I don’t understand the depth of feeling that so many people have about what condiments other people put on their hotdogs. In the currently-running ketchup on steak thread, mention was swiftly made of those heathens that put ketchup on hotdogs.
Okay, I’ll admit this. Ketchup is used to add flavor to bland foods. I would never put ketchup on a bratwurst, a kielbasa, or a banger. But your basic Oscar Meyer hotdog is pretty darned tasteless. Given my druthers, I’d barbecue it and add some good spicy brown mustard and sweet pickle relish. Or maybe just a good barbecue sauce. At many little hotdog stands, though, the only “mustard” they have is that grotesque yellow stuff, which I simply won’t eat. Thus, the hotdog gets ketchup.
But that’s not my point, or my question. My question is, WHY does it make the slightest bit of difference how someone else prepares their food? Personally, it wouldn’t bother me a bit it you cut open your hotdog, stuffed it with blackberries, breaded it, wrapped it in rhubarb, deep-fried it, and served it on a Krispy Kreme doughnut with a dollop of cream cheese and a sprinkling of chopped walnuts. It’s your hotdog.
So, if you’re one of the card-carrying, banner-bearing, anti-ketchupists, please explain why it matters to you what’s on someone else’s wiener*?
*Yes, Swampbear, that straight line is there just for you. Go for it.
I’m a ketchup hater, and I freely admit that my aversion is illogical. I hated it long before I ever had to scrub its dried remains off baseboards at McDonalds. It looks like blood, it tastes sweet…I’m gagging.
And you eat it??? How could you? Why, I oughtta…[insert imaginative violent act that won’t get me in trouble with the mods]
It doesn’t…unless you’re advertising it as a “Chicago-style hot dog.” Or if you operate in the city of Chicago and put ketchup on an “everything on it” dog. (One place in the Loop does this and it drives me nuts. I don’t go there anymore.) For me, it’s a Chicago tradition thing. We were born and raised not to put ketchup on hotdogs, it doesn’t belong there. Even Cecil agrees.
It doesn’t really matter to me, but it gives me a shudder every time.
I just don’t like ketchup. I can’t think of the last time I used ketchup except as a base for some of my sauces or for my son’s food on occasion. I figure if I’m putting ketchup on something it’s to mask how bad it really is.
If you want to douse things with ketchup go ahead, I honestly don’t care as long as you aren’t putting it on food I’ve prepared that tastes just fine as is. My brother does it sometimes when he comes over and I have to bite my tongue since it seems like he’s insulting the food (and my cooking) though I know that’s not his intent.
Ketchup on a hot dog is as common as ketchup on a burger, at least in my neck of the woods. I’d never heard it was a faux pas until I read a long-ago previous thread here on SDMB.
The more stuff you can put on a dog to hide the real taste, the better: including onions, relish, mustard, and hot peppers.
There are such things as good-tasting hot dogs, believe it or not. In my neck of the woods, the natural casing Vienna Beef dogs and Chicago Red Hots are pretty tasty on their own. Oscar Meyers and their ilk are so far removed from what a real hot dog should taste like.
Damn straight. I’m on a lifelong quest to find the perfect hot dog and the perfect mustard. I think I’ll never find it unless I go to central/eastern Europe.
I’ll take up the question of why the rabid hatred, since AFAIK I’m the first one to post it, at least in my memory of the boards.
It’s vile! To me, those are two tastes that simply don’t go together. Like ice cream and bologna. BBQ sauce is right out as well, unless it is also topped with cole slaw. Then it’s a shaggy dog, and is more pleasurable than sex.
As far as insulting people who defile their weiners, it’s just ribbing. It’s a joke, son.
I was about to pile-on about the ketchup as well but then your threw in the sweet relish and I realized that you are sensory disabled and more deserving of pitty rather than scorn. Those things obviously don’t go together (sweet relish doesn’t even go with itself) and yet you have no idea.
I don’t have a problem with people slapping grape jelly and caviar on their hotdog if they do it in their home. However, my wife and her family are major gourmet foods importers and distributors. I am a good cook and have a good feel for what goes with what and how. If you eat at our house and start pouring ketchup over fine, expensive ingrediants that are well thought out and prepared carefully, you probably aren’t coming back. It isn’t a capital crime but it does indicate personality, upbringing, and lifestyle issues that I don’t find admirable.
This sounds oddly like something I got pitted for once but the fact still remains that the sun sets in the West.
If you want to put ketchup on your hot-dog, put it on.
It actually doesn’t taste bad at all.
But, you will run into food snobs at all levels, even at the lowly level of the hot-dog.
It’s pathetic, the number of people out there in search of the “perfect” hot-dog, or the “perfect” soft ice cream.
Those pitiful people, in my opinion are nothing more than sad, raw souls trying to exert control over something that was never meant to be controlled, in a sorry attempt to become the arbiters of something that is bigger and more important than they are.
Ignore them, because all they have are their own taste buds, which amounts to exactly Jack Squat.
Put whatever you want on your dog, and enjoy it.
Don’t listen to provincial jackasses from NYC or Chicago telling you what you should or shouldn’t like.
I like ketchup, but it’s just the wrong kind of taste for a hot dog. You need spicy with a dog, like a good brown mustard and/or sauerkraut. You can put sweet relish on a dog, but only if you put the brown mustard on first, to get that spicy/sweet combination. Ketchup just seems wrong to me. Even my husband, whose first choice of condiment is ketchup (followed by BBQ sauce) puts mustard on hot dogs.
But I wouldn’t make ewwww noises at you if you ate it like that. i wouldn’t even think less of you. Personal taste is just that–personal.
How so? And no, the explanation that you offered doesn’t fly. What’s wrong with me wanting to find a dog more delicious than the last one I had? I’ve already said that I really don’t care what other people eat. Am I still pitiful?
