Take you to the cinema
And leave you in a Wimpy Bar
You tell me that we’ve gone too far
Come running up to me…
Did Wimpys gladly extend you credit to Tuesday?
You are aware that variants of black pudding exists in French and Italian cuisine, right? Blood in cooking, especially in sausages, is pretty common all over the place. It always amazes me that the Brits somehow get blamed for it.
It’s kind of traditional to blame the English for bad food. If the French make it then it’s a delicacy. If the English make it then it’s garbage not fit for a mangy cat to eat.
I think it’s mostly a naming problem. Boudin Noir and Morcella sound exotic and lyrical. Black pudding, although absolutely not inferior (IMHO) to the French and Spanish equivalents, sounds lumpen.
Are American hot dogs really anything other than bite-size haggises?
I don’t know that any hot dogs are made from sheep although it’s possible to do. But no, if you are talking about contemporary American hot dogs the vast majority of them are made solely with beef and/or pork muscle meat. There are some things called hot dogs made from chicken or turkey meat, which should be illegal, but it’s impossible to actually prove they exist because they cause such great cognizant dissonance that the victim represses all memories of even having seen them.
A typical recipe might be whole muscle meat, mix of pork and beef, somethiing like totally 20% fat or so. The sausage is usually spiced with dry mustard, paprika, sometimes mace or nutmeg, salt, pepper, etc. The sausage is then emulsified into a paste so when it’s cooked it is completely smooth. It is also often lightly smoked.
Here’s a good rundown of good American hot dogs.
I should add, hot dogs may contain offal or off-cuts, but it’s hardly a rule, and the more expensive brands tend to use whole meat cuts. For me, the main points that define a hot dog are that it is an emulsified forcemeat, it is lightly smoked and cooked through before heating and serving. They tend to be stuffed in sheep’s casings (or no casings at all) so you have a thin and long end product. The spicing also tends to be garlicky, a bit of pepper, and some kind of “sweet” spice like mace/nutmeg, coriander, or ginger.
Ah yes, sheep’s casings are sometimes used so there is a near overlap with the ingredients of haggis. I go for all beef, but I want that casing, it gives the dog that snap when you bite into it.
For me, without the sheep casing and the snap it provides, it’s just not quite “right.” That’s why a lot of the New York kosher dogs are a non-starter for me. That said, even here in Chicago, it’s getting more and more difficult to find natural casing dogs, which is why some intrepid soul came up with a natural casing map for Chicago. My area of town, near Midway airport, has tons of hot dog joints. There’s hardly any on the map, which jibes with my experience of the difficulty of finding them. Luckily, there’s always Portillo’s. If I’m in a part of town craving a hot dog, and I don’t know the area, I end up at Portillo’s.
I suggest “Midnight Bangers” as a new name? Or “Sooty Sausage”…
Not bad, but sound ever so slightly like a range of black dildos. 
You’ve seen right through my alternative marketing campaign 
Chewing through your Wimpy dreams, they eat without a sound. Digesting England by the pound.
Indeed, the American hot dog is beyond reproach. It’s respectable and magically delicious. And, there are so many sanctioned toppings you may put on a hot dog (e.g. mustard, ketchup, coleslaw, relish, chili, sauerkraut, onions, tomatoes, sliced dill pickle, gummi bears, etc.), that if you attempted every possible combination, you would never eat the same hot dog twice in your life…even if you ate an infinite number of hot dogs per day and lived to infinity years.
I make things simple for myself: like my intellectual doppelgänger, Albert Einstein, who allegedly had a closet full of the same identical suit so that he didn’t have to waste mental time thinking about what to wear each day, I just put all possible toppings on my hot dogs all at once. Like a small snake eating a big pig, I’ve got to unhinge my jaws to get it in, but it’s worth the effort.
Of course, if you’re an Evel Knievel-type risk-taker, you can dance with the devil and enter the world of non-sanctioned toppings for your hot dog. The beautiful thing about it is, no matter what you put in a hot dog bun, as long as a wiener is buried in there somewhere, it’s called a “hot dog.” You can stick a hot dog and bun on top of a 22oz T-bone steak and it’s still simply called a “steak dog.” There was intense controversy here in the States a few years back when the hamburger-people claimed that the combination of hamburger and hot dog should legally be called a “dog burger”, but those people mysteriously [sup]giant airquote[/sup]“disappeared”[sup]giant airquote[/sup] from the face of the earth. Good riddance I say.