St. Louis World’s Fair Hot Dogs

The impact of the spectacular St. Louis 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition still resounds lo these 108 years later.  Among other splendors, the fair launched the careers of the hot dog (St. Louis World’s Fair Hot Dog recipe here), the waffle cone, peanut butter, iced tea, cotton candy and Dr. Pepper.

Sadly there are those who will dispute these culinary creds. I feel sorry for them, I really do. Fact: Dr. Ambrose Straub of St. Louis received the first patent for a peanut butter machine in 1903.  Need I say more?

We grew up in a 1906 house in the close-in suburb of Webster Groves. Many homes built at that time used wood salvaged from the fair. There’s as much reason to believe that our home had World’s Fair wood as there is not to. And that, my friends, gives me the authority to pronounce these beef and lamb tube-steaks a World’s Fair-worthy original recipe. (The decorative orange frills in the photo are incendiary Good and Evil Carrot Pickles.)

Besides, Spectacularly Delicious has already done recipes for the Perfect Hog Dog and Hog Dogs Super Olga. Take a look back at the reasons why home made hot dogs and sausages are superior; check out this video for a look at home sausage making in action. Buy KitchenAid’s food grinder and sausage-stuffer attachments for their stand mixer here.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let”s review some other landmark World’s Fairs just for fun.

The granddaddy of them all was England’s 1851 Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations.
– Best remembered for the nearly 23 acre, all glass Crystal Palace, site of the world’s first public toilets that flushed.
– Bold-faced names: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Charles Darwin, Charlotte Brontë, and Samuel Colt who exhibited a nifty little revolver which turned out to be quite popular indeed.
– Visitors: 6 million.

What’s not to like about the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair? 
– Life-changing inventions introduced: color photography, air conditioning, fluorescent lamps and Smell-O-Vision.
– High/low food irony: birthplace of Wonder Bread and American haute cuisine.  At the close of the fair the French Pavilion scooted across the East River and opened up as Manhattan’s legendary Le Pavilion, with chef Pierre Franey.
– Second in size only to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. (Ha!)
– Visitors: 60 million.

The absolute grooviest World’s Fair of all time: Expo ’67 in Montreal.
– Could the name be any hipper? And check out the logo, as seen on these mugs Mom and Dad brought back from the Expo.
– The Habitat apartments, the mini rail, the Buckminster Fuller Geodesic Dome and the Calder Sculpture.
– The Grateful Dead, Tiny Tim and Jefferson Airplane performed there. Ed Sullivan did a live broadcast with The Supremes and Petula Clark.  Sure, Queen Elizabeth showed up, but that’s her job. Better still was the visit of the queen of the Jet Set, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. Princess Grace, Jacqueline Kennedy with brother-in-law Bobby, Haile Selassie and  Marlene Dietrich took in the sights and entertainments as well.
– 50 million visitors.

Back to 1904 in St. Louis:
–  A virtual human zoo including the real, live Geronimo on display in a tee-pee; a tribe of nearly-naked indigenous Filipinos; babies in incubators.
– An elephant water slide; reenactments of the Boer War.
– Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, John Philip Sousa, T. S. Eliot.
– Scott Joplin popularized ragtime music there and Vincent Minnelli later immortalized it with “Meet Me in St. Louis” starring Judy Garland.

This concludes the comparative World’s Fair portion of the post.

Recipe: St. Louis World's Fair Hot Dogs Recipes

2 lbs. beef chuck, cut into 2″ cubes
1 lb. ground lamb
1/2 lb. pork fat, cut into 1″ pieces
3 cloves garlic
1/2 c. chopped white onion
2 T. kosher salt
1 T. paprika
sausage casings (get from butcher)

WATCH THIS HOW-TO VIDEO ON MAKING SAUSAGES TO FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THE PROCESS. THIS IS A DIFFERENT RECIPE BUT THE PROCESS IS THE SAME.

Separate the beef into two equal piles.

Place the onion, garlic and a handful of lamb into a food processor fitted with a chopping blade and run the blade until the garlic and onion and lamb are completely smooth.

Set the food processor to pulse mode and as the machine is start-and-stop pulsing add in handfuls of lamb, the pieces of pork fat and the beef chunks from one of the piles.  Using the pulse setting will help chop everything equally — the pork fat, beef chunks and ground lamb of are such different consistencies that this alternating chopping makes everything down evenly.  Stop and scrape down the sides a few times as you go.

When the meat is added and everything is finely chopped, turn the blade on to regular chopping mode. Add the salt and paprika and process until the meat is a paste and balls up in the bowl of the processor. Scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times so that it’s evenly blended smooth paste.

Fit your food grinder with the fine gauge cutting blade. With the grinder running on medium speed, grind the meat paste and the remaining beef chunks in alternating batches. Start with 1/4 c. of meat paste and a few cubes of beef, push through the grinder.  Take care to grind all the beef pieces with some of the meat paste so that the resulting mixture is evenly distributed small chunks of beef mixed with smooth meat paste.

Use a strong spatula to stir the ground meat in a bowl, ensuring that you have a homogeneous mixture.  Take about 1/3 of the meat run it through the grinder again, and mix this smoother batch back through the big batch.  These hot dogs are special because they have recognizable bits of beef mixed with the smooth paste.

Rinse and prepare your sausage casings under cool water. Check out this how-to video for more instructions.

Use the stuffer funnel attachment of the grinder to fill the hot dogs, twisting them off at your desired length.

Note: the thickness of the sausages can be controlled as the casing are filled. If you want a skinny dog, gently pull the casings off the funnel as the meat is extruded so that the casings are not plumped to maximum thickness. If you want a fat hot dog, allow the force of the extruding meat to fill the casings.

Prick the hot dogs a few times on each side to avoid bursting. Grill over medium-low heat, turning often to cook evenly and prevent the skins from splitting.