Ranking 12 Fast Food Hot Dogs From Worst To Best

Hot dogs are an iconic American food. The sausage sandwich has loomed large in the hearts of Americans since the mid-1800s, per CNN. Why? Because they are ridiculously delicious and, frankly (pun intended), oh-so-satisfying.

That's why you'll always catch us at the cook-out with a red hot in hand. But sometimes, we have a hankering for a frank in the off-barbecue season. Thankfully, plenty of fast food joints are in the hot dog game. It's a blessing to those of us who have already had our fair share of burgers and chicken sandwiches for the week. 

Unfortunately, not all fast food hot dogs are created equal. And there are few things worse, when it comes to food, than a really bad wiener. We found that the fast food chains with the best hot dogs use high-quality ingredients or have perfected their recipes to offer a salty snap with every bite. Here's our list of who gets cheers and who gets jeers when it comes to fast food hot dogs. 

Portillo's started as a hot dog stand in Villa Park, Illinois. Dick Portillo bought a small trailer for $1,100 in 1963 and called it "The Dog House." Portillo's received a name change and became a well-known brand in Chicago. The chain now serves burgers, fries, and shakes, as well as beef, sausage, and chicken sandwiches. You'll even find pasta at its more than 70 locations in Arizona, Florida, California, Texas, Illinois, and several states surrounding Illinois. 

But the chain is most known for its Chicago-style hot dogs. The natural casing, beef hot dogs come in four varieties with different toppings; a plant-based hot dog and Polish sausage are also available. All of them are served on a steamed poppy seed bun. While this may be standard in Chicago, that's a deal breaker right there for us. But Portillo's offends a second time with the overly-vegetated hot dogs, which come with mustard, relish, chopped onions, red ripe tomatoes, kosher pickles, and peppers. Chicagoans call it "dragging the dog through the garden." We call it too much on one hot dog. Imagine how soggy those tomatoes make the bun. No, thank you!

Even if you can get around the bun and having more vegetables than necessary, people on Reddit say the quality at Portillo's has gone downhill. They report that the jumbo hot dog has "lost its snap" though they did say that its regular hot dog is still good. Redditors pointed to the company's change in ownership as the reason for the decline in quality.

We love that we can grab a nosh before rolling those massive shopping carts into Sam's Club to stock up on toilet paper and fulfill all our club membership needs. And Sam's Club's Café menu offers prices that are just as unbeatable as its in-store offerings. You can grab yourself a slice of pizza, a pizza pretzel (we're drooling), churros, frozen yogurt, and salads.

Sam's Club Café also has a quarter-pound hot dog on its menu. These wieners are the same all-beef Members' Mark franks you can buy in packs inside the store. In the café, you can get a hot dog and a 30-ounce soda for just under $1.50. When it comes to cost, you cannot beat this deal. Member's Mark hot dogs are made without by-products, MSG, and artificial flavors or coloring. While Sam's Club hot dogs are probably a bit higher in quality than other hot dogs, they definitely leave something to be desired when it comes to taste.

Sam's Club is another big-headed brand when it comes to boasting about its frankfurters. It launched a price-off with Costco to make its hot dog combo even cheaper by lowering the price by 10% from $1.50. According to the company, it lowered the price to help make, "Sam's Club the most valuable subscription you have." It's a good thing its goal wasn't to prove that its franks were tastier than the competition because that just isn't the case.

We usually don't love boiled hot dogs; we prefer our wieners to be grilled. But Sonic manages to make a good impression with its all-beef, boiled dogs served on a steamed bakery bun. It has a good crack when you bite into the casing, but the franks aren't bursting with high-quality spices. It offers a decent flavor profile but nothing to write home about.

Sonic makes up for this with its toppings. The fast food chain's hot dogs come in four styles: a corn dog, footlong quarter-pound coney, an All-American dog, and the chili cheese coney. The corn dog is wrapped in a sweet corn fritter batter. The footlong and chili dogs are topped with chili and melted cheese, and the All-American boasts ketchup, mustard, relish, and diced onions. Some locations also offer sauerkraut as a topping, and you can get creative by adding tater tots to your dog.

Wienerschnitzel has touted itself as the world's largest hot dog chain, slinging franks since 1961. With 50 years of hot dog-making under its belt, those franks have no excuse not to be delicious. And they must be, because Wienerschnitzel sells 120 million of them each year. The brand says its hot dogs are made with seasoned, USDA-approved cuts of quality meats.

These red hots come grilled on either a standard or pretzel bun and are available in 11 different variations. The Junkyard Dog has chili sauce, cheese, grilled onions, and mustard, and the Texas BBQ dog features bacon, grilled onions, cheese, and barbecue sauce. For a classic style, order the Chicago dog with tomatoes, onions, pickles, peppers, and mustard. But what Wienerschnitzel is most famous for is its chili dog, with chili made from a "secret recipe." These are some top-quality franks with many options to make everyone in your crew happy.

Burgers and fries aren't the only things that Five Guys freezer-free restaurants do well; its wieners are also superb. It's because they haven't tried to reinvent the wheel or, in this case, the hot dog. Like Mooyah Burgers, Fries & Shakes, Five Guys also serves Hebrew National hot dogs. Five Guys grills its franks lengthwise, giving it that sink your teeth in crunch before the salty goodness invades your mouth. Its buns are fresh and soft on the inside and nicely toasted on the outside.

The menu includes four different hot dogs. They come plain, with American cheese, with apple-wood smoked bacon, or with bacon and cheese. You can also add classic toppings to your Five Guys hot dog, like ketchup, mustard, relish, and chopped onion. We aren't fans of how the "American-style" slice of cheese is slapped on the hot dog and melted into the bun, still, it's hard to deny how crave-able these franks are, so, we'll just be skipping the cheese.

This one should be obvious, probably because Nathan's Famous has been honing its hot dogs for more than a century. How could it not be the reigning hot dog champ? Nathan Handwerker, a Polish immigrant, started selling hot dogs for a nickel at Coney Island in 1916. The company went on to become a "New York institution."

The Daily News reports that Nathan's hot dog recipe is a heavily-guarded secret from Handwerker's wife's grandmother. Company employees did say the hot dogs contain a hint of garlic, which is one of the ingredients that make each bite of a Nathan's frank euphoric. Nathans's still makes its 100% beef hot dogs with basically the same recipe that grandma came up with a century ago. The only difference is that its dogs are now gluten-free. Nathan's also sells its hot dogs at its restaurants and in grocery stores. Its website reports that it sells about 700 million hot dogs every year to satisfy America's craving for its favorite frank.