up in arms about it,
but it is true, and you gotta wonder are sausage
is featured in Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, spoiler folks, we suspect that's the main plot,
because one would hope we've actually read the Odyssey.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
It's actually a sequel to seth Rogen's Sausage Party. Absolutely
yet so. But speaking of spoilers, the whole idea here,
and this idea of it being a processed food is
to again extend the shelf life. But this early version
it was really just kind of creating sort of an
air tight package. Like you said, it wasn't until layed
(10:59):
or that more preservatives would be used, and that it
truly would be a much more processed food as we
know those today nitrates and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Right, Yeah, Max, give us some sweeping civilization esque music
to portray the passing of time?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Do perf? How goes SIEV music? Do you build it?
We're belding so so sim music at least according to
step six. It's actually what it does is it combines
music of all the different civilizations you have met in
the game. Oh oh, and that reminds me Max really quickly.
Just and I know this isn't exactly on topic, but
(11:38):
jumping back to Christopher Nolans the Odyssey, another thing that
he said, and it sort of contradicts a lot of
his other choices, is that they didn't have orchestras back then,
so he wanted the score to be ented they wanted
he wanted the score to be entirely orchestra free. So uh,
Ludwig van Gorenson. I think we both love it for
his production work with Childish Gambino, and also he's just
(11:59):
really become kind of the it composer in Hollywood. He
apparently made the entire score using only gongs, various sizes
of gongs, but then he just kind of slipped in
the fact that he also ran them through modular synthesizers
and which definitely didn't exist either.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And hit the gongs with big old wingers. Yeah, because
we're adults, we can so Max, thank you again for that.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Sort We squandered that sweeping time change music.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
But yeah, here we are over time. Centuries and centuries happen,
empires rise and full, but food remains a constant right
because it's a universal need of people. Sure, so different
regions of Europe are figuring out what d rose Chef
apparently called later. We suspect Nolan and I suspect this
(12:55):
was a lot of parallel thinking. As you always like
to say, Nol, but you gotta face it. We go
to Germany fairly often. Noel goes more often than I do,
but Germany's very famous or sausages, like if you walk
into a German butcher shop. I'm confused by how many
(13:19):
types of sausage exists.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Well, the word wiener, you know, is derived from the
region of Germany called Vienna or Veen, and that is
where the term wiener comes from. Another you know, interchangeable,
at least the way it's come to be today. Frankfurture
comes from another city in Germany called Frankfurt, and they
(13:43):
claim that their sausage tradition dates as far back as
the Middle Ages. There are some local historians that trace
Frankfurt is back to the thirteenth century, but Vienna also
claims to have had a significant hand in the creation
of the sausage made from a mixture of pork and
beef that resembles much more closely than what Gaius was
(14:05):
up to the modern hot dog, and even the term
hot dog, as we'll get to its origin is a
German dog. So Frankfurt, as it's known in Germany, Mine
the mine being a river, is traditionally credited with originating
the Frankfurter, but the claim is disputed by a lot
(14:26):
of folks that do seem to believe that the sausage
known as the dochsundt dot that means the little Dog
sausage was created in the sixteen hundreds by a guy
named Johann Jorg Henner, who was a butcher who lived
in Coburg. Didn't Coburg, No, No, that's Cherniberg. We were
(14:48):
talking about fin France, and I believe that's in Saxony.
We were talking about d Day the other day, So
I'm interchanging these things. Coburg is in Germany, and according
to a report cited by Hotdashdog dot Org, he later
traveled to Frankfurt in order to promote his product that
(15:08):
he had in fact already created in Cobra. But you
know what, man, a lot of these like origin stories,
it's less about where someone was geographically when they made
the thing and more about where it took off.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, and where humans began telling the story to each other. Uh,
there's a There are some phenomenal authors who wrestle with
these same questions. One of my favorites is a guy
named Mark Kurlansky, who wrote a book entirely about salt
and It's Cold. In a burst of creativity, can you
(15:43):
guess salt?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
You nailed it? The book, the ride, the movie. It's
a Paige Sturder.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I can't believe it's a novel thing about salt.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Well, salt is is it's that's that is civilization though, right, like,
there's so much and you could argue the same thing
about hot dogs. And ben a colleague of ours, Jamie Loftis,
who does incredible podcast stuff and other things like stand
up and she's a playwright and just and an author,
wrote an entire book about hot dogs.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
She did, yes, and we have read it and it's
pretty awesome, to be honest. We're not blowing rainbows, we're
not blowing sausage links, but we we this earl that's
a little too evocative, but we can tell you that
based on the work of folks like Kurlansky and hotdashdog
(16:37):
dot Org and Loftus, we understand that the history of food,
especially when you get really far back, usually doesn't have
a lot of paperwork. It's not very well documented, like
who's the first person who figured out to put salt
on something? You know what I mean? Or to your
(16:58):
point about mushrooms as well, we generally will see that
the modern you know, Hebrew national that you might buy
in a grocery store today comes from Central European sausage
traditions that are parallel. Thinking multiple folks figured this out.
(17:18):
There's not one hot dog messiah.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Ooh, but I love the concept of a hot dog messiah.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
It's not the messiah that we wanted, but it's the
one that we deserve.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Could you please change this water into wide No, but
how do you feel about the hot links.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Hot dog water? Hot dog water. I'll take your water
and I'll some awesome dogs in it, and magically it
transmutes into hot dog water. The idea of sausage links
to is interesting because if you really see traditional the
(17:55):
way sausages are made. I love the concept too, of
how the sausage is made, the implication being some gross
that you don't want to know about. You take the
casings and you stuff them, and then you twist them,
and that's how you get all these like bangers that
are like joined together, and you can like toss them
over your shoulder. Great way to make them even more portable.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I've never bought or I've
never purchased one of those chain links of sausages or
hot dogs when I when you don't see them as
often that much anymore, not.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
In the States, unless you go to a cool ass butcher, like,
we're so lucky to have spotted trotter. In Germany, though,
you can go to any corner butcher and they will
have like a little glass dome with like sausage linked
up kind of more dry, you know, meant to be
eaten on the go as a snack. And you can
buy like four or five of them linked together for nothing.
(18:53):
And they're so good man, they really do know how
to do do sausages there in Germany.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, and thankfully a lot of German nationals immigrated to
the United States. This is part of the story of
the hot dog, right, because.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
That's why it's the story of immigration. Is the story
of this country, like so many food products, and the
tracking the lineage of them is in and of itself
a story of the movement of people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Now, as we said earlier, the Frankfurter is commonly thought
to be developed in Frankfurt in fourteen eighty seven. As
you said, Noels, so it way predates the United States.
We had our hilarious conversation.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
About the term weener. I am an.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Adult, I can vote. It looks like the North American
hot dog, the kind of Hebrew national elite today comes
from this European sausage that was brought here by butchers
and various immigrants from throughout Europe.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, the North American as we know it, the indigenous
North American hot dog, comes from this European sausage that
we've been talking about, brought here by those folks that
you mentioned. However, the big question remains, we know where
the sausage came from, but where did the bun come from?
(20:24):
And then who came up with the idea of sticking
them together. As you can imagine, we do have some
alternate theories as to how that went down.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, think about it this way, folks. She got German immigrants, butchers, salespeople.
They're going to urban centers like New York City, Chicago,
Saint Louis, Cincinnati, and they're selling street food basically.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And before we get to the bun, we've got to
mention the Colombian Exposition of eighteen ninety three. This is
where a bunch of people get together and Chicago.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
It's a big to do.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
If you ever get the chance to go to a
World's Fair or an exposition, please do visit. There are
thousands of folks who are discovering new kinds of food,
and they're seeing all these hot dogs, these sausages. This
is where you do a lovely bit in the research
stool and you point out there is a hot dog
(21:24):
historian named Bruce Craig, a PhD historian in hot dogs
at Roosevelt University, and he says, look, the German manner
was to always eat these docks and or little dog
sausages with bread.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, as is the case today. I mean, if you
go to Germany, you're not gonna typically see a you know,
a traditional hot diligible, but no, it's gonna be bavos,
midwot or buchin, which are like these little breads and
that you could cut it and then stick the dog
in side or literally just put the dog on top
(22:02):
and you put the mustard on the dog. But it's
not really a bun. And Germans are they love their bread.
