Depression Dogs
When I settled on Chicago as the theme of my 2025 Meatwave opener, there was no question hot dogs were going to be on the menu. I would have been happy serving up the standard Chicago dog, but always in search of something new to share, I did some research and decided instead to give another Chicago invention a try—Depression Dogs. This style of hot dog, which is topped with mustard, onion, sport peppers, and sometimes relish and french fries, was so named due to the hot dog's popularity during the Great Depression, having the ability to sustain on the cheap. While the Chicago dog now reigns supreme in the city, Depression Dogs have not totally faded and are served up from some long time joints like Gene & Jude's and Jimmy's Red Hots.
Although I don't think a Chicago menu would be complete without hot dogs, my real desire to make them was to have an excuse to do a Vienna Beef order. I have a preference for natural casing and the Depression Dog is more "correct" using that variety, but I opted to go for quantity this time around and got myself a hot dog lover's pack—that's 48 delicious franks!
From what I can gather, the Depression Dog requires the combo of mustard, diced white onion and sport peppers to be true. Relish is a common addition and back in the day when these hot dogs were the standard, a pre-relish condiment called piccalilli was used. It also seems like a Depression Dog isn't complete without fries, which are often wrapped up with dog, rendering some of them becoming a topping and thus now being a standard part of the equation.
I started my Depression Dog journey with the fries. I normally use my mandoline's fry setting, which cuts potatoes into a size akin to McDonald's fries, but all the Depression Dog photos I saw doing research had thicker cut fries on them, so I did some hand cutting this time around to get larger fries that I first cooked in 350°F oil until they were softened, but not yet browning.
I next heated the hot dogs on the grill, where I employed a two-zone fire. I did this so I could heat the franks on the hot side of the grill, then move them over the to cool side to stay warm while I went back inside to get the fries crisped up.
This time I heated the oil to 425°F and put the tender sliced spuds back in and let them cook until browned and crunchy on the outside. This only took two or three minutes, so I didn't have much worry about the hot dogs getting overdone on the grill, especially since they were away from the heat and uncovered.
My assembly went with sweet relish first, then a generous squeeze of yellow mustard, followed by onions and two or three sport peppers. I did serve some hot dogs at this point, but the majority I topped with just enough fries to keep the whole thing manageable both for eating and handling.
To be honest, the Chicago dog isn't a fav of mine, but I was totally down with the Depression Dog. The topping combo hit well without the fries—the sharpness from mustard, onion, and hot peppers getting a touch of balance from the relish felt right to me. They were so much better with the fries though, adding a little extra crunch, but the creamy innards were more important in both texture and dampening the intensity of the toppings in a way that made it taste perfectly in balance. Luckily I only went through one out of three packs of Vienna Beef this particular day, so I have 32 more hot dogs to look forward to, and some will undoubtedly get the Depression Dog treatment.
