I love hot dogs. I like them boiled or grilled, hot or cold. They are a fun and easy food to serve at a cookout. If you are out of link sausage they can stand in and hold their own next to the eggs.
I usually like them with ketchup but relish is also good. Never mustard. And a chili dog really hits the spot sometimes. Then the heartburn kicks in and I remember why I only eat chili dogs about once every five years.
Urban legend has it that all kinds of horrible things go into hot dogs: snouts, anuses, lips, insects, etc. I decided to find out a little more about this for myself.
I visited the FDA's website to see what they had to say about hot dogs. It started with a description of what a hot dog is. It even described their appearance as follows:
"They are link-shaped and come in all sizes - short, long, thin and chubby."
(Hmmm. That is interesting. Are they still referring to hot dogs, I wondered.)
Then they went on to the ingredients statement:
"All ingredients in the product must be listed in the ingredients statement in order of predominance, from highest to lowest amounts."
(So far, so good. Then it gets a little hazy about what is actually meat as we think of it, and what is "other stuff".) Luckily, there are some nice definitions:
"Meat" Derived by Advanced Meat Bone Separation and Meat Recovery Systems
"The definition of "meat" was amended in December 1994 to include any "meat product that is produced by advanced meat/bone separation machinery." This meat is comparable in appearance, texture, and composition to meat trimmings and similar meat products derived by hand. This machinery separates meat from bone by scraping, shaving, or pressing the meat from the bone without breaking or grinding the bone. Product produced by advanced meat recovery (AMR) machinery can be labeled using terms associated with hand-deboned product (e.g."pork trimmings" and "ground pork"). The AMR machinery cannot grind, crush or pulverize bones to remove edible meat tissue, and bones must emerge essentially intact."
(However, if the bones get ground up in all that mess, they have another term for it.)
Mechanically Separated Meat (MSM)
"Mechanically separated meat is a paste-like and batter-like meat product produced by forcing bones, with attached edible meat, under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue."
Note that the bones do not have to emerge intact in this case. Very appetizing.
On a different note, there are many inventive ways people have come up with to cook hot dogs. Here are just a few for your enjoyment:
Suitable for an intimate dinner for two
Cooking for a crowd, redneck style
Quite sleek and sophisticated, don't you think?
Supposedly this one barks when the dogs are ready
The toaster is apparently good for more than making toast
This one is cooked with 220 Volts of electricity
A favorite on Death Row as a last meal?
