I read that they sell those as calamari. The article said never, ever, order fried calamari in a NYC restaurant, unless you want to eat hog sphincters.
I do. I don’t trust ground meat in any form, and I hate eating it. I even have trouble with sandwich meat, although I do eat it fairly often. I eat a lot of things I find disgusting, because in the end I need the protein. When I was poor, I sometimes even ate hot dogs or “half smokes.”
I was only twelve, or maybe even less, when I read “The Jungle.” That is never going to leave my consciousness. I’m stuck with it for life.
No ketchup for me, but I can get onboard with Heinz Chili Sauce. Never tried that on a hot dog, but it sounds good.
Here’s a hint, Beck: Use Heinz Chili Sauce instead of ketchup when you make a meatloaf. It adds a lot of zip that ketchup just doesn’t have.
As for me, hot dogs need sweet green relish and plain ol’ yellow mustard. That’s all. If they’re Nathan’s dogs or I’m at the ballpark or I’m getting one from a street cart, then maybe sauerkraut too. But never ketchup.
They’re called “emulsified sausages” in sausage-making parlance, meaning that they’re so blended together that the fat and protein are effectively emulsified into a homogenous mass.
On top of that, they’re fairly salty, spiced pretty heavily (pepper, mace, coriander, nutmeg, etc…) and smoked. Their flavor profile isn’t centered on the original meat as a result.
Labeling doesn’t help either- it either says something horribly generic like “Beef”, or worse, something like “Beef trimmings” or “mechanically separated chicken”. And some other highly processed meat products like potted meat have actually had nastier ingredients listed (see this link for the gory details on potted meat)
That’s why people are so skeptical; an unscrupulous maker could bulk out their sausages with God-knows-what, and they’d never know, because it’s blended six ways from Sunday, spiced up, and fairly heavily smoked.
That said, I’m not sure that hot dogs deserve the opprobrium they get- something like Hillshire Farm smoked sausage is much the same, as are any commercial sausage. They’re almost certainly not made from the choicest cuts of meat, as those are more valuable elsewhere. But they’re probably not made of a mish-mash of organ meats either- they’re probably made from trimmings and lesser quality (i.e. tougher, harder to deal with) cuts, which doesn’t really matter when you’re emulsifying the sausage anyway.
Ah, dear pup, how sadly you were led astray in your youth.
Raw onions are nasty in / on everything. Mustard likewise is not actually edible in any form. Sweet pickles or the same in relish form is also nasty although non-sweet pickles or relish is good.
About halfway through the posts, my appetite for breakfast kicked in, and I slaked it with a couple of Johnsonville* Cheddar/Jalapeno stuffed whatever-they-are (kinda hotdoggie) each wrapped in a corn tortilla; this is my idea of a corndog. These I browned all over in olive oil, and dipped in a mix of equal parts catsup/mustard/horseradish, since the wrapping and cooking process would have been far too messy if they had been pre-slathered.
Honest to Dog, I don’t understand the resistance to ketchup; this must be down to parental “teaching”, an early form of child abuse.
And finally, if you have a picky dog, be wary of what he does eat, because cats don’t eat dog shit. Yeah, we apparently knew very different dogs.
*Would you trade your job at the slaughterhouse collecting and sorting hog anuses for a similar position in the johnson department?
Many people are cautious towards new experiences, especially when it comes to food. Some just can’t appreciate the sweet plus umami blend found in ketchup plus hot dog or pineapple plus ham. So when you hear someone complain about some flavor combination, know they’ve had a limited gamut of experiences and treat them kindly. Not everyone can or wants to be cosmopolitan.
I think hygiene has improved since the days of The Jungle, but being mostly urban dwellers, we might be less acquainted or prefer not to dwell on the specifics of turning animals into meat.
Sausages use the parts of animals not conducive to more familiar and pricy cuts. They contain a lot of fat. There is tendon and ligament and things that are edible but not sold in Canadian grocery stores. You can buy snout in Mexican grocery stores, and others are less squeamish about the taste, texture and health benefits of organ meats.
I’m a meat eater and love hot dogs. Sometimes after handling a raw turkey or chicken I can barely eat it. It kind of grosses me out. I’d rather eat a hot dog! It doesn’t look like an animal.
DING DING DING!! I actually love to mix up mustard and ketchup. I call it my Emergency Sauce. The concept of adding horseradish to it revves up my most powerful culinary anticipatory vibes. I have to try this!
Good luck! And while I get the humor in your username, I’ll say that there is no such thing as too many cats; I once had about a dozen (couldn’t keep track) strays, rescues, cast-offs, and retirees, most of whom just showed up. I think cats have a hobo-like set of symbols that they use to direct their fellows to soft touches.
I think for me, the fact that I grew up eating curried goat, say, and hearing people remark on how disgusting that was, even though those same people would have no issue eating lamb / mutton, kinda made me realize how arbitrary the whole “good” and “bad” meat thing was.
I’m vegan now, but in my meat-eating days I ate basically* everything, and any part of an animal, including not hesitating to eat products made from pink slime. If you’re going to sacrifice an animal for your belly, fucking use it all.
* I refused to eat dog meat. Just because I had heard that they were kept in particularly cruel conditions.
I remember as well where they showed a doctor a video of the goop being prepared for chicken nuggets, and asked the leading question of (paraphrasing) “What does eating this kind of meat do to the human body?” And the doctor just shrugged and said words to the effect of “Well, it’s fattier meat than the choice cuts, but apart from that it’s the same thing”.
Honestly, if you’re eating hotdogs, “sophisticated” has pretty much already left the building. I like ketchup and raw onions, so just deal with it “snobs”*.
Just so. I happily adorn my hot dogs with ketchup (and only ketchup; mustard goes on ham sandwiches and pretzels, nothing else), and my pizzas with pineapple.