I tried 17 supermarket hot dogs to find the best ones for Bonfire Night
Hot dogs have become part of the Bonfire Night tradition. For some people, they are synonymous with frankfurters, a narrow cooked and smoked German sausage with a smooth texture. For others, it’s an American iteration of that frankfurter – thicker, more highly seasoned, and without a casing.
So, what are they made from? Traditionally pork and beef, chicken often creeps in, and sometimes turkey. Poultry-only ones are available for people who avoid pig meat, but they do taste different, with a mealy texture and none of the classic porkiness.
The price varies hugely too, and that is largely down to the quality of the meat. Artisan hot dog makers like Claire Drysdale and Euan Macgregor of Brigston & Co use pork shoulder, grinding it finely. Others, using lower quality meat, will emulsify it into a liquid “slurry” (the technical term, not a judgemental one). According to Macgregor, grinding rather than emulsifying “gives it a slightly different texture, but also aims to hold the flavour of the meat better through the cooking process.”
Many of the cheaper frankfurters use mechanically separated meat (MRM), which by law must be identified on the ingredients label. The process involves mashing the carcass, stripped of the high-value cuts, and forcing it through a sieve to remove the bone.
Sure, it’s not a delicious idea. But if we heard a chef promoting a homespun technique that meant that our chicken carcasses could produce one more meal, a dish that was popular with all the family, we’d be proclaiming it from the rooftops. So, let’s not be snobs. It is a way of extracting every scrap of goodness from an animal, just like the ultra trendy bone broth.
Of course, the difference is that the animals are not high welfare. When a producer can tout organic mechanically separated chicken, I’ll be right there. Perhaps all the organic chicken carcasses are going to that posh bone broth to sell at a tenner a litre.
As for additives, all the frankfurters I tried contained added nitrites or nitrates, used as part of the curing process. True, they aren’t healthy and the advice is to eat less. But they are also an intrinsic part of cured meat products – and while companies like Naked have been making some interesting moves in the field of added nitrite-free cured pork (they have a frankfurter in the works), I’m not sure it’s time to throw out the nitrite bathwater, for fear of losing the baby.
The lower grade sausages may also replace some meat with pea protein, which with most people trying to cut down on meat, seems like a fair swap. Yes, it’s a marker for ultra processed food, but these frankfurters are already ultra processed. Other additives are more concerning, and may include antioxidants, emulsifiers, stabilisers, flavourings and monosodium glutamate, designed to help keep costs down for the manufacturer by holding more water, increasing shelf life, and making poor ingredients palatable, while adding nothing to the nutritional content.
So here goes: 17 hot dogs; the ones to stuff in a bun and the ones to throw on the bonfire.
The taste test
All products were tasted blind and assessed for texture, colour and flavour
*drained weight