Hot dog phobia

Phobias are, by definition, irrational or at least overblown fears, in the face of logic or evidence to the contrary. Americans have been squeamish about their meatpacking houses ever since muckrakers like Sinclair Lewis (am I remembering correctly here?) exposed their terrible state a century ago. Fears die hard.

[;(]I grew up in a home where my father thought every piece of pork harbored trichinosis and had to be drastically overcooked just to approach being safe to eat, although he enjoyed bacon, sausage and occasional other pork dishes, the rest of our family always had to endure his tirades about the dangers of pork whenever it was served and also a drastically misquoted admonition from the bible about pork being unclean[):]...frankly, it took the fun out of the meal pretty quick, usually on Easter or Xmas (he didn't like turkey either). But to be truthful, he was paranoid of undercooked turkey and beef also, he had my mom charbroil all meat until it approached becoming carbon.

I still enjoy occasional hot dogs, but bologna has scared me for many years, lol. That's the real Mystery Meat. I went to the Missouri Auctioneering School in the 80's at the Kansas City, MO stockyards and saw the old gimpy cattle going to the "bologna buyers"....[xx)]

Happy holidays everyone.

No one here seems to mention it, so maybe it's not a nationwide brand, but here in New York, I really like the Boars Head hot dogs -- the seven-to-a-pack natural casing ones, not the 10-to-a-pack skinless ones. I. They have a "lite" less-sodium version that's good,too, though smaller (hmmm... could that be how they get less sodium?). They're the closest I've been able to come, in NYC, to the hot dogs used for the Coney Island hot dogs I remember from my hometown of Detroit.

quote:

Originally posted by Mark in Ohio

Phobias are, by definition, irrational or at least overblown fears, in the face of logic or evidence to the contrary. Americans have been squeamish about their meatpacking houses ever since muckrakers like Sinclair Lewis (am I remembering correctly here?) exposed their terrible state a century ago. Fears die hard.

Mark:

You make a common error, confusing social reform advocate Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle (a book exposing the terrible crimes of the early 20th-century U.S. meatpacking industry), with novelist Sinclair Lewis. Nothing to be ashamed of, really. (I majored in American History so I always feel inclined to point out stuff like this)

Speaking of Upton Sinclair and his key work, The Jungle, there's a very sickening sequence (don't read this if you're squeamish) in which a woman worker gives birth in the packinghouse and the baby falls in with the pig meat and gets ground up into sausage (which of course gets sold to the public). No way to verify if this actually happened, of course. However, President Theodore Roosevelt was so disgusted by what he read in The Jungle that he ordered an investigation of the meat packing industry. This helped lead to food safey laws.

quote:

Originally posted by gschwim

The best reassurance you can get is to buy kosher hot dogs, such as Hebrew National. Even better are the ones sold at Jewish delicatessens. All phases of production, from the slaughtering of the cows (which is required to be done as humanely as possible), to the finished product, is done under the supervision of rabbis, in strict adherence to Jewish dietary law and guaranteed to be pure beef. Just look for the word "kosher" on the package.

and make sure its made from bris-ket.

quote:

Originally posted by danimal15

quote:

Originally posted by Mark in Ohio

Phobias are, by definition, irrational or at least overblown fears, in the face of logic or evidence to the contrary. Americans have been squeamish about their meatpacking houses ever since muckrakers like Sinclair Lewis (am I remembering correctly here?) exposed their terrible state a century ago. Fears die hard.

Mark:

You make a common error, confusing social reform advocate Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle (a book exposing the terrible crimes of the early 20th-century U.S. meatpacking industry), with novelist Sinclair Lewis. Nothing to be ashamed of, really. (I majored in American History so I always feel inclined to point out stuff like this)

Oops, thank you Danimal, you are entirely correct, it was indeed Upton Sinclair who I was trying to think of; that will teach me to use a reference book instead of my memory when in doubt. Now that I have entered my 50's, things I learned in my teens are becoming an increasingly hazy memory, lol.

quote:

Originally posted by danimal15

Speaking of Upton Sinclair and his key work, The Jungle, there's a very sickening sequence (don't read this if you're squeamish) in which a woman worker gives birth in the packinghouse and the baby falls in with the pig meat and gets ground up into sausage (which of course gets sold to the public). No way to verify if this actually happened, of course. However, President Theodore Roosevelt was so disgusted by what he read in The Jungle that he ordered an investigation of the meat packing industry. This helped lead to food safey laws.

