This Tuesday is National Hot Dog Day! Mid-summer is the perfect time to enjoy this old seasonal treat, a childhood favourite grilled up in minutes on the barbecue and slathered with the fixings of your choice, whether that’s mustard and relish, or grilled onions, sauerkraut, ketchup, barbecue sauce, pickles, cheese, bacon bits, chili … well, you get the idea.
But maybe you’ve become a bit wary of hot dogs – the classic mystery meat. Just what do they put in those “tube steaks” anyway?
You can take the “guilty” out of this guilty pleasure with tasty wieners and sausages from Schmucker’s Fresh From The Farm, because ours are always made from 100 percent high-quality, local meat raised without chemicals, and with absolutely zero fillers. There’s nothing quite like biting through the crisp casing of a perfectly grilled sausage and enjoying that juicy burst of meaty flavour, perfectly spiced for summer appetites.
Hot dogs — mild sausages served in a long bun — were probably the invention of German immigrants to North America, and they’ve been a popular street food (and ballpark/amusement park staple) for more than a century. (“Hot dog” may have been a sly reference to the long and skinny dachshund dog the Germans also brought here!)
For Hot Dog Day, may we suggest our turkey, beef, grass-fed beef, or pork wieners. Pick your favourite to enjoy nestled in a soft bun at your next cookout or picnic, maybe with a smear of one of our delicious mustard varieties, organic ketchup, or St. Jacobs sauerkraut. (Want to really use your imagination? Try adding a little Green Table Foods kimchi, pickled or roasted peppers from Melis, or corn relish from Kountry Kitchen Cupboard.)
In the U.S., where they sell 9 billion hot dogs a year, there are a lot of variations in style and toppings, like the Coney Dog, the Chicago Dog, the Fenway Frank, the Texas Dog, and so on. We happen to think the Toronto Dog, with a huge variety of condiments typically available at street-corner sellers, is a delicious representation of our multicultural city. So, pile it on!
For a more grownup alternative to the classic wiener, try one of our many varieties of well-seasoned gourmet sausages, all of them fabulous grilled and tucked into a crusty bun. Our turkey sausage comes in regular, smoked and maple-smoked varieties, all low in fat and high in flavour. Chicken sausage from Earlidale is anything but bland, enhanced with green herbs and garlic; from Walnut Hill, we have chicken spinach feta sausage.
Our juicy beef sausage has a delicious mildly garlicky taste, great on its own with side salads, or in a bun. Or grill some sweet peppers and onions alongside some mild Italian sausage made from our heritage Berkshire-Tamworth pork. Yum!
And good news for traditionalists: coil sausage is back! Many of our long-time customers told us they like our links just fine, but they miss the old-fashioned style of the long coil, so we’ve brought it back.
Whatever your choice, you can be sure that Fresh From The Farm meats will always be fresh, local and delicious. Enjoy!