Can Vegan Hot Dogs Achieve a Glorious Snap?

What makes the legendary Chicago hot dog so good? It’s the snap of a Vienna Beef, Jeff Greenfield, the owner of the classic Chicago establishment Redhot Ranch, told the New York Times a few years ago. It’s not just Vienna Beef: Sabrett and Sahlen’s also consider snap their signature. For some hot dog fans, myself included, snap is key to the hot dog experience. That springy feeling that accompanies each bite signals the rush of flavor and delicious fat that will follow, and snap, like crackle and pop, is simply an appealing sensation.

So when the Chicago-based vegan food brand Upton’s Naturals began working on its own hot dog in 2018, “snap was so important to us,” says Natalie Slater, the company’s director of sales and marketing. “We felt like vegan food shouldn’t really be graded on a curve anymore — that we shouldn’t say, this soy dog’s pretty pretty good for a vegan hot dog,” Slater says. “We wanted to make a hot dog that was just good.”

The vegan hot dog category has been dominated by good enough ever since 1993, when Lightlife launched its industry-leading Smart Dogs. The best-sellers in the category, according to Lightlife, Smart Dogs are, for better or worse, most people’s stereotype of a veggie dog. They’re smooth, bouncy, and somewhat plasticky in appearance. Which isn’t to say that they’re unpleasant: On the general hot dog continuum, Smart Dogs map closely onto what we might want when we eat an Oscar Meyer wiener. Why a Smart Dog is such a good imitation, I think, is that the former, which is made with mechanically separated meat, already pushes our understanding of what “real” meat even is; as with plant-based nuggets, it’s easy to imitate something that already seems artificial.

By comparison, Upton’s was reaching for a more difficult goal with its Updog, a vital wheat gluten-based frank. “Our reference point for what a hot dog should taste like is a kosher beef hot dog,” says Slater, who is vegan, like the majority of Upton’s team. Instead of a squishy, smooth, homogenous texture, she explains, the team envisioned “a firmer texture, a more pronounced spice and smoke profile, and of course, [a] casing that crisps up when it cooks and snaps when you bite into it.”

Casing, as Slater mentioned to me, has historically been a euphemistic way to say animal intestines. “A good natural casing is the quintessential thing needed for a good snap,” says Tony Fragogiannis, the owner of the Brooklyn Hot Dog Company; his beef hot dogs get their snap from sheep casing. Not every hot dog uses casing — today, Fragogiannis notes, many are skinless — but not every hot dog snaps. Still, while casing once meant something undeniably animal, it can now be made of seaweed or starches and vegetable glycerin.

Pull an Updog out of its package and you’ll see it: the thin, translucent skin that wrinkles if you push it. You’ll find something similar around Impossible’s sausages and Beyond’s bratwurst. All of these casings rely on alginate (either sodium alginate or calcium alginate), an algae derivative that thickens food and can also form a gel-like skin. Impossible notes that its casing also includes guar gum and konjac gum (the latter’s bouncy, jelly texture has made it a popular ingredient in plant-based seafood products). “With some of these casings, combined with the [vegan] meat emulsion that you stuff it with, that snap is within reach,” says Kale Walch, who started Minneapolis’s Herbivorous Butcher with his sister in 2014.

The first thing to know is that from both the producer’s and home cook’s perspectives, plant-based casing can be finicky and particular. In bolded text, the Updog’s packaging warns that you should neither remove the casing nor boil or steam the hot dog, lest you lose the brand’s “signature snap.” One manufacturer of the casing cautions against overstuffing it, cooking it in oils, or soaking it in water. But if you cook [plant-based casing] carefully it can get “a really good crisp to it,” Walch says. But less ideal results are also possible, he adds; some plant-based casing gets plasticky as it cooks.

I cooked a couple Updogs. The first attempt, cooked in a pan as per the package instructions, browned on each side but looked somewhat dry overall, and I found that the casing was indeed fragile. It stuck and tore in a spot, despite the care I took while cooking it. Taking a bite of the hot dog alone, I found that it snapped, but limply.

The second attempt, cooked in an air fryer (also per package instructions), was immediately more appealing, with a uniform bronzing and what looked like splotches of oil underneath the surface of the casing. The dog appeared to have shrunk, as if the whole thing had tightened. It looked more like a good hot dog, and when I took a bite, it produced a satisfying, audible snap — the kind I never thought possible from old-school Smart Dogs or Field Roast sausages. Although I found that the addition of a bun muted the effect, I was still impressed.

Though the Chicagoans at Upton’s care a lot about snap, they’ve found that “snap importance varies wildly from region to region,” Slater says. “[Consumers] definitely don’t all concern themselves with it as much as we did.” She adds that texture, overall, is the number-one thing that people care about, and she shares that priority: To her, there’s nothing worse than biting into something expecting one texture and getting another.

Of course, what everyone is looking for in a hot dog varies, whether it’s regular or vegan. Some hot dogs have bounce, others have more chew, some are soft, others are snappy; the right texture means something different for everyone. Despite the fact that I also eat meat, I sometimes prefer the texture and flavor of a veggie dog because I find it pleasing in its own right.

Indeed, what the Updog offers isn’t the homogenous smooth texture of a Smart Dog but the signature chewiness of gluten-heavy seitan. Pinch it apart in your hands and it looks somewhat like ground meat or sausage. It registers as drier when you eat it — a texture that, to me, has always made it clear that it comes from wheat. Is it like beef? Definitely not, but it also falls closer to the Nathan’s end of the hot dog continuum than its soy predecessors.

Total facsimile isn’t the goal for everyone anyway. “A lot of people like our hot dogs just the way they are now because they’re not just like real meat,” says Walch, though he’s currently tinkering with his hot dog recipe to make it more realistic.

Other companies, both vegan and non, agree that the vegan hot dog category has room for improvement. Impossible and Oscar Meyer are in the process of rolling out promising new veggie dogs, though I didn’t get to try either in time for this story. I found Field Roast’s Signature Stadium Dog to be another standout. Made from a base of pea protein, it has the squishy density of a good beef hot dog, and a little more variation in texture than a soy dog. It doesn’t quite snap, nor does it promise to, but it maps onto another favorable spot on that hot dog continuum. I’ll find occasions for them, for sure.

Maybe the best thing about a veggie dog that snaps is simply that it’s surprising: When you’re used to the good-enough veggie dog, it’s a sign of some extra effort. As Slater says, “We’re looking for just a texture that in and of itself is pleasant. It doesn’t necessarily have to replicate the analog version — it just needs to be a good texture that you enjoy eating.”