Tube Steak

I want to talk about a food item that, when I think about it, leaves a little bit of gag-vurp in the back of my throat. It's haunted county fairgrounds, carnivals, and deli counters far too long, and, to be honest, doesn't deserve a place amoung the delicious funnel cakes and chocolate-covered cheesecakes that the carnies next door are peddeling at the same such events. Foot-long hot dogs.

First of all, I really have no qualms with regular hot dogs. In fact, I embrace them, sometimes four at a time. But if you really want to eat that much hot dog, get two (or three or four) regular-sized hot dogs. Secondly, you’re putting a foot of ketchup, a foot of mustard, a foot of relish, a foot of chilli (you get the idea) on your foot-long hot dog. That’s gross.

What are hot dogs made of? Essentially leftovers. After the butcher has cut out the delicious chops, ham, bacon, and ribs, whatever’s left over gets ground and squeezed into a long tube of processed goodness. And what about the hotdogs that claim to be made from beef instead of pork? Or turkey? I don’t care how lean the animal was, hot dogs are still tubular leftovers.

I have a friend from Wisconsin, home of Johnsonville Brats, who talks with that charming Northern Midwest accent. She says things like, “Doncha know?” and, “Yah!” She calls hot dogs “tube steaks.” She has a point. A hot dog is just a hose stuffed with leftover steak.

Now, a bratwurst is slightly different from a hot dog in a few ways. For one, it’s less often that you find those leftover blends with a bratwurst. You usually either have pork brats, beef brats, or turkey brats. No “40% REAL TURKEY!!” label to leave you wondering what the other 60% is made of. Also, some careful seasoning goes into the creation of a bratwurst. You can get them at any level of spiciness, too. Extra spicy, medium spicy, original.

After countless Google searches, I've come to understand the innards and outards, so to speak, of the Johnsonville Bratwurst production line. It's just as you would expect. Lots of tubes, pipes and grinders.

It reminded me of my grandparents’ beef operation. Grandpa raises grain-fed baby beef until they are ready to be slaughtered at about a year old. That’s right. They’re not free-range. They live in a feed lot and eat until they are one year old, at which point they are loaded on a truck and sent to the butcher. Stop whining, PETA. These animals are in no way suffering. Did you read what I just said about them eating all day long?? They love it. They can’t get enough corn meal.

Grandpa took me with him to the butcher once. I have to admit, as exposed as I am to the whole beef-farm outfit, I was a little bothered by the putrid air that struck me when I walked into the slaughterhouse. Air conditioning? Forget it. This was late-August and the air was tepid. I was also startled by the shrieking sound of the power tool the butcher used to shave off the remains of the animal. There was a window where children could watch the butcher in action. Like at Nobel Roman’s or Dewey’s Pizza where you can watch the pizza chef flip the dough around in the air. Kids actually climb up on the step that brings you to eye level with the hanging carcass on the other side of the plexi-glass. Filets, rib-eyes, strips, and porterhouses are all set out on the table under the carcass while the butcher works away at another American Grade A steak to send out to Jeff Ruby’s, where it will be barely cooked and sold for between twenty-five and forty American dollars.

Of course there was also a vacuum sucking up the leftovers and shavings, sending them up through the ceiling to another room, probably without a viewing window, through long plastic tube. One day, a little man on the other side of that tube thought, "Hey! Why would we throw away all of these excess lips and assholes?" He took out his Swiss Army Knife, choose the serated blade, and started slicing away. The rest is history, and today Takeru Kobayashi stands as a national hero as he chokes down just one more of these delicious treats in a water-soaked bun.