Summer is in full swing (and has been for a while now), which means that hot dogs are being cooked and eaten at ballparks and grills across the country. But as much as Americans love a good hot dog, we often vilify them.
Within the gluten-free community, we cast a leery eye in the direction of hot dogs because, as a processed meat product, they hold the potential of being a hidden source of gluten. (Thankfully, there are many tasty GF hot dogs out there, and hot dogs that previously contained gluten are frequently being reformulated to be gluten-free.)
Just as much so, we criticize hot dogs for being a “mystery meat,” stereotypically made of all the unmentionable parts of animals…pig snouts and turkey feet. This is, of course, a gross exaggeration over the reality (at least, I hope it is!). But even if it’s the honest truth, shouldn’t we be praising hot dogs for this quality? I’ll explain…
Those of us who ascribe to the “ethical meat eating” camp believe that, when we take an animal’s life in order to eat it, we have a responsibility to use that meat as much as we can. Which means using as many parts of the animal as possible.
This runs counter to the modern-day supermarket meat-buying experience. The way talented butchers parse chicken and turkey and pork and beef into convenient cuts allows us to pick and choose exactly what parts of the animal we want to buy and eat. We can be selective. And so Kelli and I tend to buy chicken breasts, and ground turkey, and sometimes pork tenderloin or country-style ribs, and less often, certain cuts of beef (like skirt or flank steak).
I suppose the hope is that enough supermarket customers will by enough cuts of meat that a “whole animal” will get used. But the reality is that Americans prefer certain cuts of meat, and parts of an animal will go waste.
But what about a whole roaster chicken, you might ask? A whole chicken is certainly an improvement…you get the breast meat, and the thighs, and legs, and wings. But even a supermarket whole chicken has been cleaned of parts we might otherwise use. In the United States, as a whole, we’re pretty bad about cooking with offal (organ meats), and we certainly don’t use things like chicken feet, which you’ll find everywhere in markets throughout parts of rural Mexico, for example. (I remember about 10 years ago, when I went on a mountaineering expedition to rural Mexico to climb some of the high volcanoes – including El Pico de Orizaba, the 3rd tallest peak in North America – I bought some chicken from a market butcher, and she happily gave me the organ meat. It was the first time I ate chicken hearts.)
For these reasons, Kelli and I have talked about buying a half a cow from our local rancher, which would include all sorts of cuts, including many we wouldn’t buy if we went to the supermarket and pick and chose what cuts we wanted to buy. But investing in half a cow requires the space to store it, and at least for now, we don’t have a chest freezer. So we still haven’t pulled the trigger on buying half a cow. (We also, frankly, don’t eat that much red meat…)
At any rate, this is where the noble hot dog comes into play. Hot dogs, in theory, take parts of the animal that otherwise might go to waste, and turn them into a tasty food beloved by the American public. As strange as it might sound, while an an Applegate Farms hot dog made of whole cuts of meat and no mystery meat ingredients may be a good thing, a run of the mill hot dog made from all the unmentionables might be even better.
– Pete