Okay, time for my two short rendering plant stories after reading about the baby getting ground into sausage.

Living on a working farm 3 miles up the road from the "collecting station" for a rendering plant 45 miles north in Columbus we used to always glance at it warily driving into town. It was the Cow Dachau, the next to the last stop for the "crips and downers" of area livestock, sometimes on hot summer days we were "treated" with the ghastly site of a bloated horse, cow, or goat dangling from an iron hook in the light between the two huge sliding doors.A friend once worked there for two days, quitting on the second day after watching a veteran employee sit down on a dead hog, unwrap his lunch, and proceed to eat it.
The company used to load a big truck every few days (if the neighbors were lucky, a week if they weren't) with the ballooning animals and drive them to their mother plant, Inland Products just SW of Columbus. A number of times we would be driving up the back highway to Columbus (which will remain nameless to protect the drug traffic, drunk drivers, overweight semis, unlicensed drivers, and EPA-banned goods that ply its length) and we would smell something awful as we found ourselves tailgaiting an Inland Products truck for an hour which dripped blood, assorted body fluids, and animal parts (when they hit a bump with a ripe load). The truck usually hit the back highway about midnight; you couldn't pass it, you had to hold your breath and breathe once a minute or so. The actual plant looked like the Evil Witch of the West's Castle and everybody aproaching Columbus from the S or SW was obliged to drive near it to enter the city, even the state inspectors deigned to visit it: Elmer the Bull went in one end and bone meal, blood meal, glue, fertilizer and whoknowswhat came out the other...
.
Now the collecting station has been closed a few years and there is just a big spray-painted sign at the entrance saying "Closed. No More Animals."

quote:

Originally posted by Mark in Ohio

quote:

Originally posted by danimal15

Speaking of Upton Sinclair and his key work, The Jungle, there's a very sickening sequence (don't read this if you're squeamish) in which a woman worker gives birth in the packinghouse and the baby falls in with the pig meat and gets ground up into sausage (which of course gets sold to the public). No way to verify if this actually happened, of course. However, President Theodore Roosevelt was so disgusted by what he read in The Jungle that he ordered an investigation of the meat packing industry. This helped lead to food safey laws.

Okay, time for my two short rendering plant stories after reading about the baby getting ground into sausage.

Living on a working farm 3 miles up the road from the "collecting station" for a rendering plant 45 miles north in Columbus we used to always glance at it warily driving into town. It was the Cow Dachau, the next to the last stop for the "crips and downers" of area livestock, sometimes on hot summer days we were "treated" with the ghastly site of a bloated horse, cow, or goat dangling from an iron hook in the light between the two huge sliding doors.A friend once worked there for two days, quitting on the second day after watching a veteran employee sit down on a dead hog, unwrap his lunch, and proceed to eat it.
The company used to load a big truck every few days (if the neighbors were lucky, a week if they weren't) with the ballooning animals and drive them to their mother plant, Inland Products just SW of Columbus. A number of times we would be driving up the back highway to Columbus (which will remain nameless to protect the drug traffic, drunk drivers, overweight semis, unlicensed drivers, and EPA-banned goods that ply its length) and we would smell something awful as we found ourselves tailgaiting an Inland Products truck for an hour which dripped blood, assorted body fluids, and animal parts (when they hit a bump with a ripe load). The truck usually hit the back highway about midnight; you couldn't pass it, you had to hold your breath and breathe once a minute or so. The actual plant looked like the Evil Witch of the West's Castle and everybody aproaching Columbus from the S or SW was obliged to drive near it to enter the city, even the state inspectors deigned to visit it: Elmer the Bull went in one end and bone meal, blood meal, glue, fertilizer and whoknowswhat came out the other...
.
Now the collecting station has been closed a few years and there is just a big spray-painted sign at the entrance saying "Closed. No More Animals."

Thanks for sharing that, Mark. I grew up in the city of Chicago and went to college in a rural area. After four years of smelling pig-filled trains go by and soybeans being crushed, I was happy to move back to the city, and have never left. So much for the fresh air of the country.