They're very particular, very particular about their bread, as of
course the French are as well. So the question then
becomes like, you know, sure the Germans were probably eating
their you know, sausages with bread since time immemorial, or
(22:24):
since the sausages kind of were around. But that's not
necessarily the same thing as the like elongated split traditional
americanized hot dog, buton that we see at baseball games.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, for that we have to go to an historical debate.
So a lot of hot dog boffins are going to say, hey,
there's a story that isn't true. This is the story
that historians hate. The story goes, or the legend we
could call it, is that in nineteen oh four there
(22:59):
was a Bavarian street vendor we could call them, named
Anton Futswangler, and he was at the Saint Louis, Louisiana
Purchase Exposition. So apparently, again according to the legend, he
he is selling these very hot, fresh baked sausages and
(23:21):
he gives his customers these cheap white gloves so that
they don't burn their hands while they're fing Yeah, they
don't burn their fingies. And he realizes, hey, I can't
trust all these strangers. I'm giving these people these gloves
as alone, but they're not giving them back.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
They're just away. You don't give away a thing expecting
to get it back unless you take a deposit. I mean,
I'm sorry. This thing screams of apocryphal.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
One hundred percent and So he goes to his brother
in law, a guy who is a baker, and he says, hey, man,
can you you bake gloves?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Helps me out? I'm out of white.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Gloves, right, And so the baker looks at the sausage,
looks at his brother in law, loves the guy and
doesn't want him to fail, and we can only imagine
he had some leftover materials. That's where, according to this
kind of malarkey story, we find the long soft rolls
(24:26):
that seem custom tailored to fit the hot dog.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah. Sadly, though, there is still that discrepancy of hot
dogs coming in a certain number and buns coming in Yeah. Yeah.
I'll never forget that scene from Father of the Bride
with Steve Martin where he freaks out and rips the
package open and takes only the number of buns that
he wants and the guy's like, you can't do that.
He's like, I'm making a stand. I can relate, man,
(24:53):
but you gotta you know, these people don't get paid
enough to deal with your craziness in the in the
grocery store.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Steve Martin exactly, Steve who is by the way, did
you know Steve Martin is one of the best banjo
players on the planet.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
He knows how to pluck at a banjo.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I was surprised.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I've been playing for a very long time. He incorporated
into a lot of his early stand up and he
really truly is. I think it's They're called like the
Steep Canyon Rangers, I believe is the name of this group,
and it's not a comedy group. It is just an
absolute top notch bluegrass outfit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
You go into Steve Martin experience and you think I'm
gonna see some amazing stand up, and then part way
through you go, oh, this guy is just actually amazing
at the banjo.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
This guy can shred, this guy shreads.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
What we do know here is that sausages were phenomenal
in the American sphere, Like there was a great appetite
for it. So by the late eighteen hundreds, you can
already see a sausage something that doesn't quite look like
your hot dog today in a long rowle, and it's
(26:02):
being served and sold in multiple US cities, especially on
the East Coast, which I think gives us a clue
about immigration and innovation.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, and we also it also gives us a clue
about that historical game of telephone, you know that you're
always talking about Ben. There's another hot dog apocryphal hot
dog story, origin story that historians kind of you know,
turn their noses up at. Some believe that the term
was coined in nineteen oh one at an event that
(26:35):
took place on the New York Polo Grounds on a
frigid April day, where vendors were selling the dogs that were,
you know, being kept warm in hot water tanks and
shouting out their slogans something along the lines of get
them while they're hot, you know, get your docsun sausages, Well,
they're red hot, and red hots is another name for
(26:57):
a type of sausage. And apparently, as the story goes,
a cartoonist named Ted Dorgan from the New York Journal
saw the you know, the kerfuffle, the delicious kerfuffle, and
decided he to draw a little cartoon to commemorate this
historical moment, wherein he kind of anthropomorphized the hot dogs
(27:18):
and made them into little barking docs and sausages hanging
out in these little buns. He didn't know how to
spell the word, as the story goes, so he wrote
hot dog instead of Docson and apparently, you know again,
as the tale goes, that the cartoon was a big
hit and the term hot dog took off from there.
But this particular cartoon seems to be lost to history,
(27:41):
if it ever existed in the first place. So yeah,
there's definitely a huge body of work by this particular cartoonist,
but this does not seem to be among it. So yeah,
the historians seem to believe that that one's another one
that's kind of been you know, largely exaggerated, if not
entirely trumped up.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I love it though, especially because we skipped a bit
of lunch today to record, so I'm super into hot
dog history. We're gonna make some hot dogs here in
the home studio after this. We also one thing I
love that you found here is that the easiest way
(28:19):
to figure out when something becomes a thing is to
look back into printed material. This is why Craig and
other culinary historians hot dog boffins. This is why they
spend so much time digging through history for the first
printed instance of the phrase hot dog. They see it
(28:44):
again in the late nineteenth century. In the eighteen nineties,
it was used at Yale in eighteen ninety four, specifically
referring to something called dog wagons, which speak.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Of like a pro food truck or like an ice
cream you know what do you call it? Like a
little pushcart. But instead of selling you know, cold treat,
you're selling hot dogs. And this is something that would
go around to the different dormitories, and the name kind
of became a bit of a regional in joke, not
a compliment, not a compliment again, how the sausage was
(29:20):
made there, it did become a question as to whether
or not, you know, these kind of mystery meats contained
some things that maybe would not be particularly culturally appropriate
to eat.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, and do check out our earlier episode on the
amazing growth of Chinese restaurants in the United States and
the racism those folks had to had to overcome. So
we know, a hot dog was definitely derived from some
perspective about German immigration.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
It was also definitely a compliment all the time.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
But there is one reason beside convenience that made the
hot dog an American staple. Dare we say, an icon
up there with apple pie this one and cracker jacks
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And seventh, any stretches This one
is for our own Max Williams. The hot dog owes
(30:25):
its success to baseball.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, as baseball became America's pastime, the hot dog became
inextricably linked with the sport. The spectacle. There you go of,
you know, attending the old, the old ballgame. So Smithsonian
mag has a delightful piece by Donald Dale Jackson called
hot Dogs are Us. It's no stretch to say they're
(30:56):
more American then, as you said, Ben apple Pie, because
they lay us together. Everyone's going to be making that joke.
It's simple. Oh yeah, I didn't even do it on purpose.
It just this hat and he had this to say.
They were Americanized through their association with public events. According
to a person who spoke to the author for this
piece named Bruce Craig, people ate them at baseball games,
(31:19):
horse races, fairs, and circuses. Today America is hot dog
HQ with rival styles regional specificities in terms of what
what does the hot dog make from places like New
York and Chicago. There's even a Seattle dog we'll get
to in a little bit, and it is a bit
of a source of some good natured beef. Haha. Gosh,
(31:44):
you just walk right into all of them. New Yorkers
would say that Chicago dogs are you know, way overkill
unga patchka, as my buddy Wigs would say on the
dough Boys podcast putting a hat on a hat In Chicago,
they would say they put an entire salad over the
dog because they're embarrassed at the way it tastes. I
(32:04):
love a Chicago dog. You know who else loves the
Chicago dog.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
People from Chicago, People from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
But Anthony Anthony Bourdain. Oh yeah, it is a real
evangelist for the Chicago dog. And I will die on
that hill. I think it is the superior dog. It
is true, it is true. Don't necessarily like the full
pickle spear on it, but everything else is good on me.
And we'll get to some of these different.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Weird rules about condiments, I hope, uh huh oh definitely yeah,
no catchup allowed on a Chicago dog, let's see.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
But A guide to Chicago fast food bad mouths the
New York Dogs from Smithsonian, again referring to as this
is tough, guys, but I'm gonna get through it. A
little limp Wiener drowning in gloppy stewed onions and sour crowd.
What a fair I don't know, man, some of those
(32:56):
street hot dogs in New York are not great. Well
what do you expect.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
It's like, it's how much good a padana costs?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Michael. That's a very good question, Ben. But I will
say there are other forms of street meat that are superior, like,
you know, absolutely a little bit of chicken and rice.
You know, I love a hala bowl.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
It just seems like some of the hot dog vendors
are phoning in it. Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
In some cases, I'll say it, they're clearly laundering money.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
But but I was like, it's like the pizza places.
