Saucy Wieners

Ravenous, a food column by Jennifer Brizzi

Saucy wieners

Ran in the Kingston Times, January 6, 2005

“If anyone offers you a tofu wiener, that person is not your friend."

-- Linda Merinoff in The Savory Sausage (Poseidon Press, 1987)

You won't find a Dallas wiener in Dallas, a Michigan in Michigan, or a New York System in New York, but Americans all over are devoted to their wieners, fiercely defending their right to have them prepared exactly how they want them.

A wiener is technically the same thing as a hot dog or frankfurter, but I think dogs and franks are often beef-based, with a garlicky flavor and a teeth-teasing snap that their casings give them, whereas a wiener is soft, skinless, bland and often pork-based. Usually a wiener is not at all my dog of choice, but when it's slathered with any one of a range of zesty, greasy sauces and a variety of toppings that differ regionally across the country, it becomes a “hot wiener,” more than the sum of its parts, far from health food but cheap and satisfying.

My first wiener was actually a “weiner,” with the “e” before the “i.” It was called a New York System Hot Weiner, but had nothing to do with New York. The early 20th century Greek immigrant who invented it had come through Ellis Island on his way to Rhode Island, and was inspired by the evocative words “New York.” I had that first weiner in a state where tiny lunch counters with names like Wein-O-Rama dot the landscape like clam shacks, and where wiener is sometimes even spelled “ie.”

Wiener is short for wiener wurst, or Viennese sausage, the grandpa of our wiener. So the word wiener means Viennese and “ie” is the correct spelling. So I have no idea why Rhode Island's dogs are “ei,” but they're so good that expatriate Ro Dylanduhs all over are passionate about their weiners, waxing nostalgic for them in Internet chat rooms. They sneak them by the dozens onto airplanes after visits home, or order the spice mixture by mail so they can make their own sauce out of state.

The Hot Weiner mystique is in part due to the fun way they're traditionally served; the counterman takes a whole bunch of them and lines them up along his arm--people often order them in threes. Then he dabs each dog with a mustardy wooden stick, slathers on a picante, spice-laden sauce, then raw onion, then celery salt. I think the appeal is also partly because the sauce sits around on the heat 24 hours a day, drying out and requiring copious quantities of Crisco added regularly to keep it moist. If you get your Hot Weiners to go, they are wrapped in wax paper and put in a paper bag that gets pretty greasy pretty fast.

I tried "gaggers," as they're affectionately called, at the Original New York System on Smith Street in Providence. I can't say I ate hundreds of them during my eight-year tenure in the state, due to aspirations of eating healthily, but I did try them a couple times and they were really good.

A hot wiener and a chili dog are not the same animal. As much as I love a hot wiener, I'm not a chili dog fan. I have a vivid childhood memory of standing on a sidewalk in Brattleboro, Vermont, trying to eat a chili dog in the bitter cold as the sloppy, beany chili oozed all over my gloves and down coat. So I don't go out of my way for chili dogs, but a wiener is something else entirely.

Similar in style to the Rhode Island Hot Weiner is our local Dallas Hot Wiener, which I sampled lately at Dallas Hot Weiners II (spelled “ie” on the signs inside), as well as Mr. Big Belly's Hot Wieners, both on Broadway in Kingston. Dallas' was spicy, generous with onion and greasily satisfying. The cozy, friendly Mr. Big Belly's offers a variety of toppings that include the tasty “Mardi Gras,” sweet, meaty sauce topped with cayenne and cole slaw. Their crispy, piping hot French fries are a traditional wiener go-with. It's “The Place to Dog It,” a sign on the window proclaims.

The Dallas Hot Weiner is not from Dallas -- actually there you're more likely to find cheddar and beans on your dog -- but rather an offshoot off the Paterson, New Jersey-born Texas Hot Wiener, which was so named in a story similar to Rhode Island's. The Greek immigrant who invented it there around 1924 based the sauce on a Greek tomato sauce (but with chili powder added) and liked the sound of “Texas.”

It's usually ordered in twos rather than threes, but the Texas or Dallas wiener is like Rhode Island's in that you get a mild-tasting hot dog slathered with yellow mustard, chili-flavored meat sauce, and a sprinkling of diced raw onion. But the dog of choice is often deep-fried twice in oil rather than steamed, and the secret sauce may contain cinnamon (RI's is more allspice-y). This way of serving wieners has spread far beyond New Jersey and in now all over Pennsylvania, Connecticut and the Hudson Valley, with regional variations.

