All-American Hot Dogs.

Byline: JIM BOYD The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 7/4/02): The Web site address for the Americam Museum of Natural History's hot dog display is: www.amnh.org/exhibitions /baseball/hotdogs/index.html. The address was incorrectly listed in a story in Wednesday's Entree section. The story also incorrectly stated the Eugene Emeralds' opponent tonight. The Emeralds will play Spokane.

NOTHING PLANNED for an Independence Day picnic? Don't worry! Cook some hot dogs. Although wieners and frankfurters were invented in the Old World, they've become an all-American treat.

Americans are expected to consume 7 billion hot dogs this summer, according to the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council. Laid end to end, the council says, 7 billion hot dogs would circle the Earth's equator 27 times.

Hot dog consumption will become particularly conspicuous at the international hot dog eating contest to be held Thursday at Nathan's Famous hot dog restaurant at Coney Island, N.Y. Twenty finalists are scheduled to compete this year in this 12-minute, all-you-can-eat annual event. Takeru Kobayashi of Japan set the all-time record last year by downing 50 frankfurters and buns.

Popular in the late 1800s at fairs and other public events, hot dogs became the cuisine of choice at baseball parks across the nation.

Here in Eugene, the Eugene Emeralds Baseball Club will serve up Fourth of July fireworks and four styles of sausage on Thursday night when it plays Spokane.

The Ems' sausage lineup includes 6-inch bun-length and 7-inch jumbo beef-and-pork hot dogs made by John Morrell & Co., a Polish sausage, an Oktoberfest sausage and a pork Bratwurst that is new this year.

Like the signature dishes of famous chefs, many ball parks serve their own distinctive, regional style of hot dogs. Ten are currently pictured on the Web site of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which has "Baseball as America" as its current exhibit and a variety of hot dogs featured in its food court.

(To see the museum's "Hot Dogs as America" presentation, go to www.amnh.org/exhibitions/baseball/hotdogs/index.html.)

The museum's selection includes the New York Deli Dog, a natural-casing, foot-long Best's beef frank, which is typically grilled flat on a griddle by hot dog shops in New York City and topped with sauerkraut and deli mustard. And there's the New York Street Cart Dog, a Hebrew National kosher beef frank that is boiled and served with onion sauce and deli mustard or sauerkraut.

The museum also serves the Chicago Red Hot, a Vienna beef frank on a poppy seed roll that is "dragged through the Garden." That's Windy City slang for topping the sausage with yellow mustard, sweet pickle relish, chopped onion, fresh tomato, pickle spear, sport peppers and a dash of celery salt.

There are pork hot dogs, too. The Rochester White Hot from Zwigle's Meats in Rochester, N.Y., is neither cured nor smoked and is off-white in color. It's split and griddled, then served topped with a meat chili, onions and one of a variety of mustards.

See? There are lots of options for a quickly organized Fourth of July picnic with hot dogs and something cold to drink.

Bruce Kraig of Carbondale, Ill., a retired professor who is an authority on hot dogs, divides the little sausages into two basic categories: hot dogs that are made for adults and hot dogs that are made for kids, which he somewhat scornfully calls "supermarket hot dogs."

Oscar Mayer and Ball Park brands are examples of kids' hot dogs. They are mild in flavor, skinless and soft in texture, Kraig says. Adult hot dogs are usually made of beef, have greater flavor and provide more resistance to the teeth when chewed.

"A really good hot dog should have a natural casing," Kraig says. "However, skinless ones, if they have a lot of protein in them, will have a tougher skin. The protein comes to the surface when they are cooked, especially when boiled or hot water bathed as the Chicago ones are, and so it has a good snap. You want to have a mouth-feel to it that aficionados like. If you go to cities like New York and Chicago, people will tell you, 'I like the snap, the chewability of it.' '

There are two main flavor profiles - New York and Chicago - for adult hot dogs, Kraig says.

"The New York hot dog is all beef. It has a lot of garlic in it. Salt. It has a slight amount of paprika, a very small amount. The overwhelming profile is garlic and salt," he said.

