As food expenses continue to rise, one option stands out for students: the hot dog. This iconic, cheap meal remains an affordable and filling option.
Students can always count on hot dogs. And food vendors at SAIT are making sure of that.
“We’d rather have students fed than try to make money on everything,” said Sidharth Safaya, director of food services for Aramark Canada at SAIT.
Aramark is the company that runs the Grill House in the Stan Grad food court, the only place on campus that consistently sells hot dogs.
The hot dogs, which cost $4.19 with tax, do not make a profit, said Safaya.
“I would never consider taking [the hot dogs] out given how the economy has rolled out on students. … The whole idea was to ensure that no student, because of financial stress, goes hungry,” he said.
Students agree.
“In this economy? I would love to have lunch for four dollars,” said SAIT student Katie Young, when asked if she thought $4.19 was a reasonable price. Young was previously unaware that hot dogs were sold anywhere on campus.
Marge Soriano, another SAIT student, frequents the Grill House. “The service is good, and I usually get [the hot dogs]. I think they are affordable.”
And although the Grill House is the only place on campus that offers this highly-sought dish daily, they do make a rare appearance at the marketplace in the John Ware building.
“When we make them, we make a ton, and they sell out insanely fast. They’re probably some of the best hot dogs I’ve had in my life,” said Ray Bucknell, an instructor for the butchery and charcuterie management program at SAIT.
They are made by students as one of the final parts of the butchery program. Despite the fact that they are a cheap food, creating hot dogs requires a lot of effort.
“Hot dogs are probably one of the trickiest things to make,” said Bucknell. “It’s one of the hardest for the students to master.”
“The act of putting them into a casing can be a bit tricky … You also want something that doesn’t have any air holes in them. We call them fish eyes. Often, when we’re teaching students, they’ll get a lot of fish eyes in them.”
Bucknell, who is an avid hot dog fan, said the iconic food requires any combination of beef, pork or lamb, although the majority at SAIT are entirely pork. The meat is mixed with a ratio of 50/50 fat, and emulsified with water and ice.
Also worth noting is that water and ice make up about 25 per cent of the product. This, along with the low cost of fat, is largely why hot dogs are so cheap.
Spices and additives are added, both for taste and to create the classic brown-pink colour.
The ingredients are then mixed, formed and brought to the smokehouses. Here they are dried, smoked, steamed and finally showered.
“The reason the shower exists is to stop the product from cooking. It starts to cool it, and that introduction of moisture is what allows the casing to be nice and plump and full, rather than a crinkled up sausage,” said Bucknell.
“If I have a perfect hot dog, I like it on the whitest bun I can get and I like to boil or steam them. I always say to people: you steam a hot dog, you return it to its natural environment.”
Bucknell also says there are a lot of myths about what goes in a hot dog.
“The reality is you actually need high-quality meat and well-graded meat. Meat that’s determined specifically for a hot dog, so it has the muscles from a certain part of the animal, and the right amount of collagen inside of it.”
When it comes to the additives present, Bucknell is not concerned.
“Some studies came out where lab rats had been fed high levels of sodium nitrate, which is the same ingredient that goes into hot dogs and deli meats and smokies. They all developed cancer. Having said that, it would be the equivalent of eating like, 20 pounds of hot dogs a day.”
He explains that additives are present in many cheaper foods, but they are there for a purpose: to make the food taste good.
“It’s not part of the food pyramid, you know? It’s part of the fun pyramid.”