It's like the pizza places. Uh, and Ben, you'll be
thrilled to know, and Max as well, that Pizza Hut
is bringing back the classic Pizza Hut experience. It's our
youth and one of them is going to be in
Blue Ridge, which is not too far. We have to
be we are I want to go.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
We have to go together.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
I really want to go. And it's it's such a
good excuse to go for a lovely little, you know
day in the mountains and in a classic pizza hut,
pizza parts, those red cups, those red plastic cus in
the stained glass little table overhang.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We could play a pickup game of basketball with kids,
or demolish a little league team. They go back to celebrate.
That's awesome, that's great news, and that's quinte essentially American.
We should do a history of pizza hut one day.
But we know that the hot dog now is if
(34:25):
you're not from the States, you are familiar with the
American modern version of the hot dog because you see
it in countless TV shows and countless gosh, even reality
TV or films. They're associated with picnics and cookouts and
definitely baseball games. We know that they've even become a
(34:49):
tool of diplomacy because back when we had FDR as
a president in nineteen thirty nine, he made international headline
because George the sixth, the guy from Britain from earlier
the King, visited the US and the White House chef
(35:09):
was like, hey, President Roosevelt, what should we serve this
visiting royalty, And without missing a beat, all FDR said,
give him hot dogs.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Give him hot dogs. Yeah, that's true. It's like Trump
would probably make it big Max. You know, at this
point he was kind of trying to spread the word
sort of the way that remember in the Potato episode,
they were serving potatoes to foreign dignitaries and using potatoes
as you know, the main ingredient in a lot of
(35:43):
like state dinners, and it was a way of spreading
the word of the potato. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And some of the more high faluting, like the Boston
Brahmins or the blue blood New Yorkers in the crowd,
some of them said that Velt was screwing up because
he was serving street food to the literal king of
the United Kingdom. But word on the street changed once
(36:12):
the public learned King George had a hot dog politely
and then he had a second hot dog. He was
housing these dogs.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
He was housing those dogs, man, just shoveling them down. Uh.
And you know it's just it's kind of the everyman food. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Walking while you're eating it. You can hold it with
one hand, you know, you got your other hand for
your soda or whatever.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
I don't suck it out of your sleeve because it'll
get lies in your throat and then you need a
special vacuum cleaner to suck it out.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Skip lunch I'm getting so hungry thinking about this. We
do have to mention, of course, uh nol, as you
point out here, we do have to mention a titular milestone,
watershed moment in the history of the hot dog, that
is Nathan's famous and Cody Island.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Right in nineteen sixteen, Nathan Handworker opened what you just mentioned,
his first hot dog stand. He sold hot dogs at
a bargain price that he, you know, was able to
undercut all his competitors, helping further establish them as a
kind of you know, universal food of the people. His
(37:27):
stand began to amass acclaim far and wide and really
helped popularize the hot dog outside of just the boroughs
of New York. Not to mention, of course, Nathan's famous
hot dog eating contest that later turned the hot dog
into a symbol of this bizarre to me anyway, sports
(37:50):
as well as American popular culture, and the hot dog
eating contest that happens at Coney Island every year is
still you know, hugely popular.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Absolutely, and I went down a huge rabbit hole about
this for several years before we even started Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
It's it's such.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
A bizarre and thoroughly American pastime. I'm not sure if
we could call it a sport, but competitive eating does
have all the ingredients of a sport.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
And also these people that are the best at it
aren't like big, you know, gluttonous talking. I'm talking yep,
for sure. It really did. The hot dog eating sports
took on a bit more kind of cachet or gravitas
when Takuru Kobayashi won the Nathan's Contest in two thousand
(38:45):
and one, eating fifty hot dogs in only twelve minutes,
roughly doubling the previous winning totals. And you might have
heard of some of these techniques. This is not again
just glutton the stuff. There's there's strategy here. Some of
his techniques that he more or less invented, I guess,
separating the dogs and the buns and soaking it's not appetizing,
(39:06):
by the way, soaking the buns in water. It really
did give this event much more of a sense of
you know, competitive edge and you know skill, rather than
being a little bit more like, you know, who was
the fattest fat boy on the block? Right right, who's
the biggest piggy.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
It's it's not that it's uh, there is something.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, r yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I have to mention this as a student of the game.
During Kolbiyashi's halsey odd years, during the height of his fame,
he was studied by doctors who found this is you know,
the scuttle butt.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
They found that he had a.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Mutation of sorts. His stomach was not constrained by his
rib cage, so and under it, providing more area of absorption.
At least that's the legend. There are a bunch of
legends about competitive eating. Shout out to Sonya the Black Widow, Thomas,
(40:14):
shout out to, of course Joey Chestnut, which already sounds
like a made up name.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
It it really does. These folks must have had like
the metabolisms of hummingbirds. In two thousand and seven, Joey
Chestnut dethroned Kobayashi and began, you know, absolutely dominating in
It's referred to in some of the sources I'm reading
as the most dominant runs in sports periods. He won
(40:39):
Jordan of it. He really is. He won the contest
numerous times and set a record of seventy six hot
dogs and buns in ten minutes in twenty twenty one,
not too terribly long ago. His rivalry with Kobyashi is
really a big you know again sports beef that gave
competitive eating much more of a mainstream quality.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
And you can watch it with us live very soon
next month, less than a month away. I'm getting too
excited about it.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
It's fine. We have the hot dog contest. I've never
watched it. I'm really glad that you mentioned that, Ben.
I'm sure it is, but I'm at least morbidly curious. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, well you will scratch that itch, Noel, because it's
when they go to town. They certainly go to town. I
want to go back to one of those stats you mentioned.
I cannot imagine eating seventy six hot dogs in a series,
no matter how much time I have.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
No ten minutes. Four is too much. Four is too many.
Four is too many. I will say though, hot dogs
two is they should come in. I do like if
I'm eating them at home, I'll always make two, Always
make two. Yeah. Remember that scene in Weapons where they
have like ten like it was the time I started
reading about. When that movie came out, people were talking about, like,
(42:02):
what's up with the hot dog scene? And apparently it's
a reference to the Whitest Kids you know sketch which
Zach Craigor was a member of that crew. We have
teased multiple times some of the distinctive regional spins on
the hot dog, so I think we wrap with a
few of those for you to try. I mentioned I've
(42:23):
already come down on the side of the way they
do it in Chicago with mustard relish, and it's kind
of a weird green like, you know, almost ungodly neon
green colored relish, onion, tomato, pickle spear could take it
or leave it, sports Peppers, That's what does it for me.
And Celery salt. I really love that, And traditionally on
(42:47):
the Chicago Dog, Ketchup is a no no. You'll even
hear Obama talking about that. He absolutely abhorrors ketchup, and
that is a very Chicago perspective.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, I don't know what ketchup did to Chicago, but
there's still very pissed about it. Also, the tomato.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Take it or leave it? I agree to me, the
real winner are the sports peppers and the Celery sauce
and the onions and the mustard and the relish.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
I'm not opposed to the mustard. We also have to know,
going back to the Chicago New York City rivalry, we
also have to know that the New York style dog
is going to be a bit simpler in formation.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
For sure it is. It is a much more cut
and dry, straightforward dog, typically served with brown mustard, sauer kraut,
and a kind of an onion sauce. Yeah, it's sort
of sauteed caramelized onions. Sometimes almost has a little bit
of a barbecue quality too, maybe yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's certainly different spins on it. On the onion sauce,
(43:48):
you can do that a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Some of it will be fresh chopped and others will
be clearly just sort of out of a container.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Which is funny though, because they're New York. Kind of
two styles of dog, the other being, of course, the
coney dog, referring to Coney Island, and this one usually
has chili with mustard on top and onions. And though
it is kind of associated with Coney Islands, even if
you get it at Sonic, I think they call it
(44:18):
a coney it did in fact originate in the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
And then we have we have multiple variations of this
and you know, a lot of it, folks, is going
to be people in the US fighting about toppings. We
got to talk about the Dodger dog. It's branded advertising.
