We like it, the hot dog. At any time, in any place. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon on the pavement of the cities, when we ate with the wooden horses at noon. At midnight, when the night promises to be white and a craving ambushes us between two pints. This is perhaps one of the first street foods we shared with our galapiat when he was typing the biggest piece of the sausage and the mustard was poking his nose and eyes. After this snack, we went to test the strength of our stomach on the roller coaster of the ducasse of Arras or another chti city. The kid laughed like a whale with leftover Nutella from his pancake around his mouth. We waited with our eyes closed, the sausage yo-yoing in the esophagus, the end of this hellish merry-go-round.
20 billion hot dogs
As much to admit it right away, we pane that slab on the origin of the hot dog as there are different versions and quarrels of the bell tower. The only certainty is that he is spending miles in the land of Uncle Sam. There, statistics put forward by different sources make you dizzy: 20 billion hot dogs gobbled up every year. Numbers are like contests, the bigger it is, the more it passes: on July 4, 2021, national holiday in the United States, Joey Chestnut, nicknamed Jaws, swallowed 76 sausage sandwiches in ten minutes, beating his own record of 75 hot dogs in 2020.
Frankfurt sausages
Our cousins, the Germans, claiming that they are at the origin of the sausage and that at the end of the sixteenth century they already stuff it in bread. In the nineteenth century, they embarked on the American dream with their Frankfurt sausages. In the aftermath, around 1870, a butcher of Teutonic origin, Charles Feltman, had the idea of placing frankfurt sausage in a long bread easy to eat on the beaches of Coney Island.
A second version of the story claims that the hot dog was born in 1904 at a fair held in Louisiana where the Bavarian exhibitor Anton Feuchtwanger decides to serve his hot sausages in a piece of bread, in order to stroll through the aisles of the fair. Third legend: a New Yorker is at the origin of the hot dog. With the sausages he sells very hotly, he offers a pair of gloves to enjoy them. But one day, he finds himself in the glove compartment and calls on the local baker to make buns to eat his sausages without spitting his fingers.
Dachshund
Our Quebec friends call the hot dog, “hot dog”. And all this is still the fault of the Germans as Mémé would have said who had never digested the Jerusalem artichokes of the Occupation. Because not content to land across the Atlantic with their sausages, they also bring something that also looks like a sausage but on all fours: their dachshund (sorry dog, we like you). This nice dog would have inspired the name of the sandwich also because of the dubious reputation attributed to the meat of his sausage.
Sauerkraut
Among the slew of hot dog variants (mustard, ketchup, relish, fried onions …), we have a particular tenderness for the sauerkraut one. And this weekend, we will try a new version around this emblem of street food: the homemade hot dog sausage in the Japanese version, found in Japanese Cuisine by Maori Murota (1), a delicate and exciting book.
For four people, you need 4 hot dog loaves; 4 teaspoons of mustard; 4 spoons of classic mayonnaise; neutral vegetable oil.
Homemade sausage
400 g of farmer pork spine; 1/2 clove of chopped garlic; 3 g finely chopped fresh ginger; 1/6 finely chopped yellow onion; 1 teaspoon nuoc-mam; 1 teaspoon of lemon juice; 1 teaspoon of unrefined sugar; pepper.
Spicy ketchup
2 tablespoons of ketchup; 40 g of cherry tomatoes cut in half; 1 teaspoon nuoc-mam; 1 teaspoon of unrefined sugar; 1 chopped fresh red pepper.
Coleslaw
150 g of pointed cabbage (or white cabbage) cut into thin strips; 1/8 small red onion; 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds; 1 tablespoon of olive oil; 1 teaspoon of nuoc-mam.
Make the sausage. Chop the pork with a robot or knife. In a bowl put the ground pork, garlic, ginger, onion, nuoc-mam, lemon juice, and sugar. Pepper and mix well. Form four sausages the diameter of a Strasbourg sausage. Place each sausage in a sheet of parchment paper and wrap it, turning the ends as if to close a candy. Pack each roll in a sheet of aluminum foil and close in the same way. In a large saucepan, heat a bottom of 2 cm of water. When boiling, lower the heat, place the sausages, and cover. Cook for seven minutes over medium-low heat. Drain and let cool.
Prepare the ketchup. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients.
Prepare the coleslaw. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients.
Unpack the sausages from their papers. In a frying pan, heat a little oil and cook the sausages over low heat for 2-3 minutes, until golden brown.
Open the hot dog buns and toast them lightly in the oven. Spread the mustard on one side and the mayonnaise on the other. Put in each bread coleslaw, a sausage, then ketchup. You can add a few coriander leaves and a few slices of fresh chili.
Maori Murota also offers a vegan version: “Replace sausages with vegetable sausages. What I like is to cut firm tofu into sticks (125 g for 4 people) and marinate it for thirty minutes with a clove of garlic, a tablespoon of soy sauce, and a teaspoon of unrefined sugar. Wipe and coat with potato starch. Fry. Pepper.”
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