The Reason Chicago Hot Dogs Are All-Beef

If you're unfamiliar with the phenomenon that is the Chicago hot dog, you should know that this food item is in a class by itself. These aren't merely hot dogs you eat in Chicago. No, no. A Chicago-style hot dog consists not only of sausage-shaped meat in a bun but also one that's "dragged through the garden" to include an entire meal of toppings. And while a Chicago-style dog's toppings are subject to the consumer's preferences (except ketchup — hot dog purists don't do ketchup), one element is not: Chicago-style hot dogs are traditionally made with beef. The reason for this is that the guys who basically invented the form were not only Viennese sausage makers but also observant Jews, and kosher dietary laws forbid the consumption of pork. These days, there are entire restaurants that are kosher.

This doesn't mean that every beef hot dog is kosher — it's more complicated than that. But let's leave that aside for a moment and instead take a trip back in time to 1893, and a little sausage stand set up at the World's Columbian Exposition (now more commonly known as the World's Fair) in Chicago's enormous Jackson Park. The stand's operators, Samuel Ladany and Emil Reichel, had recently emigrated from Vienna. The two ended up making enough money that they were able to open their Vienna Sausage Co. storefront the following year. We know their sausages were exclusively made from beef; let's talk about why they were kosher.

Kosher food is that which is considered "fit" to eat (the literal meaning of the word) based on Talmudic scripture and resulting dietary guidelines. Not only are some foods (like pork and certain kinds of fish and birds) forbidden to eat, but a system of kosher dietary laws called kashrut also guides everything from the humane slaughtering of animals to the rabbinic supervision of food production, which includes things like keeping dairy and meat products separate.

So, just because a hot dog is made from beef doesn't make it kosher (unless it's Hebrew National, and here's everything you need to know about that brand). But the history of hot dogs in America is inextricably tied with Jewish sausage vendors and butcher shops. Samuel Ladany and Emil Reichel weren't the first guys to have the (admittedly brilliant) idea of selling sausages in public spaces. Charles Feltman got there first in 1870, putting pork-and-beef sausages into a bun and selling his "Coney Island Red Hots" in Brooklyn. Soon after, once a kosher butcher shop opened in Manhattan, all-beef sausages (and ultimately hot dogs) became staples in Jewish neighborhoods all over New York City. But this doesn't explain why all-beef dogs are the standard issue of the Chicago style.

The answer to this question is also rooted in food cleanliness. To this day, the manufacturer synonymous with Chicago hot dogs is Vienna Beef, the same company founded by those two Austrian-Hungarian immigrants. The reason their all-beef sausages caught on (instead of the mixed-meat sausages that were also popular) was largely due to the justifiably awful reputation of Chicago's Union Stock Yard & Transit Company, a meatpacking district. Stockyards across America were notoriously unsafe, as documented by author Upton Sinclair in his fictional book "The Jungle." The Union Stock Yards were no exception (as Sinclair took pains to point out), and Chicago consumers wisely chose to eat food made under more stringent and hygienic conditions. As of 2021, Vienna Beef had a 71% market share in Chicago, according to Forbes.

Oh, and why is ketchup so scrupulously not part of a Chicago-style dog? Because it's considered a sweet condiment, and the pickle relish takes care of that attribute very well, thank you. Condiment manufacturer Kraft Heinz received a very public dope slap when it rebranded its ketchup as "Chicago dog sauce" for National Hot Dog Day in 2017 and was basically canceled on social media. It's cool to try new things, but don't mess with tradition.