Yeah, yeah, we've heard your jokes about what goes into hot dogs. We know they're not healthy, and we don't care. We wanted to rank the best hot dogs in America because hot dogs are America. At their essence, both hot dogs and America are a bunch of, uh, parts from all over the place that come together to create something special. They can be bad sometimes -- and bad for you -- but when they're good, they're really good.

We take our meat tubes seriously over here at Post Food HQ. We judged the dogs -- purchased in D.C. from national retailers including Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Safeway, Giant, Costco and Target -- on four factors: taste, appearance, seasoning balance (a good blend of sweet, spicy, salty and smoky), and "snap." You know snap -- it's what it should feel like to bite into a hot dog. A good hot dog isn't too soft or mushy. A good hot dog casing bursts a little when you bite it (but it also doesn't require too much chewing, which can be off-putting). We only included all-beef hot dogs in the test (we will circle back to veggie dogs soon).