It's for the La Dodgers baseball team. They sold in
twenty eleven and nope, I think we can assume Max
(44:46):
already knows this. In two thousand, twenty eleven, the Dodgers
Stadium sold two million hot dogs, and the question immediately
became for everybody involved, what makes this Dodger dog so unique?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
What makes it special? Well, they're particularly long. The traditional
hot dog would be around six inches and the Dodger
dog's more in line with ten, so they are considered
the biggest hot dogs on the market. You can get
them in a couple different hot dog varietals, the Super
Dodger Dog, which is one hundred percent beef sausage, while
(45:27):
the Doyer Dog swaps the traditional toppings for jalapinos, salsa
and chili. Then they have a veggie and vegan version,
the Italian Dodger Dog with shredded mozzarella and marin aasa,
and the Southwestern Dodger Dog with has a little bit
of sour cream, avocado slices, pico degayo, and other things.
(45:47):
And La does have another pretty famous hot dog place
known called Pinks that people talk about a lot, and
I've never been. The lines are always crazy long. LA
is typically known as more of a burger town, but
they also do dogs pretty dang well.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, most US cities will will make a good hot
dog for you, from Atlanta to Seattle and beyond. Now
I had a question for you to know about this
Seattle style hot dog. I've never tried this cream.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Cheese, you know, doesn't immediately peak my appetite, but I'd
try it. You know, if there was a if I
was in Seattle and there was someone making one the
authentic Seattle way, I'd give it a go. It wouldn't
be wouldn't be my go to preparation though. Yeah. Yeah,
I love cream cheese, but it just feels like it's
again kind of putting a hat on a hat. Yeah,
(46:39):
wish Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
And we also everybody from New York who's writing the
email now, don't worry, we got you. We're well aware
of Gray's Papaya and the Papaya dog. We've all been.
It's inexpensive. It is considered one of the best hot
dogs in the city of New York. So if you
get a chance and you find yourself in the Big Apple,
(47:03):
if you've got like a loose three dollars and forty
five cents, get a put by a dog.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
For sure, And I guess we can just wrap with
kind of hot dogs as they are today. Like many things,
the Industrial Revolution changed hot dogs as well, from a
street food to a mass produced product that you could buy,
you know, in odd numbered packages in the grocery store.
The advent of Oscar Meyer and their titular Wiener mobile
(47:31):
really revolutionized refrigeration and supply chain and distribution packaging. Of course,
I'm creating a network that allowed the hot dogs to
be sold in supermarkets all over the country. The great,
the great democratization of hot dogs, which further made it
the people's food. By the mid nineteen hundreds, as you've
(47:54):
already mentioned, ben became a staple of bapguard barbecues, July
fourth celebrations, school lunches, sporting events of course, and family cookouts.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, and this becomes a global phenomenon all the way
from murky undetermined legends to the modern day. As we
record on Tuesday, June ninth, twenty twenty six, you go
pretty much anywhere in this wide world, and you're gonna
run into something like a hot dog. And the beautiful
(48:27):
thing about it is, you know, similar to pizza, right,
or similar to a hamburger. All these different cultures and
countries have adapted the basic idea of the hot dog
to their local preference. So you'll have breads you've never
heard of, You'll have sauces you've never tasted. You'll have toppings,
(48:48):
some of which you will love and some of which
will thoroughly confuse you.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Like mustardo mustard.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
I was not expected of a startouff it's today.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah, I mean, I guess you could put it on
a hot dog, right, isn't it like a like a
it's like a mustard fruit, right, mustard fruit?
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Not?
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Thanks? Yeah, yeah, it's traditionally one of the weirder condiments
that comes up, and we talk about this kind of stuff. So,
what began as a European tradition even previous to that,
a whoop see, a culinary whoop see that led to
stuff in animal guts with you know, seasoned meats, evolved
into one of the most recognizable facets of American cuisine.
(49:30):
Hot dogs and hamburgers. You know, just a simple combination
of meat and bread. That really does like to the
earlier point of this stuff, tracking the movement of people
and culture represents a very rich culinary history, immigration and
entrepreneurship and of course pop culture.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
And people will say the hot dog is as American
as apple Pie. Not only is that not the case,
as we've solved here today, but also apples are from Kazakhstan. Everybody,
please tune in for our upcoming.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Episode and apple Pie's Dutch. What yes, tune in for our.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Episode on an unhinged eccentric named Johnny Appleseed. Noel, thank
you so much for this awesome research brief. I'm a
little mad at you because it does have me hungry
and starving. But also big thanks to our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Max the coney Boy Williams. How about long Dog too,
dirty long Dog?
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Silver long Dog, Silver long Dog.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
So only the third time I've gotten that nickname? Oh wow?
All right? Oh humble brags, Yeah, humble brags. Huge thanks
to Jonathan Strickland, the Quizler, A J. Bahamas, Jacobs, the Puzzler,
Chris Frasciotis and Leaves, Jeff Coates.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Here in spirit and huge thanks to Kobeyashi.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
Mm hmm, what was the next time, folks. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Hot Dog who is that? Our
super producer, mister Max Williams Hot Diggity Dog, Chocolate Starfish,
Chocolate Starfish, then the.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hot Dogs flavor water.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
That's none other than mister Noel Brown no Diggity wonderful
co host brother and podcast arms, also the research associate
for today's episode.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
And and the friend, the front person of olymp Biscuit
cover band. I've been keeping that from you, guys. That's
what I do on the weekends when no one's looking. No,
I'll be rolling. They hate him. Well, no, that's different.
I roll and rolling, rolling, rolling. Uh, and you're been
bowling bowling, bowling, balling. He already said that, You did
(01:17):
say that. I'm just fitting it into the whole Limp
Biscuit motif. I'm fucking at the top because we are
indeed talking about we're talking sausage. Yes, yes, hot dogs.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Indeed as you may as you maybor call, they're a
pretty big deal in the US culture. But the story
doesn't really start there, does it.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Does it? Ever? You know maybe maybe sometimes.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Maybe sometimes maybe sometimes, But it's it's funny because I
was thinking about your research here not too long ago,
when I was in a hurry to make dinner, and
I said, you know what, I'm gonna make a couple
of dogs.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I'm gonna do it right.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I'm gonna have some some relish, I'm gonna have a
little bit of onion, a little bit of chili, got
nasty with some cheese, and I thought, oh man, this
is such a great this is such a great food stuff.
But I think maybe we start here. I don't know
(02:23):
about you, man, but I've always been mystified by the cylindrical,
tubular dare we shay phallic shape of the hot dog must.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Happen, We must have been, but we will know it's true.
You can't really look at a hot dog and not
think that, at least for a hot second. And it
all goes. It all comes back to guts, man, It's
all about guts. Hot dogs do to your point, Ben,
(02:55):
And you can't hold a thing like that in your
hand not wonder about the story lineage of such a
delicious and handholdable snack. And most historians do trace their
origins to German sausages. But the idea of the sausage
of making a cylindrical meat product goes further back than that,
(03:17):
goes back, in fact, to sausages before the hot dog.
The hot dog's ancestor is, of course, the humble sausage,
and a lot of records, historical records reference a sausage
like food that first appeared in ancient civilizations, including the
Greeks and the Romans. It was achieved this shape that
(03:40):
you've mentioned, Ben, by stuffing minced meat meats of various
origins into animal intestines. That's the casing the snappy bit
on the outside. And nobody likes to think of that, No, Adam,
I don't really care. I think we you and I
all both we'll eat it. We'll eat a gut from
time to time. Mm hm Yeah, I like a little
(04:01):
tripe in my in my fa And you know, this
was a way of creating a longer shelf life for
the meat in question by stuffing it inside this kind
of edible pouch.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, because think about it, folks, you've you've got the
animal that you've already slaughtered, right, your sheep, your goat,
your pig, your cow, et cetera. And you have the
food that is prized, right, the protein you would eat,
but then you're thinking, how do I get all this
back in one place? And so it makes sense that
(04:39):
you would have the intestines and look at them and say, oh,
I can the guiver a perfect package here.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
A perfect package. Indeed, Ben, no, you nailed it. And actually,
if you're looking for some other sausage related episodes of
Ridiculous Sisty, we got two that come to mind. One place,
Richard Blaze, for sure, that was more bacon oriented. Well, no,
it wasn't a bacon versus sausage. That's true in his
episode of Food Court that you and I did. But
(05:08):
we also did an episode pretty early in the history
of this show about botox, the vacullinium toxin that was
derived from spoiled sausages, and also about sausage intestine type
casings used to create early Zeppelins. And you can find
both of those in the feed. But we are talking
(05:29):
specifically about that aha moment that usually comes along with
an oopsie of some sort, right, yeah, yeah, the aha oopsie,
and this in this case, it happened at the behest
of the Roman emperor Nero, whose chef goes by the
name of Gaius, may have accidentally stumbled upon the method
(05:52):
of creating a casing out of animal guts. God, this is,
you know, a legendary myth kind of thing. But Guias was,
you know, overseeing his kitchen, was preparing these roasted pigs
for some sort of you know, presumably debauched bacchanalia.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And they were supposed to be starved for a whole
week before they're killed.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Right. I didn't know this. No, I didn't know that either, Ben,
And that that is I guess a way of I
guess is that sort of like a veal, It makes
the meat more delicate or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Maybe it's we've all eaten Chiplin's before. Maybe it's a
matter of hygiene.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Could well be Ben, But as the legend goes, Guyas was,
you know, overseeing his kitchen. And by the way, fabulous
article from history dot com, the Extra Long History of
the hot Dog that I'm pulling some of this information from.
