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“Dirty-water dogs!” You love ‘em (chances are you grew up in NYC), you can’t stand the thought of them, or you haven’t tried them – yet.

Want one? Look for blue and yellow striped Sabrett umbrellas (sometimes green and white, per regulation, in NYC parks).There seem to be a lot of foodtrucks with blue and yellow Sabrett umbrellas, but you can still find plenty of pushcart vendors hawking frankfurters – even if some of them are now cooked on grills rather than plucked out of pots of warm (“dirty”) water.

The Dirty-Water Dog

“Dirty-water dogs” are hot frankfurters plucked out of a metal vat full of warm, salty liquid. How long the hot dog has sat in in it’s warm bath is anyone’s guess – a time frame probably dependent on how many sales have been made and how long the vendor chooses to leave them in there.

The cooking process is simple. Dump the dogs in the water. Snatch them out for a waiting customer, drop them onto a soft (non-grilled) bun that sops up the wetness that clings to the dog, and add on whatever else (sauerkraut, chili, condiments) the customer wants. If you’re in NYC, go for the famed tomato/onion mixture. Classic NYC street food.

The Origin of the Hot Dog

Hot dogs are derivatives of sausage and sausage has been around a long time – it’s one of the oldest forms of processed food having been mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey in the 9^th century BC.

Although there’s really no consensus on the origin of the “hot dog” (or the “dachshund” or “little-dog” sausage), credit is usually given to Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany around the year 1487. That means the little dog sausage was being happily eaten five years before Christopher Columbus set sail for the new world. The name “hot dog” probably began as a joke referring to the small, long, thin dachshund.

The Dog In The Bun

Who served the first North American dachshund sausage (hot dog) wrapped in a roll is also in doubt: maybe the German immigrant who, in the 1860’s, sold them with milk rolls and sauerkraut from a push cart on the Bowery in NYC. Maybe it was the German butcher who opened up the first Coney Island hot dog stand in 1871 and sold 3,684 dachshund sausages in milk rolls his first year in business.

A baseball stadium staple since 1893, the sale of hot dogs as game day food is credited to a St. Louis German immigrant bar owner who also owned the St. Louis Browns major league baseball team.

in the 1890s, the word “hot dog” began appearing in college magazines. Students at Yale called the wagons selling hot sausages in buns outside their dorms “dog wagons.” An article in the October 19,1895 Yale Record described people as “contentedly munching on hot dogs.”

The Pushcart and the Dirty-Water Dog

Pushcarts used to be made of wood. Cooking sausage dogs over an open flame on a wooden pushcart meant carts that could – and many did – go up in smoke. The solution: around the beginning of the 20th century, pushcart vendors started heating hot dogs in water instead of on an open flame.

After the pushcart transition from wood to stainless steel, hot dog pushcarts all looked pretty much the same – rectangular stainless steel carts on wheels with a hinged bins for the dog water, shelves for squeeze bottles of condiments, and the ubiquitous umbrellas.

Carts began to change and varying types of permits allow for expanded menus. With a non-processing permit vendors can only sell pre-made food like dirty-water dogs and pretzels. A processing permit allows them to cook food like kebabs and falafel – and, since grills allow the vendors to cook, they can also grill hot dogs.

Dirty-Water Dogs

New York’s iconic pushcart hot dogs –New Yorkers eat millions of them a year — come mostly from the company, Sabrett. You can spot Sabrett yellow and blue striped umbrellas on most carts. Sabrett calls it’s product “New York’s # 1 Hot Dog, renowned for the famous snap! of it’s natural casing, all-beef frankfurter.”

The water that the hotdog sits in isn’t – or shouldn’t be — dirty, even though it looks like it when the vendor sticks long tongs into a vat of gray foamy covered liquid. That’s not scum on top of the liquid but a froth from the combination of warm water flavored with the juice, salt and meaty leakage from all the hotdogs that have been sitting in their warm water bath.

Despite greater availability of grilled hot dogs, the president of Sabrett says there hasn’t been a major fall-off in “dirty-water” hot dog sales. He says that the regulars stand firm in their preference for dirty-water dogs, a sentiment echoed by the owner of the truck in the photo. He says he’ll grill a dog if someone wants, but that he uses his grill mostly for rib-eyes. His regulars prefer a dirty-water dog – and he smiles as he calls it that. However, he assures me his water is clean not dirty!

