Hot Dogs: the best ingredients to optimize your hot dogs :
- Ascorbic acid/Sodium ascorbate – Also known as …
- Autolyzed Yeast Extract – Flavor enhancer derived …
- Beef – Most commonly pieces of meat cut away …
These are primarily beef, water and modified corn starch, and other ingredients include corn syrup, sodium phosphate and sodium diacetate; they’re nitrate-free. But full-fat hot dogs are usually less processed. If you didn’t know that, you definitely didn’t know these other surprising facts about hot dogs.
Mixed Meat: Healthiest: Applegate Naturals Stadium Beef and Pork Hot Dog. These hot dogs are made of mostly beef, pork and water. Other than that, all that’s in them is spices and the lamb casing. Pair your hot dog with one of these side dishes for a relatively healthy summer meal.
Sodium nitrite – A ingredient responsible for curing, sodium nitrite is 1)anti-oxidant which keeps hot dogs from quickly going rancid; 2) gives cured meats their characteristic pink color and their unique cured taste; and 3) inhibits many dangerous bacteria helping make the hot dogs much safer.
But of the 17 kinds of hot dog we sampled in our recent taste test (some beef, some pork, some a combination of these and other meats), the pork varieties easily slid into the bottom ranks—except for one. More on that later. In the lead: kosher beef—namely that by Hebrew National.