Very clever. We love our writers. Over your history. Stephanie
Butler wrote this one from ancient Roman sausage to Nathan's
(06:53):
Coney Island hot Dog, The history of tubular meat may
stretch back millennia, she writes. So god Bias was overseeing
the preparation of these starved animals, and one of them,
it would seem, was roasted without being cleaned. So, in
other words, all of the offal and the stuff that
(07:14):
you know inside the cavity had not been pulled out
as customarily would be the case before roasting them. And
when he popped the thing open, outspilled a cornucopia of
gutty parts.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
M Yeah, this guyas we could only imagine, encounters something
like when you open a package that's been delivered and
you see all the little puffs of air, right, the
plastic air puffying or the styrofoam or what have you.
(07:48):
He sees all this packaging essentially, and because the intestines
are empty, as the pig had been starved for a week,
and because they are puffed up from the heat, they
clearly look like contators. And he has this light bulb
moment way before light bulbs are invented, where he apocryphally exclaims,
(08:11):
I have discovered something of great importance. And so he's
got a bunch of like wheat and spices, right, because
he's top dog chef.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So he.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I'm laughing because he literally stuffs the intestines with this
minced meat and the spices and this wheat as filler.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Is it twisted or genius or geniusly twisted.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I think it's both, man.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I think it really is. I mean, it's the kind
of story we always hear when it comes to like
the first person that figured out how to eat the
snotty insides of a crustacean and then found it to
be delectable, or the mushrooms that you know killed you
are made just see crazy stuff until you found the
one that just tasted.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Nice, right right. And we do know thanks to hotdog
dot org. Hot dash dog dot.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Love that that exists, as we typically do with these
very specific orgs. I love the Internet, man.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
What we learned from our friends over at hot dashdog
dot org is that sausage is indeed one of the
oldest forms of processed food. It's even mentioned in the
Odyssey by Homer not Honda, dating back to ninth century BCE.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Ben, have you heard a lot of this kerfuffle that's
being made about the Christopher Nolan Odyssey coming out?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Dude, I was just reading about some of that, people
seem to be skeptical. I think there was a trailer release,
but I'm a sucker for a good a good piece
of mythology.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, I love a sword and sandals kind of thing.
But I think the issue is that Nolan is pretty
you know, infamous for being a stickler for details, for
like historical details, and he has you know, said as
much about this project in his press runs. But it's
my understanding that there is not anyone of note that
is of Greek lineage that has been cast in the film.
(10:09):
And also there are some questions about like the type
of bronze, whether they could have like bronze that was
made to appear jet black, whether that was a process
that was even popular at the time. So there's some
people that are getting a little up in arms about it,
but it is true, and you gotta wonder are sausage
is featured in Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, spoiler folks, we suspect that's the main plot,
because one would hope we've actually read the Odyssey.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
It's actually a sequel to seth Rogen's Sausage Party. Absolutely
yet so. But speaking of spoilers, the whole idea here,
and this idea of it being a processed food is
to again extend the shelf life. But this early version
it was really just kind of creating sort of an
air tight package. Like you said, it wasn't until layed
(10:59):
or that more preservatives would be used, and that it
truly would be a much more processed food as we
know those today nitrates and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Right, Yeah, Max, give us some sweeping civilization esque music
to portray the passing of time?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Do perf? How goes SIEV music? Do you build it?
We're belding so so sim music at least according to
step six. It's actually what it does is it combines
music of all the different civilizations you have met in
the game. Oh oh, and that reminds me Max really quickly.
Just and I know this isn't exactly on topic, but
(11:38):
jumping back to Christopher Nolans the Odyssey, another thing that
he said, and it sort of contradicts a lot of
his other choices, is that they didn't have orchestras back then,
so he wanted the score to be ented they wanted
he wanted the score to be entirely orchestra free. So uh,
Ludwig van Gorenson. I think we both love it for
his production work with Childish Gambino, and also he's just
(11:59):
really become kind of the it composer in Hollywood. He
apparently made the entire score using only gongs, various sizes
of gongs, but then he just kind of slipped in
the fact that he also ran them through modular synthesizers
and which definitely didn't exist either.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And hit the gongs with big old wingers. Yeah, because
we're adults, we can so Max, thank you again for that.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Sort We squandered that sweeping time change music.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
But yeah, here we are over time. Centuries and centuries happen,
empires rise and full, but food remains a constant right
because it's a universal need of people. Sure, so different
regions of Europe are figuring out what d rose Chef
apparently called later. We suspect Nolan and I suspect this
(12:55):
was a lot of parallel thinking. As you always like
to say, Nol, but you gotta face it. We go
to Germany fairly often. Noel goes more often than I do,
but Germany's very famous or sausages, like if you walk
into a German butcher shop. I'm confused by how many
(13:19):
types of sausage exists.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Well, the word wiener, you know, is derived from the
region of Germany called Vienna or Veen, and that is
where the term wiener comes from. Another you know, interchangeable,
at least the way it's come to be today. Frankfurture
comes from another city in Germany called Frankfurt, and they
(13:43):
claim that their sausage tradition dates as far back as
the Middle Ages. There are some local historians that trace
Frankfurt is back to the thirteenth century, but Vienna also
claims to have had a significant hand in the creation
of the sausage made from a mixture of pork and
beef that resembles much more closely than what Gaius was
(14:05):
up to the modern hot dog, and even the term
hot dog, as we'll get to its origin is a
German dog. So Frankfurt, as it's known in Germany, Mine
the mine being a river, is traditionally credited with originating
the Frankfurter, but the claim is disputed by a lot
(14:26):
of folks that do seem to believe that the sausage
known as the dochsundt dot that means the little Dog
sausage was created in the sixteen hundreds by a guy
named Johann Jorg Henner, who was a butcher who lived
in Coburg. Didn't Coburg, No, No, that's Cherniberg. We were
(14:48):
talking about fin France, and I believe that's in Saxony.
We were talking about d Day the other day, So
I'm interchanging these things. Coburg is in Germany, and according
to a report cited by Hotdashdog dot Org, he later
traveled to Frankfurt in order to promote his product that
(15:08):
he had in fact already created in Cobra. But you
know what, man, a lot of these like origin stories,
it's less about where someone was geographically when they made
the thing and more about where it took off.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, and where humans began telling the story to each other. Uh,
there's a There are some phenomenal authors who wrestle with
these same questions. One of my favorites is a guy
named Mark Kurlansky, who wrote a book entirely about salt
and It's Cold. In a burst of creativity, can you
(15:43):
guess salt?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
You nailed it? The book, the ride, the movie. It's
a Paige Sturder.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I can't believe it's a novel thing about salt.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Well, salt is is it's that's that is civilization though, right, like,
there's so much and you could argue the same thing
about hot dogs. And ben a colleague of ours, Jamie Loftis,
who does incredible podcast stuff and other things like stand
up and she's a playwright and just and an author,
wrote an entire book about hot dogs.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
She did, yes, and we have read it and it's
pretty awesome, to be honest. We're not blowing rainbows, we're
not blowing sausage links, but we we this earl that's
a little too evocative, but we can tell you that
based on the work of folks like Kurlansky and hotdashdog
(16:37):
dot Org and Loftus, we understand that the history of food,
especially when you get really far back, usually doesn't have
a lot of paperwork. It's not very well documented, like
who's the first person who figured out to put salt
on something? You know what I mean? Or to your
(16:58):
point about mushrooms as well, we generally will see that
the modern you know, Hebrew national that you might buy
in a grocery store today comes from Central European sausage
traditions that are parallel. Thinking multiple folks figured this out.