In northern New York State, around Plattsburgh, they slather hot dogs with what they call Michigan Sauce. Although plenty of recipes include tomato, purists say there shouldn't be any. And the sauce has little to do with Michigan, where they call their saucy wiener the Coney Island, or just Coney.

Space doesn't allow inclusion of the hot dog's venerable history in Germany and America, nor is there time or room for the cornucopia of regional variations, like Chicago's famous poppy seed bun filled with an all-beef Vienna dog, "dragged through the garden" with unnaturally green relish, fresh tomatoes, a pickle spear, celery salt, chopped onion and “sport” peppers. But I have to mention my favorite hot dog, the snappy saugy. Like NY System, it's from Rhode Island, but there any similarity ends. It's not available at weiner stands but rather in delis and grocery stores around that state. I always thought the name was shorthand for “sausage” until researching this column, when I discovered that the company that makes it was actually founded 135 years ago by Messrs. Augustus and Alphonse Saugy. The longish, German-style, natural-casing hot dogs are delicious boiled 'til they pop and topped with spicy brown mustard. How I miss them. They can be mail-ordered for forty bucks for three pounds from the source, but I balk at doing that, making do with my second favorite dog, the garlicky, salty Sabrett. It is available delightfully slow-cooked and washed down by fresh papaya juice in Manhattan at Gray's Papaya or Papaya King. Some at city hot dog carts hawk it, too, although the murky water the tube steaks swim in is a bit of a deterrent. Fortunately you can buy Sabretts at most local grocery stores in a choice of short or long. I like to boil or grill them and plop them in a soft, yellowish, side-split potato bun and dab with Gulden's.

Famous hot dog places I have heard much of but have yet to try include Super Duper Weenie in Fairfield, Conn., owned by a CIA grad winning accolades for regional authenticity for his crusty dogs with toppings made from scratch, or Walter's in Mamaroneck, with its split dogs grilled in buttery oil and topped with homemade, pickle-laced, grainy mustard.

Other places I'll seek out some day include Demon Dog and SuperDawg in Chicago, Tail O' the Pup in L.A., Swanky Franks in Norwalk, Conn. (garlicky deep-fried dogs), and the Wee Nee Wagon in Chester Township, New Jersey.

Closer to home is a health food hot dog place, Soul Dog, at 107 Main St. in Poughkeepsie, dedicated to folks with food sensitivities, like to wheat, gluten, peanuts, eggs or dairy. They have three different dogs: beef, chicken or veggie, all available with a huge variety of toppings from the exotic to the mundane. I tried a pleasant chili laced with very spicy Soul Sauce, but if that's too everyday for you, consider Marsala Mushrooms or Roasted Poblano Pepper Salsa.

Last weekend I set out to attempt replication of a Texas slash Dallas slash New York System slash Coney wiener. I collected and compiled dozens of recipes for wiener sauces so I could develop a good one to offer to readers of this column. For my experiment I chose a pork and turkey dog from Kahn's out of Cincinnati rather than the garlicky all-beef dog I usually prefer. I bought house-brand top-split “New England style” buns and steamed the wieners-really more like poaching or coasting--you boil water, throw in the wieners, then cover and let sit off the heat for 15 minutes. Both sauces I made I topped with diced raw onion for authenticity. For the first sauce I made a chili-powder-less version that included (in addition to the ubiquitous hamburger and onion) vinegar, sugar, celery seed, mustard, ketchup, and Worcestershire and Tabasco sauces. Maybe I ground up the cooked meat too much in the food processor, but the texture and color were unappealing, the flavor like a cloyingly sweet meatloaf. With the next sauce I had more luck, a try at unlocking the mysteries of Rhode Island's New York System Hot Wiener, although it's been more than eleven years since I tasted one. This kicky, zesty sauce had a rich color and was redolent of the flavorings the meat simmered two hours with: allspice, chili powder, paprika, celery salt and garlic. A fellow taster preferred the previous sauce, however, going to show that when it comes to wieners, to each his or her own. I guess I could have taken it further and tried to come up with a perfect wiener sauce recipe, but I concluded that the best bet is to get thee to a wiener shop where they know what they're doing.

The fun thing about hot dogs is that they're just so damn bad for you. Out of 170 calories in one of my beloved saugies, 140 are from fat. What naughty things, so un-PC, so potentially full of pig lips and calf toenails (not really, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council -- unless they're labeled as containing variety meats, they contain “muscle meat” just like the ground meat you buy), and lastly, so plainly symbolic. I will still eat them, not every day or every week even, but as long as there are wieners in the world, I'll eat them.

Jennifer Brizzi | P.O. Box 48 | Rhinecliff, New York 12574 | U.S.A.

jenniferbrizzi@yahoo.com