Service area for Stewart’s hot dog meat sauce. Notice the purpose-built tongs and holder to the right of the grill.
Stewart’s Shops festoon the northeast like ripe fruit on a raspberry bush. There are 6 of them in Saratoga Springs (which is also Stewart’s home base) alone and another 4 on the outskirts. Stewarts (often thought of without the apostrophe or affectionately as Stewies) is like 7-11 or other convenience stores but with a number of quirks that create great affection among locals.
Every Stewie’s has a trash receptacle like this one, which looks like it was made out of formica and label maker in a high school shop class.
A favorite Stewart’s item for me is the Deli Dog. I wrote about this soon after I moved to Saratoga; the price has gone up and for some reason (probably a copyright issue) the name has been changed to Hot Dog but the product is the same. You can currently get two of them for $4 and will serve yourself from a roller cooker with tongs from a special hanger on the side, and place the tube steak on a bun which comes prepackaged atop the cooker or in a drawer underneath. (In modern they times have discontinued the practice of steaming vs grilling the dogs, and no longer warm the buns. Such is progress.) You can add condiments to your heart’s content: mustard, green or spicy red relish, sauerkraut, chopped onions, ketchup… and meat sauce.
A family member is fond of Stewart’s hot dog meat sauce, which is like chili but without the beans (which of course should never be in chili to begin with) and unlike the chili is free with your hot dog purchase. You can’t always be at Stewart’s when a hot dog urge strikes so we decided to hack Stewart’s meat sauce at home.
There are lots of hot dog meat sauces on Amazon, including Coney Island, Chicago and Detroit varieties, but we guessed the Stewart’s product was heavily influenced by the sauce on the “Michigan Dog” originated a hundred miles north of us in Plattsburgh, and ladled onto the mini-dogs served at various establishments in the Capital District. Hot Dog Charlie’s, based in Troy NY, sells Hot Dog Charlie’s Meat & Chili Sauce in a jar by mail order and at local supermarkets so we were able to suss out the ingredients by reading the label: Water, Beef, Dehydrated Onions, Soybean Oil, Paprika, Salt, Chili Powder (ground Chili Peppers), Spices, Citric Acid, Garlic.
We liked that there is more water than meat, which suggests a formula for an item with very low food cost. Using first-ingredient-is-water as a criterion we hunted around for “hot dog meat sauce” recipes online. The most promising was this on TikTok from doihavetocook for “Coney Island Hot Dog Sauce” so we cooked it up. The ingredients:
1 lb ground beef (we used 85/15 mix)
2 c water
¼ c tomato paste
1 T minced dried onions
2 T mild chili powder (we used Toné)
½ t garlic powder
½ t Kosher salt
¼ t ground mustard
¼ t ground allspice
¼ t cinnamon
1/8 t cayenne pepper
1/8 t ground cumin
Method: sear meat in a saucepan, crumbling with a spoon, over medium heat to render fat without browning the meat. Drain off fat and add all other ingredients. Simmer for 2 hours or more till the sauce is reduced to the thickness of a pasta sauce that coats a spoon without dripping off. Serve warm over your favorite cooked wiener.
Our hot dog with hacked meat sauce in on the top, a Stewart’s dog on the bottom. Notice their sauce is more viscous and spreads more evenly vs clumping.
Verdict: this was the same consistency as Stewart’s meat sauce but much more interesting flavor-wise thanks to the warm spices. For a more authentic Stewart’s hot dog meat sauce hack, next time we plan to eliminate the allspice and cumin (cinnamon stays because we like it in chili; unsure about the tiny amount of mustard) and substitute 1 T paprika for one of the T of chili powder. Other things we might consider:
Using canned tomato sauce or puree instead of tomato paste
Thickening/stretching the sauce with flour, cornstarch or corn flour
Adding some brown sugar (a variation since Stewart’s sauce is not sweet)
Perking it up with some cider vinegar (again, a flavor note missing in Stewart’s meat sauce).
Did we nail it in the second test? Stay tuned to find out in our next post. And happy 4th to those who celebrate!
Michigans I’ve had. How about Herkimer County “Mexicans”? A lost cuisine. Meat sauce on a hotdog in the Mohawk NY area. The interwebs confuse this with Heinz Chili Sauce recipes and chili dogs with beans. Mexican mix, hot ground beef, is still sold. Not a sauce but a burger? Or..? Sauce in the past, IMO. Your recipe is “right there”.
I would like to seek out this item if I am ever in Herkimer County. Also, “Sloppy Joes” seem to have disappeared from the American fast food pantheon. What’s up with that?
You can get the burger mix. Sloppy Joe’s at a fast food joint?
McSloppy? The Slopper? . Home cooking or Manwich. Gas station sushi might be the modern replacement.
The roller dog! I usta get them by the fell off the truck method in local taverns. What are they called? I want some and roller’basa too;-)
If you study the photo of the hot dog setup at Stewart’s and think about picking up a tube steak with those tongs, it actually doesn’t work. To efficiently grasp the dog with the tongs the rollers would need to be at right angle, not parallel to the front of the grill. I have more than once grabbed a dog that was about to fall to the floor. Now a pro, I know that I first grasp a dog with the tongs then lay it atop the others so I can get a new angle and transfer it to my bun.
Happy Birthday Otis,
I like your exploration of regional sauces and foods that are loved locally as treasures for multigenerational enjoyment. I never heard of this item, but it looks good and has some great mixture of spices. I always cook chili separate from beans and allow people to mix as they desire. Instead of using solely pinto beans I like to use half pinto, one quarter the little black beans and the final quarter red beans. A small batch would be one cup of pinto and one-half cup of black and red beans.
Sounds like you can pop in to the Stewarts anytime without bothering to make your own chili. I haven’t made chili in a long while, you have awakened my interest in making my own recipe where I add eggplant with the skin and mushrooms along with the meat. When I cook my beans, I also add epazote for flavor.
Thank you Philip for the birthday greetings! In these troubled times who knows if the Stewart’s meat sauce will continue to be available? It’s common sense to develop a strategy for making it at home, much as colonial ancestors (I understand, min not yours) made soap from pig parts after the revolution.
I have recently been making a version of the meat sauce at home for my hubs…as he likes it along with slaw on his hot dogs….very easy to do and I’ve had it on tortilla chips with a sprinkling of shredded cheese…makes a great pseudo nachos!!
Sure… add more chili powder and some cumin and you have taco meat!