(17:18):
There's not one hot dog messiah.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Ooh, but I love the concept of a hot dog messiah.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
It's not the messiah that we wanted, but it's the
one that we deserve.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Could you please change this water into wide No, but
how do you feel about the hot links.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Hot dog water? Hot dog water. I'll take your water
and I'll some awesome dogs in it, and magically it
transmutes into hot dog water. The idea of sausage links
to is interesting because if you really see traditional the
(17:55):
way sausages are made. I love the concept too, of
how the sausage is made, the implication being some gross
that you don't want to know about. You take the
casings and you stuff them, and then you twist them,
and that's how you get all these like bangers that
are like joined together, and you can like toss them
over your shoulder. Great way to make them even more portable.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I've never bought or I've
never purchased one of those chain links of sausages or
hot dogs when I when you don't see them as
often that much anymore, not.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
In the States, unless you go to a cool ass butcher, like,
we're so lucky to have spotted trotter. In Germany, though,
you can go to any corner butcher and they will
have like a little glass dome with like sausage linked
up kind of more dry, you know, meant to be
eaten on the go as a snack. And you can
buy like four or five of them linked together for nothing.
(18:53):
And they're so good man, they really do know how
to do do sausages there in Germany.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, and thankfully a lot of German nationals immigrated to
the United States. This is part of the story of
the hot dog, right, because.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
That's why it's the story of immigration. Is the story
of this country, like so many food products, and the
tracking the lineage of them is in and of itself
a story of the movement of people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Now, as we said earlier, the Frankfurter is commonly thought
to be developed in Frankfurt in fourteen eighty seven. As
you said, Noels, so it way predates the United States.
We had our hilarious conversation.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
About the term weener. I am an.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Adult, I can vote. It looks like the North American
hot dog, the kind of Hebrew national elite today comes
from this European sausage that was brought here by butchers
and various immigrants from throughout Europe.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, the North American as we know it, the indigenous
North American hot dog, comes from this European sausage that
we've been talking about, brought here by those folks that
you mentioned. However, the big question remains, we know where
the sausage came from, but where did the bun come from?
(20:24):
And then who came up with the idea of sticking
them together. As you can imagine, we do have some
alternate theories as to how that went down.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, think about it this way, folks. She got German immigrants, butchers, salespeople.
They're going to urban centers like New York City, Chicago,
Saint Louis, Cincinnati, and they're selling street food basically.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And before we get to the bun, we've got to
mention the Colombian Exposition of eighteen ninety three. This is
where a bunch of people get together and Chicago.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
It's a big to do.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
If you ever get the chance to go to a
World's Fair or an exposition, please do visit. There are
thousands of folks who are discovering new kinds of food,
and they're seeing all these hot dogs, these sausages. This
is where you do a lovely bit in the research
stool and you point out there is a hot dog
(21:24):
historian named Bruce Craig, a PhD historian in hot dogs
at Roosevelt University, and he says, look, the German manner
was to always eat these docks and or little dog
sausages with bread.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, as is the case today. I mean, if you
go to Germany, you're not gonna typically see a you know,
a traditional hot diligible, but no, it's gonna be bavos,
midwot or buchin, which are like these little breads and
that you could cut it and then stick the dog
in side or literally just put the dog on top
(22:02):
and you put the mustard on the dog. But it's
not really a bun. And Germans are they love their bread.
They're very particular, very particular about their bread, as of
course the French are as well. So the question then
becomes like, you know, sure the Germans were probably eating
their you know, sausages with bread since time immemorial, or
(22:24):
since the sausages kind of were around. But that's not
necessarily the same thing as the like elongated split traditional
americanized hot dog, buton that we see at baseball games.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, for that we have to go to an historical debate.
So a lot of hot dog boffins are going to say, hey,
there's a story that isn't true. This is the story
that historians hate. The story goes, or the legend we
could call it, is that in nineteen oh four there
(22:59):
was a Bavarian street vendor we could call them, named
Anton Futswangler, and he was at the Saint Louis, Louisiana
Purchase Exposition. So apparently, again according to the legend, he
he is selling these very hot, fresh baked sausages and
(23:21):
he gives his customers these cheap white gloves so that
they don't burn their hands while they're fing Yeah, they
don't burn their fingies. And he realizes, hey, I can't
trust all these strangers. I'm giving these people these gloves
as alone, but they're not giving them back.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
They're just away. You don't give away a thing expecting
to get it back unless you take a deposit. I mean,
I'm sorry. This thing screams of apocryphal.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
One hundred percent and So he goes to his brother
in law, a guy who is a baker, and he says, hey, man,
can you you bake gloves?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Helps me out? I'm out of white.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Gloves, right, And so the baker looks at the sausage,
looks at his brother in law, loves the guy and
doesn't want him to fail, and we can only imagine
he had some leftover materials. That's where, according to this
kind of malarkey story, we find the long soft rolls
(24:26):
that seem custom tailored to fit the hot dog.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah. Sadly, though, there is still that discrepancy of hot
dogs coming in a certain number and buns coming in Yeah. Yeah.
I'll never forget that scene from Father of the Bride
with Steve Martin where he freaks out and rips the
package open and takes only the number of buns that
he wants and the guy's like, you can't do that.
He's like, I'm making a stand. I can relate, man,
(24:53):
but you gotta you know, these people don't get paid
enough to deal with your craziness in the in the
grocery store.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Steve Martin exactly, Steve who is by the way, did
you know Steve Martin is one of the best banjo
players on the planet.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
He knows how to pluck at a banjo.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I was surprised.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I've been playing for a very long time. He incorporated
into a lot of his early stand up and he
really truly is. I think it's They're called like the
Steep Canyon Rangers, I believe is the name of this group,
and it's not a comedy group. It is just an
absolute top notch bluegrass outfit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
You go into Steve Martin experience and you think I'm
gonna see some amazing stand up, and then part way
through you go, oh, this guy is just actually amazing
at the banjo.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
This guy can shred, this guy shreads.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
What we do know here is that sausages were phenomenal
in the American sphere, Like there was a great appetite
for it. So by the late eighteen hundreds, you can
already see a sausage something that doesn't quite look like
your hot dog today in a long rowle, and it's
(26:02):
being served and sold in multiple US cities, especially on
the East Coast, which I think gives us a clue
about immigration and innovation.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, and we also it also gives us a clue
about that historical game of telephone, you know that you're
always talking about Ben. There's another hot dog apocryphal hot
dog story, origin story that historians kind of you know,
turn their noses up at. Some believe that the term
was coined in nineteen oh one at an event that
(26:35):
took place on the New York Polo Grounds on a
frigid April day, where vendors were selling the dogs that were,
you know, being kept warm in hot water tanks and
shouting out their slogans something along the lines of get
them while they're hot, you know, get your docsun sausages, Well,
they're red hot, and red hots is another name for
(26:57):
a type of sausage. And apparently, as the story goes,
a cartoonist named Ted Dorgan from the New York Journal
saw the you know, the kerfuffle, the delicious kerfuffle, and
decided he to draw a little cartoon to commemorate this
historical moment, wherein he kind of anthropomorphized the hot dogs
(27:18):
and made them into little barking docs and sausages hanging
out in these little buns. He didn't know how to
spell the word, as the story goes, so he wrote
hot dog instead of Docson and apparently, you know again,
as the tale goes, that the cartoon was a big
hit and the term hot dog took off from there.