"The Chicago has a richer blend of seasonings, including paprika, a slight amount of cayenne and some other spices, including coriander - the seed, not cilantro - and others. So the Chicago hot dog has a richer, more subtle flavor profile than the New York does. New York is more in your face, with garlic, and the reason is historical."

The Chicago hot dog was a product of Hungarian Jews and reflects their flavor preferences, Kraig said. The New York makers were Poles or Russians with a different sausage heritage.

Vic Hastings' Custom Meat Company here in Eugene makes wieners regularly along with other kinds of sausage, bacon, ham, smoked turkeys and the normal cuts of fresh meat. Originally located downtown in what is now a parking lot for the Fifth Street Public Market, Hastings' butcher shop moved seven years ago to 2355 W. 7th Place.

Hastings makes skinless wieners in nitrite-free beef, nitrite-free turkey and regular and nitrite-free beef-and-pork versions. He custom makes venison wieners for deer and elk hunters in the fall.

For the beef-and-pork wiener, lean bull meat, beef trim and pork trim are ground up. Spices for flavoring and binders to hold the sausages together are mixed in, and the mixture is chopped by machine until it has the consistency of a cake batter.

At Custom Meat, the batter is then scooped by hand into the hopper of a stuffing machine, which forces the mixture into a 94-foot-long cellulose tube that the machine ties off with string at regular intervals to make links of wieners.

The links are looped over a wooden rod and are carried to a smokehouse that looks like a big walk-in oven, where they smoke and cook for about 90 minutes. When cooked, the racks of sausages are spray with water to cool them and placed in a cooler overnight. The next day, the cellulose casings are stripped away.

Hastings makes only 5-inch-long wieners these days, the common supermarket length. That's because the law has changed and, as a state-inspected meat processor, he can sell his products only for home use and not for re-sale by food vendors who would be interested in the longer lengths.

"Our machine can be adjusted to make different sizes," he said. "We used to make a 6-inch, 8-inch, 9-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch. They always called the longer ones 'foot-longs,' but most of them weren't really foot-longs. They were usually 8-inchers or 10-inchers."

Another local favorite can be found at Costco, which sells more than 7,000 franks and Polish sausages every week at its Eugene warehouse store. These 8-inch-long beef sausages are made in Chicago and are marketed under the Sinai Kosher brand.

Now, about the toppings: Mustard is the favorite hot dog topping among Americans, according to a new poll by the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. The poll of 577 randomly selected Americans found 30 percent choose mustard over all other toppings. Twelve percent of adults like chili on their hot dogs, while 10 percent prefer relish. Ketchup was the second favorite topping choice at 22 percent.

However, real hot dog lovers don't use ketchup, food historian Kraig says. That's because the origin of the hot dog is essentially East European and Central European.

"They don't use sweet sauces like they do in south Europe or America, particularly," Kraig said. "It's an ethnic product and it's East European, and culture is as culture does."

Personally, I heap on mustard and ketchup and relish and onions and even slices of jalapeno when I buy a hot dog at a gas station convenience store. If you decide to do a hot dog picnic, you too can experiment with toppings, too.

"One of the best hot dogs I ever ate was just an ordinary supermarket hot dog," Kraig said. "But it was on the main square in Taxco in Mexico, where the boy put on a wonderful green sauce, a tomatillo sauce. Out of sight!

"I've often said that Americans would be smart to put salsas out with their hot dogs. That would be fine!"

Features reporter Jim Boyd can be reached by phone at 338-2363 and by e-mail at [e-mail].

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Stay safe: Heat up those dogs Warning! Although hot dogs have been fully cooked, they should never be eaten unless they have been reheated and are steamy hot throughout, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service advises. The potential problem is contamination by the harmful bacteria Listeria monocytogenes, which can cause listeriosis. Most people don't become seriously ill with listeriosis. However, pregnant women and newborns, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems caused by cancer treatments, AIDS, diabetes, kidney disease and the like are at risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 2,500 people in the United States become seriously ill with listeriosis each year and that 500 die. The hot dog has become a staple of backyard picnics and ball parks in the United States, especially on the Fourth of July.