Classic Coney Island Hot Dog Recipe

These Coney Island hot dogs are a diner classic. A warm sausage tucked into a soft bun and then smothered in a rich, meaty chili sauce and garnished with diced onions and a good squirt of mustard — is there a more homegrown American dish than that?

The Coney sauce in this recipe is not your average chili. Relying on ingredients that you'd expect to find behind the counter of a deli (or a hot dog cart), this sauce makes for the perfect hot dog topping. Ground beef cooked with onions, spices, ketchup, and a touch of mustard is not only a classic diner Coney sauce, but it is exactly what you'll want on every hot dog you eat from here on out.

These hot dogs are an ideal comfort food recipe for a trip down memory lane or a perfect platter for a game day get-together. And, it takes only a measly 15 minutes to bring them from the fridge to the dinner table. All you need is two pans on the stove — a skillet full of simmering Coney sauce and a pot of boiling hot dogs — and you've got yourself a meal that the whole family will be excited about.

Coney Island hot dogs only use a handful of ingredients that you'd expect to find in a hot dog stand. The Coney sauce is made with ground beef, onion, paprika, garlic powder, celery seed, salt, ketchup, and mustard. The hot dogs themselves are simply boiled in water and placed in a fresh bun. For garnish, all you need is a bit more mustard and diced onion. With these 10 ingredients, you are ready to start cooking.

Bring a skillet to medium heat and add the ground beef.

Cook, breaking apart, for 2 minutes.

Add the onion and spices and cook for 3 minutes more, until the beef is just done.

Pour in the ketchup and mustard and stir together. If you are using lean ground beef, you may wish to add ¼ cup water to thin the sauce.

Reduce the heat to low and allow the Coney sauce to simmer while you cook the hot dogs.

Bring a pot of water to a boil over high heat.

Add the hot dogs to the water and simmer for around 5 minutes, or until warmed through.

Remove the hot dogs from the water and place one in each bun.

Top the hot dogs with a scoop of Coney sauce.

Garnish with additional mustard and diced onion, if desired, and serve immediately.

With a name like Coney Island hot dog, you would probably assume that the answer to this question is straightforward. Obviously, these Coney Island hot dogs must have originated in New York, right? You know, the home of Coney Island? Interestingly, it is not so simple.

As it turns out, the people of Detroit argue vehemently that they reside in the true birthplace of the Coney dog. While the actual Coney Island in New York is certainly a place where many hotdogs are sold, this particular preparation — a hotdog smothered in Coney sauce with diced onions and mustard — may have actually originated at a Detroit, Michigan, diner.

As with many food origin stories, it is difficult to say where exactly a particular dish originated. When something like the Coney Island hot dog starts to take off in popularity, lots of folks are going to get on board quickly, and each is likely to have their own particular recipe, and perhaps even their own origin story for how they came up with it. Regardless of where the Coney Island hot dog was first dreamed up, it certainly holds an esteemed place among the many regional hotdog varieties of the U.S.A.

While a chili dog might not intuitively seem like an easy recipe to make vegan, it is actually quite simple to turn out plant-based Coney Island hot dogs. This recipe makes use of a fairly small number of ingredients, and all that you really need to replace are the ground beef and the hot dogs in order to remove any animal products and make this 100% vegan. But, what are the best options for replacing these ingredients?

Veggie dogs were one of the earliest meat replacement products on the market. Hot dogs have always been a product that bore little resemblance to what it was made from, so switching from meat to plant-based protein has never been a problem. Even Oscar Meyer is in the veggie dog game these days. But, veggie dogs are not the only option to replace the hot dogs in this recipe. Surprisingly, carrots have recently come into fashion as a hot dog alternative and would work great in these Coneys.

As far as the ground beef in the Coney sauce, these days, there are many excellent vegan ground beef alternatives on the market. Gone are the days of veggie burgers that resemble hockey pucks, and there are now many products that you can hardly tell are plant-based. Beyond Burgers' legume-derived meat alternatives make an excellent substitution for ground beef in this recipe and will surely make an excellent vegan Coney Island hot dog.