But this particular cartoon seems to be lost to history,
(27:41):
if it ever existed in the first place. So yeah,
there's definitely a huge body of work by this particular cartoonist,
but this does not seem to be among it. So yeah,
the historians seem to believe that that one's another one
that's kind of been you know, largely exaggerated, if not
entirely trumped up.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I love it though, especially because we skipped a bit
of lunch today to record, so I'm super into hot
dog history. We're gonna make some hot dogs here in
the home studio after this. We also one thing I
love that you found here is that the easiest way
(28:19):
to figure out when something becomes a thing is to
look back into printed material. This is why Craig and
other culinary historians hot dog boffins. This is why they
spend so much time digging through history for the first
printed instance of the phrase hot dog. They see it
(28:44):
again in the late nineteenth century. In the eighteen nineties,
it was used at Yale in eighteen ninety four, specifically
referring to something called dog wagons, which speak.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Of like a pro food truck or like an ice
cream you know what do you call it? Like a
little pushcart. But instead of selling you know, cold treat,
you're selling hot dogs. And this is something that would
go around to the different dormitories, and the name kind
of became a bit of a regional in joke, not
a compliment, not a compliment again, how the sausage was
(29:20):
made there, it did become a question as to whether
or not, you know, these kind of mystery meats contained
some things that maybe would not be particularly culturally appropriate
to eat.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, and do check out our earlier episode on the
amazing growth of Chinese restaurants in the United States and
the racism those folks had to had to overcome. So
we know, a hot dog was definitely derived from some
perspective about German immigration.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
It was also definitely a compliment all the time.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
But there is one reason beside convenience that made the
hot dog an American staple. Dare we say, an icon
up there with apple pie this one and cracker jacks
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And seventh, any stretches This one
is for our own Max Williams. The hot dog owes
(30:25):
its success to baseball.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, as baseball became America's pastime, the hot dog became
inextricably linked with the sport. The spectacle. There you go of,
you know, attending the old, the old ballgame. So Smithsonian
mag has a delightful piece by Donald Dale Jackson called
hot Dogs are Us. It's no stretch to say they're
(30:56):
more American then, as you said, Ben apple Pie, because
they lay us together. Everyone's going to be making that joke.
It's simple. Oh yeah, I didn't even do it on purpose.
It just this hat and he had this to say.
They were Americanized through their association with public events. According
to a person who spoke to the author for this
piece named Bruce Craig, people ate them at baseball games,
(31:19):
horse races, fairs, and circuses. Today America is hot dog
HQ with rival styles regional specificities in terms of what
what does the hot dog make from places like New
York and Chicago. There's even a Seattle dog we'll get
to in a little bit, and it is a bit
of a source of some good natured beef. Haha. Gosh,
(31:44):
you just walk right into all of them. New Yorkers
would say that Chicago dogs are you know, way overkill
unga patchka, as my buddy Wigs would say on the
dough Boys podcast putting a hat on a hat In Chicago,
they would say they put an entire salad over the
dog because they're embarrassed at the way it tastes. I
(32:04):
love a Chicago dog. You know who else loves the
Chicago dog.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
People from Chicago, People from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
But Anthony Anthony Bourdain. Oh yeah, it is a real
evangelist for the Chicago dog. And I will die on
that hill. I think it is the superior dog. It
is true, it is true. Don't necessarily like the full
pickle spear on it, but everything else is good on me.
And we'll get to some of these different.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Weird rules about condiments, I hope, uh huh oh definitely yeah,
no catchup allowed on a Chicago dog, let's see.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
But A guide to Chicago fast food bad mouths the
New York Dogs from Smithsonian, again referring to as this
is tough, guys, but I'm gonna get through it. A
little limp Wiener drowning in gloppy stewed onions and sour crowd.
What a fair I don't know, man, some of those
(32:56):
street hot dogs in New York are not great. Well
what do you expect.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
It's like, it's how much good a padana costs?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Michael. That's a very good question, Ben. But I will
say there are other forms of street meat that are superior, like,
you know, absolutely a little bit of chicken and rice.
You know, I love a hala bowl.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
It just seems like some of the hot dog vendors
are phoning in it. Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
In some cases, I'll say it, they're clearly laundering money.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
But but I was like, it's like the pizza places.
It's like the pizza places. Uh, and Ben, you'll be
thrilled to know, and Max as well, that Pizza Hut
is bringing back the classic Pizza Hut experience. It's our
youth and one of them is going to be in
Blue Ridge, which is not too far. We have to
be we are I want to go.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
We have to go together.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
I really want to go. And it's it's such a
good excuse to go for a lovely little, you know
day in the mountains and in a classic pizza hut,
pizza parts, those red cups, those red plastic cus in
the stained glass little table overhang.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We could play a pickup game of basketball with kids,
or demolish a little league team. They go back to celebrate.
That's awesome, that's great news, and that's quinte essentially American.
We should do a history of pizza hut one day.
But we know that the hot dog now is if
(34:25):
you're not from the States, you are familiar with the
American modern version of the hot dog because you see
it in countless TV shows and countless gosh, even reality
TV or films. They're associated with picnics and cookouts and
definitely baseball games. We know that they've even become a
(34:49):
tool of diplomacy because back when we had FDR as
a president in nineteen thirty nine, he made international headline
because George the sixth, the guy from Britain from earlier
the King, visited the US and the White House chef
(35:09):
was like, hey, President Roosevelt, what should we serve this
visiting royalty, And without missing a beat, all FDR said,
give him hot dogs.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Give him hot dogs. Yeah, that's true. It's like Trump
would probably make it big Max. You know, at this
point he was kind of trying to spread the word
sort of the way that remember in the Potato episode,
they were serving potatoes to foreign dignitaries and using potatoes
as you know, the main ingredient in a lot of
(35:43):
like state dinners, and it was a way of spreading
the word of the potato. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And some of the more high faluting, like the Boston
Brahmins or the blue blood New Yorkers in the crowd,
some of them said that Velt was screwing up because
he was serving street food to the literal king of
the United Kingdom. But word on the street changed once
(36:12):
the public learned King George had a hot dog politely
and then he had a second hot dog. He was
housing these dogs.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
He was housing those dogs, man, just shoveling them down. Uh.
And you know it's just it's kind of the everyman food. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Walking while you're eating it. You can hold it with
one hand, you know, you got your other hand for
your soda or whatever.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
I don't suck it out of your sleeve because it'll
get lies in your throat and then you need a
special vacuum cleaner to suck it out.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Skip lunch I'm getting so hungry thinking about this. We
do have to mention, of course, uh nol, as you
point out here, we do have to mention a titular milestone,
watershed moment in the history of the hot dog, that
is Nathan's famous and Cody Island.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Right in nineteen sixteen, Nathan Handworker opened what you just mentioned,
his first hot dog stand. He sold hot dogs at
a bargain price that he, you know, was able to
undercut all his competitors, helping further establish them as a
kind of you know, universal food of the people. His
(37:27):
stand began to amass acclaim far and wide and really
helped popularize the hot dog outside of just the boroughs
of New York. Not to mention, of course, Nathan's famous
hot dog eating contest that later turned the hot dog
into a symbol of this bizarre to me anyway, sports
(37:50):
as well as American popular culture, and the hot dog
eating contest that happens at Coney Island every year is
still you know, hugely popular.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Absolutely, and I went down a huge rabbit hole about
this for several years before we even started Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
It's it's such.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
A bizarre and thoroughly American pastime. I'm not sure if
we could call it a sport, but competitive eating does
have all the ingredients of a sport.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
And also these people that are the best at it
aren't like big, you know, gluttonous talking. I'm talking yep,
for sure. It really did. The hot dog eating sports
took on a bit more kind of cachet or gravitas
when Takuru Kobayashi won the Nathan's Contest in two thousand
(38:45):
and one, eating fifty hot dogs in only twelve minutes,
roughly doubling the previous winning totals. And you might have
heard of some of these techniques. This is not again
just glutton the stuff. There's there's strategy here. Some of
his techniques that he more or less invented, I guess,
separating the dogs and the buns and soaking it's not appetizing,
(39:06):
by the way, soaking the buns in water. It really
did give this event much more of a sense of
you know, competitive edge and you know skill, rather than
being a little bit more like, you know, who was
the fattest fat boy on the block? Right right, who's
the biggest piggy.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
It's it's not that it's uh, there is something.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, r yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I have to mention this as a student of the game.
During Kolbiyashi's halsey odd years, during the height of his fame,
he was studied by doctors who found this is you know,
the scuttle butt.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
They found that he had a.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Mutation of sorts. His stomach was not constrained by his
rib cage, so and under it, providing more area of absorption.
