Hot-Dog / Frankfurter Américain
Descendant of the Frankfurter würstchen, transformed by American industrial standardisation to the point that its creators would no longer recognise it.
| Lean beef (or pork, or a mix) | 600 g |
| Beef or pork fat | 300 g |
| Crushed ice | 100 g |
| Fine salt | 18 g |
| Curing salt (Prague Powder #1) | 2.5 g |
| Sugar | 5 g |
| Sweet paprika | 6 g |
| Garlic powder | 3 g |
| Onion powder | 2 g |
| Ground coriander | 2 g |
| Grated nutmeg | 1 g |
| Ground white pepper | 2 g |
| Sheep casing (Ø 22–24 mm) | — |
- Preparation: Cut the meat and the fat into cubes. Part-freeze at −3 °C to ease the emulsion.
- Initial grinding: Mince the meats through the 6 mm plate.
- Emulsion: In a bowl cutter or powerful processor, mix the meats with the curing salt, the salt and the spices. Add the crushed ice gradually while mixing, until a very fine, sticky paste forms (temperature below 12 °C).
- Test: The forcemeat should be smooth and stick to the fingers. If it separates, it is too warm.
- Stuffing: Stuff into fine sheep casings. Form sausages of 15 cm.
- Resting: Refrigerate for 12 hours to let the flavour and colour develop.
- Smoking and cooking: Hot-smoke at 65 °C for 1 hour, then raise to 75 °C until 68 °C at the core.
- Cooling: Plunge at once into ice water. Refrigerate.
The hot dog descends from the German Frankfurter würstchen (see that entry). What separates the American version from the original is its industrial trajectory: crossing the Atlantic in the nineteenth century in the baggage of the German and Alsatian immigrants, the Frankfurter became a standardised product, often stuffed into a synthetic casing, then peeled (skinless), made from blends of beef, pork and sometimes poultry. The premium versions (all-beef, in a natural sheep casing) remain closest to the Germanic ancestor, but represent only a fraction of the market.
In 1867, Charles Feltman, a German immigrant who had reached New York in 1856, began selling sausages in rolls from a cart on the beach at Coney Island. His Coney Island Red Hots met with such success that he built a catering complex that, at its height in the 1920s, served nearly 5 million customers a year. In 1916, Nathan Handwerker, a Polish Jewish immigrant who worked at Feltman’s as a bread-cutter, opened his own stand with 300 dollars of savings and sold his hot dogs at half price. To overcome the customers’ mistrust, he had extras wear surgeons’ gowns and eat conspicuously at his stand. Nathan’s Famous was born. Feltman’s closed in 1954; Nathan’s is still on the same street corner.
The NHDSC (National Hot Dog and Sausage Council) estimates that Americans consume about 20 billion hot dogs a year, with 150 million consumed on the Fourth of July alone. These figures, regularly disputed, are nonetheless revealing: no other sausage, in any other country, reaches these orders of magnitude.
In 1939, President Roosevelt served Nathan’s hot dogs to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at a picnic at Hyde Park, a deliberately popular gesture meant to show the British sovereigns that America needed no protocol to receive them.
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