How about vinegar for french fries? It seems to only be done from Ottawa ( Canada ) and east of there. People thought I was looney for doing that when I was in Texas, and I’ve even had people tell me that they don’t normally do that in Toronto. Salt and vinegar on fries is the best.
What can I say? 30 years living in NYC has made me like ketchup on my hamburger. I also add Hellmann’s, too. I even put ketchup on hot dogs. I like ketchup. Sue me. Ketchup on my bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. Mmmmm.
Now that I live in the South, they put (ack) mustard on burgers. Don’t like it, but lots of people do. I do like the Southern custom of tossing slaw on a burger or sandwich, especially some nice pork BBQ. And they have a different type of cole slaw, minced and in a vinegar type base. I grew up with the mayo base, but I like this stuff better.
I must say that this thread really surprised me. I’d always thought that ketchup on burgers was universal. To me, there are two modes of hamburgers:
a meat & potatoes burger - ketchup, mustard, cheese, bacon etc.
or
a ‘deli’ burger - lettuce, tomato, mayo, pickles, special sauce etc.
and never the twain shall meet.
A McDonalds Quarter Pounder is an example of the former, and a BigMac the latter.
As far as putting ketchup on a hotdog, there is something truely unholy with that. As a kid I remember the only kids who ate hotdogs with ketchup as being those weirdo nerds who ate their own buggers.
Must… refrain… from… making… wisecrack…
ketchup: hamburgers, hotdogs, french fries, chicken. one of my favorites is a ketchup sandwhich, preferably on a hamburger or hotdog bun, both of which hold up better than bread.
mayonaisse: on french fries. whoever first paired mayonaisse and french fries deserves to be knighted, sainted, or, in the very least, be given amazing oral sex. also on boloney sandwiches.
mustard: hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, any sandwich that is made up of deli meats and is made on a bagel instead of on bread.
i always thought i was a hardcore mustard person, but after considering this thread, i am no longer sure. the only thing to do is to go out and test my preferences, which will be a long and artery-clogging journey, no doubt. luckily, i am always up to that sort of challenge.
Hamburgers: mustard, sliced onion, sliced tomato, lettuce if you insist. The bun should be lightly toasted, preferably on a grill, and then buttered.
Hotdogs: mustard, chopped onions, relish, chopped tomato as a variation, chili, and (rarely) kraut.
Hamburgers made with Mayo used to be known as “sissyburgers”
back home in Dallas.
BLTs made with mustard are superior.
Ketchup and Mayo are comparable to ripe roadkill.
I’ve put vinegar on fries before, malt vinegar is available as a condiment at a lot of the fast sea food places like Captain Ds and Long John Silvers.
For fries I must mention: banana ketchup! Especially the hot banana ketchup, sometimes known as “banana chili sauce”. Food coloring makes it look like tomato ketchup. Found here in Houston in Vietnamese supermarkets, sold under several different labels on identical bottles, suggesting that it all comes from one big processing plant in the Philippines. Great stuff!
Vinegar on sprouts and broccoli… grew up that way (I think it was just a thing of my dad). Just dip them in and eat them up. Of course I have that genetic ‘defect’ where I can’t taste the chemical in sprouts and would eat them solo anyway. Maybe people would like brussel sprouts if they dipped them in vinegar. Does anyone else practice vinegar dipping on veggies?
Jesus. How the hell did you manage to dig up THIS rotting corpse of a thread?
A fluent speaker of Chinese once told me that ketchup derives from the word ketsop or something like it. In Chinese it refers to a minced vegetable relish. One can easily imagine the English sailors bringing this term back with them from Hong Kong.
If it came from China, might it have actually been cat soup?
I’d just like to say that this is the most enlightening thread I have read in a while.
Vinegar on fries: DEFINITELY. White vinegar in Canada, Malt in the UK. (But I sprinkle, never dip.) A friend of mine who travels to the US regularly brings his own vinegar so he can have it on his McDonalds fries. Mmm.
(When my roomate eats fries, she makes a little puddle of ketchup, and mixes in extra vinegar and salt, and dips the fries into the resulting red goo. Our friendship depends on my having reserved judgement on that.)
Hot dogs: Toronto street dog carts often offer sweet corn relish, which is divine.
And to throw this into the mix: My grandfather puts salt and pepper on fruit (specifically, canteloupe and strawberries). We thought he was mad until we tried it. Yum !
Lifelong Californian checking in…
Ketchup: hamburgers and fries.
Mustard: for all pink processed meats–hot dogs, pastrami, ham, bologna, corned beef.
Mayo: for dipping artichoke leaves.
Ketchup. . . ech. Miracle Whip? More Ech; Both are too sweet to put on real food as an adult.
Now a delightful thing is to go in a Belgian frituur, a purveyor of French Fries, as we call them on my side of this country, and marvel at the 25 or so different condiments available.
From memory, for example, aside from tomato ketchup and mayo, the obvious choices, there is curry ketchup, a sort of mayo with a LOT of peppercorns added, a marinara, something like French Dressing, a spicy kind of Indonesian chili sauce like sriachi (spelling?), something called Oorlog [war] sauce (a dark pink mix of mayo, french, and sriachi?), a garlic laden kind of mayo, a kind of indonesian peanut satay sauce, something called “sauce Americain” which looks like marinara. . . with hamburger bits? [haven’t tried it], Samourai sauce which is sort of spicy with a bit of soy in it, perhaps. . . and more that I can not recall. These all come in large plastic gallon-ish sized containers with pumps, so someone sells a lot of this stuff. Or you can get them with just some salt, but I have never seen vinegar in one of these places (IMO a shame).
I have no taste. Or I like a lot of it, one of the two. I dislike beef. I don’t hate it; I just grew up on a farm and had steak, hamburger (not necessarily hamburgers, just ground beef), beef roasts and the like five days out of seven.
My burgers have ketchup, mustard, Miracle Whip, and thousand island dressing. Lettuce and tomato and there is no such thing as too much cheese. I dislike both pickles and raw onions. Bacon if it’s available (mmmmmmmmmmm, pork!). AND I’m anal: Condiments go on the bun FIRST, spread thinly so it doesn’t run down my arms when I squish it. Then the burger (and PLEASE melt the cheese onto it - none o’ that “but the burger will melt the cheese in the bun” crap), then the lettuce, tomato and bacon (baconbaconbacongottahavebacon!).
Hot dogs have both ketchup AND mustard; ditto BBQ sauce. And if you can put some cheese on my dog I’m all for it.
And ya know what? I don’t care if you don’t like it. Make your own freakin’ burger.