Hot Dogs

This passage is about a popular food, the hot dog.

Lexile Level: 920L

Categories: People & Places Sports & Health

The hot dog is a popular American food. A hot dog is really a small, pre-cooked sausage that has an even texture. We usually put them in a bread bun of the same size and call that sandwich a hot dog too. They are made of meat from a cow or meat from a pig. Today vegetarian hot dogs are becoming more and more popular. Hot dogs are also called franks or wieners. They are called franks since this sort of sausage was popular in Germany and "franks" is the German word for them. The word "wiener" for a hot dog comes from the city of Vienna, Austria, whose German name is Wien. In America in the 1880s, the owner of the baseball team the St. Louis Browns sold them at his ballpark. From that time on, they became more and more popular at baseball games. That is why today they are so closely associated with baseball and America.