At least that's the legend. There are a bunch of
legends about competitive eating. Shout out to Sonya the Black Widow, Thomas,
(40:14):
shout out to, of course Joey Chestnut, which already sounds
like a made up name.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
It it really does. These folks must have had like
the metabolisms of hummingbirds. In two thousand and seven, Joey
Chestnut dethroned Kobayashi and began, you know, absolutely dominating in
It's referred to in some of the sources I'm reading
as the most dominant runs in sports periods. He won
(40:39):
Jordan of it. He really is. He won the contest
numerous times and set a record of seventy six hot
dogs and buns in ten minutes in twenty twenty one,
not too terribly long ago. His rivalry with Kobyashi is
really a big you know again sports beef that gave
competitive eating much more of a mainstream quality.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
And you can watch it with us live very soon
next month, less than a month away. I'm getting too
excited about it.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
It's fine. We have the hot dog contest. I've never
watched it. I'm really glad that you mentioned that, Ben.
I'm sure it is, but I'm at least morbidly curious. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, well you will scratch that itch, Noel, because it's
when they go to town. They certainly go to town. I
want to go back to one of those stats you mentioned.
I cannot imagine eating seventy six hot dogs in a series,
no matter how much time I have.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
No ten minutes. Four is too much. Four is too many.
Four is too many. I will say though, hot dogs
two is they should come in. I do like if
I'm eating them at home, I'll always make two, Always
make two. Yeah. Remember that scene in Weapons where they
have like ten like it was the time I started
reading about. When that movie came out, people were talking about, like,
(42:02):
what's up with the hot dog scene? And apparently it's
a reference to the Whitest Kids you know sketch which
Zach Craigor was a member of that crew. We have
teased multiple times some of the distinctive regional spins on
the hot dog, so I think we wrap with a
few of those for you to try. I mentioned I've
(42:23):
already come down on the side of the way they
do it in Chicago with mustard relish, and it's kind
of a weird green like, you know, almost ungodly neon
green colored relish, onion, tomato, pickle spear could take it
or leave it, sports Peppers, That's what does it for me.
And Celery salt. I really love that, And traditionally on
(42:47):
the Chicago Dog, Ketchup is a no no. You'll even
hear Obama talking about that. He absolutely abhorrors ketchup, and
that is a very Chicago perspective.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, I don't know what ketchup did to Chicago, but
there's still very pissed about it. Also, the tomato.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Take it or leave it? I agree to me, the
real winner are the sports peppers and the Celery sauce
and the onions and the mustard and the relish.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
I'm not opposed to the mustard. We also have to know,
going back to the Chicago New York City rivalry, we
also have to know that the New York style dog
is going to be a bit simpler in formation.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
For sure it is. It is a much more cut
and dry, straightforward dog, typically served with brown mustard, sauer kraut,
and a kind of an onion sauce. Yeah, it's sort
of sauteed caramelized onions. Sometimes almost has a little bit
of a barbecue quality too, maybe yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's certainly different spins on it. On the onion sauce,
(43:48):
you can do that a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Some of it will be fresh chopped and others will
be clearly just sort of out of a container.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Which is funny though, because they're New York. Kind of
two styles of dog, the other being, of course, the
coney dog, referring to Coney Island, and this one usually
has chili with mustard on top and onions. And though
it is kind of associated with Coney Islands, even if
you get it at Sonic, I think they call it
(44:18):
a coney it did in fact originate in the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
And then we have we have multiple variations of this
and you know, a lot of it, folks, is going
to be people in the US fighting about toppings. We
got to talk about the Dodger dog. It's branded advertising.
It's for the La Dodgers baseball team. They sold in
twenty eleven and nope, I think we can assume Max
(44:46):
already knows this. In two thousand, twenty eleven, the Dodgers
Stadium sold two million hot dogs, and the question immediately
became for everybody involved, what makes this Dodger dog so unique?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
What makes it special? Well, they're particularly long. The traditional
hot dog would be around six inches and the Dodger
dog's more in line with ten, so they are considered
the biggest hot dogs on the market. You can get
them in a couple different hot dog varietals, the Super
Dodger Dog, which is one hundred percent beef sausage, while
(45:27):
the Doyer Dog swaps the traditional toppings for jalapinos, salsa
and chili. Then they have a veggie and vegan version,
the Italian Dodger Dog with shredded mozzarella and marin aasa,
and the Southwestern Dodger Dog with has a little bit
of sour cream, avocado slices, pico degayo, and other things.
(45:47):
And La does have another pretty famous hot dog place
known called Pinks that people talk about a lot, and
I've never been. The lines are always crazy long. LA
is typically known as more of a burger town, but
they also do dogs pretty dang well.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, most US cities will will make a good hot
dog for you, from Atlanta to Seattle and beyond. Now
I had a question for you to know about this
Seattle style hot dog. I've never tried this cream.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Cheese, you know, doesn't immediately peak my appetite, but I'd
try it. You know, if there was a if I
was in Seattle and there was someone making one the
authentic Seattle way, I'd give it a go. It wouldn't
be wouldn't be my go to preparation though. Yeah. Yeah,
I love cream cheese, but it just feels like it's
again kind of putting a hat on a hat. Yeah,
(46:39):
wish Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
And we also everybody from New York who's writing the
email now, don't worry, we got you. We're well aware
of Gray's Papaya and the Papaya dog. We've all been.
It's inexpensive. It is considered one of the best hot
dogs in the city of New York. So if you
get a chance and you find yourself in the Big Apple,
(47:03):
if you've got like a loose three dollars and forty
five cents, get a put by a dog.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
For sure, And I guess we can just wrap with
kind of hot dogs as they are today. Like many things,
the Industrial Revolution changed hot dogs as well, from a
street food to a mass produced product that you could buy,
you know, in odd numbered packages in the grocery store.
The advent of Oscar Meyer and their titular Wiener mobile
(47:31):
really revolutionized refrigeration and supply chain and distribution packaging. Of course,
I'm creating a network that allowed the hot dogs to
be sold in supermarkets all over the country. The great,
the great democratization of hot dogs, which further made it
the people's food. By the mid nineteen hundreds, as you've
(47:54):
already mentioned, ben became a staple of bapguard barbecues, July
fourth celebrations, school lunches, sporting events of course, and family cookouts.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, and this becomes a global phenomenon all the way
from murky undetermined legends to the modern day. As we
record on Tuesday, June ninth, twenty twenty six, you go
pretty much anywhere in this wide world, and you're gonna
run into something like a hot dog. And the beautiful
(48:27):
thing about it is, you know, similar to pizza, right,
or similar to a hamburger. All these different cultures and
countries have adapted the basic idea of the hot dog
to their local preference. So you'll have breads you've never
heard of, You'll have sauces you've never tasted. You'll have toppings,
(48:48):
some of which you will love and some of which
will thoroughly confuse you.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Like mustardo mustard.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
I was not expected of a startouff it's today.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah, I mean, I guess you could put it on
a hot dog, right, isn't it like a like a
it's like a mustard fruit, right, mustard fruit?
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Not?
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Thanks? Yeah, yeah, it's traditionally one of the weirder condiments
that comes up, and we talk about this kind of stuff. So,
what began as a European tradition even previous to that,
a whoop see, a culinary whoop see that led to
stuff in animal guts with you know, seasoned meats, evolved
into one of the most recognizable facets of American cuisine.
(49:30):
Hot dogs and hamburgers. You know, just a simple combination
of meat and bread. That really does like to the
earlier point of this stuff, tracking the movement of people
and culture represents a very rich culinary history, immigration and
entrepreneurship and of course pop culture.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
And people will say the hot dog is as American
as apple Pie. Not only is that not the case,
as we've solved here today, but also apples are from Kazakhstan. Everybody,
please tune in for our upcoming.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Episode and apple Pie's Dutch. What yes, tune in for our.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Episode on an unhinged eccentric named Johnny Appleseed. Noel, thank
you so much for this awesome research brief. I'm a
little mad at you because it does have me hungry
and starving. But also big thanks to our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Max the coney Boy Williams. How about long Dog too,
dirty long Dog?
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Silver long Dog, Silver long Dog.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
So only the third time I've gotten that nickname? Oh wow?
All right? Oh humble brags, Yeah, humble brags. Huge thanks
to Jonathan Strickland, the Quizler, A J. Bahamas, Jacobs, the Puzzler,
Chris Frasciotis and Leaves, Jeff Coates.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Here in spirit and huge thanks to Kobeyashi.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
Mm hmm, what was the next time, folks. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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