Lengthy Meat: Hot Dogs–Erakina

Hot dogs:

A food that is easily available on the streets of America, which is sold in restaurants, moving trucks, etc, and it’s the people’s favorite and most consumed food of America—The hot dog. Let’s see the facts and history of hot dogs.

History:

In the 9th century BC, sausage was one of the old processed foods that was mentioned in the book of Homer: The Odyssey. This was the first written record of hot dogs in the past. In the 1st century, the king Nero Claudius Caesar was waiting for his dish—a Pig—which his cook, Gaius, was in charge of preparing.

The Pig had to be starved for 1 week before cooking it. But after cooking, they found the taste was not as they expected. Gaius took a knife and tore open the guts of the Pig and he saw the intestines of the Pig puffed. By sight, he commented, “I have discovered something of great importance”.

Then he stuffed the ground beef and mixed it with wheat and spice into the intestines and tied them into a knot. This was how the shape was created. It was because of this many people around the world started following the recipe and some of them created their own new type of hot dog. In Germany, people celebrated the 500th anniversary of the hot dog being born.

But still, we didn’t have proper evidence of who created the hot dog at first. The Germans claimed that they were the ones that founded the hot dog at first in Frankfurt. Then the recipe spread around the world. A German peddler Antoine Feuchtwanger sold hot dogs in the street of St. Louis, Missouri.

Health benefits of hot dogs:

Src: https://pixabay.com/photos/hot-dog-hot-sausage-sandwich-5337929/

A hot dog is made from pork, beef, poultry, spices, sodium nitrite, food starch, wheat, the combination of all meats, etc. The ingredients of a hot dog varies, so the nutrition in it also differs too.

Like beef, hot dogs contain protein, zinc, riboflavin, vitamin B6, and B12. A common hot dog has protein, carbohydrates, sugar, and fats. A person should have a hot dog less in his life because of the lack of nutrients and fat.

The overconsumption of hot dogs increases obesity and blood pressure level which is why people are advised to eat fewer hot dogs. So, let’s have healthy food and stay healthy in our life.

How term “hot dog” came about.

Another story that riles serious hot dog historians is how term “hot dog” came about. Some say the word was coined in 1901 at the New York Polo Grounds on a cold April day.

Vendors were hawking hot dogs from portable hot water tanks shouting “They’re red hot! Get your dachshund sausages while they’re red hot!” A New York Journal sports cartoonist, Tad Dorgan, observed the scene and hastily drew a cartoon of barking dachshund sausages nestled warmly in rolls.

Not sure how to spell “dachshund” he simply wrote “hot dog!” The cartoon is said to have been a sensation, thus coining the term “hot dog.” However, historians have been unable to find this cartoon, despite Dorgan’s enormous body of work and his popularity.

Kraig, and other culinary historians, point to college magazines where the word “hot dog” began appearing in the 1890s. The term was current at Yale in the fall of 1894, when “dog wagons” sold hot dogs at the dorms. The name was a sarcastic comment on the provenance of the meat. References to dachshund sausages and ultimately hot dogs can be traced to German immigrants in the 1800s.

These immigrants brought not only sausages to America, but dachshund dogs. The name most likely began as a joke about the Germans’ small, long, thin dogs. In fact, even Germans called the frankfurter a “little-dog” or “dachshund” sausage, thus linking the word “dog” to their popular concoction.

you can also read about: The Sugar Bowl of India- Erakina

By Mukesh Kumar U M
18/02/2022