Kitchen “Dirty-Water Dogs”

In case you have a hankering for a “dirty-water dog” and there’s no pushcart in sight, here’s the recipe for a self-made version, along with tomato-onion topping, from Epicurious.

Ingredients

2 quarts water

2 tablespoons red vinegar

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Pinch ground cumin

Favorite hot dogs, not skinless

Large yellow onion, peeled and coarse sliced

3 tablespoons cooking oil

Pinch of crushed red pepper and hot sauce to taste, optional

1 tablespoon red vinegar

1/4 cup tomato sauce, or ketchup for a sweeter version

Preparation

In a covered 4 quart saucepan, bring the water to a low simmer, and add vinegar, cumin, and nutmeg.

Add up to two packages of hotdogs and cover for at least ten minutes.

For the onion sauce:

Heat the oil and red pepper in pan over medium heat

Saute the onion 3 to 4 minutes, until about half opaque

Reduce the heat and keep the ingredients warm

Stir in vinegar and slowly add tomato until you reach the desired thickness

Serve dogs on warmed buns with warm onion sauce or sauerkraut and any other toppings.

Burgers – Is That A Yes?

Sort of. A study just published in the journal Circulation analyzed the effects of eating red unprocessed meat (100g a day of unprocessed beef, pork, or lamb) compared to processed meat products (50g of meat preserved by smoking, curing, salting, or with added chemical preservatives such as sausages, bacon, and salami).

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public health analyzed data from studies that looked at red and processed meat consumption and possible links to heart disease and diabetes. The studies included over 1.2 million people who were followed from 4 to 18 years. The conclusion: red unprocessed meat isn’t associated with an increased risk of diabetes or coronary heart disease. Eating the equivalent of one hot dog or two slices of deli meat a day (50 g of processed meat) is associated with a 42% higher risk of coronary heart disease and a 19% increased risk of diabetes.

Suspected Demons: Salt And Preservatives

We’re used to the US guidelines that recommend eating less red and unprocessed meat — but these guidelines are based on the projected effects of the saturated fat and cholesterol in the meat. Red meat and processed meat contain a similar amount of both of these, but processed meat has about four times the amount of sodium and 50% more preservatives (like nitrates) than unprocessed red meat.

Conclusion: this study (a systematic review of nearly 1,600 studies from around the world that looked for links between processed and unprocessed red meat and the risk of heart disease and diabetes) suggests that salt and other preservatives might explain the higher risk associated with processed meat.

What Kind Of Meat Are They Talking About?

This study defined processed meat as any meat preserved by smoking, curing, salting, or with added chemical preservatives. This includes bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs, and processed deli and lunch meat. The unprocessed red meat included beef, lamb, and pork, but not poultry. On average, a 1.8 oz (50 g) daily serving of processed meat (half the weight of the unprocessed meat in the study), the equivalent of one to two slices of deli meat or one hot dog, was associated with a 42% higher risk of heart disease and a 19% higher risk of diabetes and they found no higher heart or diabetes risk in people who ate only unprocessed red meat.

The average nutrients in unprocessed red and processed meats in the United States contain similar average amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol. But processed meats have, on average, four times more sodium and 50% more nitrate preservatives.

Is This A Greenlight To Chow Down On Red Meat?

Not really. Eating unprocessed beef, pork, or lamb appears not to increase the risk for heart disease and diabetes — but there is no reduced risk either. There’s also a suspected association between processed and unprocessed meats and a higher risk of some cancers (especially colorectal) so it will be important to evaluate unprocessed vs. processed meat and their effects on various cancers.

Although cause and effect can’t be proven by this long-term observational study, the results do suggest that the salt and preservatives in processed meat are culprits.

SocialDieter Tip:

You’ve heard this many times: emphasize food that is protective: fruit, vegetables, whole grains, fish, and nuts. Minimize or avoid processed meats that are high in sodium, additives, and fat. This is not a free pass to eat red meat with abandon but it seems that having unprocessed red meat once or twice a week is a lot better than having processed meat — like bacon, hot dogs, processed ham, bologna, salami — every day.

As one of the lead authors, Renata Micha, of the study says, to lower your risk of heart attacks and diabetes think about the type of meat you’re eating and “processed meats such as bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs and processed deli meats may be the most important to avoid.”

hot dog

Dirty Water Dogs: a Tasty Treat (for some)