Dogs and brats can be tasty but are hardly fit for human consumption.
I suggest good old fashioned pork sausage made in an honest to God smokehouse. My favorite link sausage comes from Edwards of Surry VA.
http://www.vatraditions.com. They have a few varieties to try. All are good.

My favorite bulk smoked sausage comes from Newsome's in KY. This is a highly smoked sausage and simply opening the poke will make your home smell very much like a smokehouse. This is also extremely lean sausage that does not fry away. http://newsomscountryham.com

Both of these exceptional smokehouses also offer great country hams, slab bacon and other great smokehouse products as well.

It is time to curb the dog and put the brat into time-out and savor well crafted traditional American fare while it is still available.

quote:

Originally posted by Greyghost

Dogs and brats can be tasty but are hardly fit for human consumption.

Why are hot dogs and brats hardly fit for human consumption?

I was about to ask the same thing. Also dont get how sausage is american fare but a hot dog is not?

quote:

Originally posted by Mark in Ohio

quote:

Originally posted by danimal15

Speaking of Upton Sinclair and his key work, The Jungle, there's a very sickening sequence (don't read this if you're squeamish) in which a woman worker gives birth in the packinghouse and the baby falls in with the pig meat and gets ground up into sausage (which of course gets sold to the public). No way to verify if this actually happened, of course. However, President Theodore Roosevelt was so disgusted by what he read in The Jungle that he ordered an investigation of the meat packing industry. This helped lead to food safey laws.

Okay, time for my two short rendering plant stories after reading about the baby getting ground into sausage.

Living on a working farm 3 miles up the road from the "collecting station" for a rendering plant 45 miles north in Columbus we used to always glance at it warily driving into town. It was the Cow Dachau, the next to the last stop for the "crips and downers" of area livestock, sometimes on hot summer days we were "treated" with the ghastly site of a bloated horse, cow, or goat dangling from an iron hook in the light between the two huge sliding doors.A friend once worked there for two days, quitting on the second day after watching a veteran employee sit down on a dead hog, unwrap his lunch, and proceed to eat it.
The company used to load a big truck every few days (if the neighbors were lucky, a week if they weren't) with the ballooning animals and drive them to their mother plant, Inland Products just SW of Columbus. A number of times we would be driving up the back highway to Columbus (which will remain nameless to protect the drug traffic, drunk drivers, overweight semis, unlicensed drivers, and EPA-banned goods that ply its length) and we would smell something awful as we found ourselves tailgaiting an Inland Products truck for an hour which dripped blood, assorted body fluids, and animal parts (when they hit a bump with a ripe load). The truck usually hit the back highway about midnight; you couldn't pass it, you had to hold your breath and breathe once a minute or so. The actual plant looked like the Evil Witch of the West's Castle and everybody aproaching Columbus from the S or SW was obliged to drive near it to enter the city, even the state inspectors deigned to visit it: Elmer the Bull went in one end and bone meal, blood meal, glue, fertilizer and whoknowswhat came out the other...
.
Now the collecting station has been closed a few years and there is just a big spray-painted sign at the entrance saying "Closed. No More Animals."

But Inland Products is still there. And you can still get to it after a few jigs and jags after using 104.

In reply to chicagostyledog:

Perhaps I did not expand enough about what I do not like about the modern hot dog:

1 The original hot dog or frankfurter hardly exists anymore. The frankfurter in modern times has become Franken-food thanks to our multinational corporations that cater to the stock holders and not to the consumer.

2 Yes, you can still find a good hot dog, but probably not in your local supermarket. For the real deal you will have to find a small old fashioned producer committed to quality.

3 Are you sure you want to ingest all those nitrates and nitrites?

4 Do you really need all that fat combined with a chemical feast?

5 In American food the hot dog is just a little over 100 years old. As I recall it was introduced at the 1890 World's Fair, although there are a few other claimants around the same time. What can be determined for sure is what you eat today has no relation to the original. Smokehouse sausage however, has a long history on the American continent and arrived with our first settlers before we were a country.

6 It seems we have different tastes and that's only natural. I love finding and supporting small producers still doing age old recipes dating from the 1700s and sometimes doing it in the same place using the same methods. Corporate food is just not my style although I do admit it is popular and unfortunately dominant.