Chili Dogs and Family Roots: Exploring the Legacy of Our Beloved Recipe

(This article was originally published March 11, 2023, in the Southern Spice section of Times-Georgian.)

“Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

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If you happened to be in the northern West Virginia town of Shinnston sometime between the 1950s and 1970s, it’s likely that you drove by Harmer’s Funeral Home and wondered if “they had a body today,” filled up your tank at my great-uncle Phil’s Amoco gas station, and stopped in Griffin’s Bar-B-Cue for chili dogs and pie. 

Griffin’s Bar-B-Cue sat across the street from the gas station, and Phil’s wife, my great-aunt Martha Ellen “Griffie,” owned and operated it with my other great-aunt, Peg. The small, white restaurant boasted large, red Coca-Cola signs and a counter filled with homemade pies under glass; the crowd favorite, hands down, was her golden-topped lemon meringue. 

Griffin’s Bar-B-Cue, Shinnston, WV. 1950s? Image courtesy of author.

But the one thing on the menu that kept people coming back was the chili sauce. In West Virginia, hot dog chili sauce is king. The whole state has an obsession with the dog topper that borders on the obsessive. Strict rules differentiate “chili sauce” from “chili.” It’s always called chili sauce, it never contains beans, it must be a tiny bit sweet (to counteract the saltiness of the dog), and it must always include ground beef simmered in water - never browned first. 

Griffin’s Bar-B-Cue didn’t serve the chili dogs with coleslaw as Shinnston sits far north of the “Slaw Line,” located at Mile Marker 111 on Interstate 79 with an honest-to-God sign designating it as such. South of that location, people eat coleslaw on their hotdogs; north of there, no dice. See? Just a wee bit consumed. 

The chili sauce is famous in my family’s history. Legend has it that a representative from Heinz came down from Pennsylvania and offered to buy the recipe from my aunts; they declined. When I was young, we spent many weekends at my great aunts’ home in Shinnston. The last morning of every trip, I woke up to the smell of 8 O'clock coffee percolating on the stove, my great aunts packing up steamed hot dogs smothered in chili sauce in lovely little aluminum foil packets. 

We loaded up in the car and headed home towards Virginia or Georgia. Invariably, not 30 minutes down the road, we would break into our “lunch,” eagerly consuming those little packets of porky goodness well before, oh, 9:30 a.m. 

For all those years, Peg and Griffie kept the chili sauce recipe a closely guarded secret,  the likes of which had not been seen since Asa Candler allegedly locked up Coca-Cola’s formula somewhere under the current location of the Candler Hotel. 

Unfortunately, they took that secret to the grave. They both passed, and all of a sudden, we all realized that no one knew how they made it. 

For years, my mom and dad scoured recipe books and blogs about West Virginia hot dog chili sauce (yep, that’s a thing) in an attempt to recreate one of our strongest family memories. No matter how many recipes they tried, the taste never equaled the chili sauce of our memories. 

84 Ferguson St, Shinnston, WV (Peg and Griffie’s home)

Perhaps our nostalgia was too strong. Maybe nothing would have ever lived up to those precious times in our family history. Regardless, no recipe was ever “the one.”

Not long after my dad passed, my mom and I were talking about “the chili.” She told me that she thought she had a recipe card for chili sauce, but there was no way it was Griffie’s. No way. Couldn’t be. Didn’t look right. 

Um, excuse me? You have a recipe card called “Chili Sauce” from Shinnston and you never tried it?  Mom!!!

I took that to be a personal challenge. Someone had to try it, and it was clear the responsibility fell to me. 

We cleared our calendar for last Sunday. I’m not a coffee drinker, but I knew I couldn’t replicate the sauce without imbuing the house with a rich coffee scent. I had to set the right mood and look for inspiration anyway I could. I did the only thing I knew how to do: I lit a Paris Cafe candle from Bath and Body Works and got to it. 

The whole undertaking was a family affair. David and I were scalding and peeling tomatoes, processing peppers and onions, and mashing ground beef down into the mixture. I even had to make a cheesecloth packet with cinnamon and cloves in it. My mom had to come over to supervise. 

I’m not going to lie, in Phase One, it looked like Linda Blair had thrown up pea soup into the Dutch oven. Finally, things started settling down, and the mixture started looking like, well, legitimate chili sauce. 

I fished out the cheesecloth packet, and we took a taste. It’s important to remember that probably half of the people in the entire world who remember the taste of that fabled chili sauce were gathered in the kitchen at that time. 

The result was -- meh. 

It was decidedly underwhelming, watery, and overly “clovey.” We tried taste corrections: more brown sugar, some ketchup, some chili powder. The result was improved, with a taste that complemented the salty dog and the sweet bun.  But it still wasn’t what we remembered. 

I should have prepared myself that this was not the miracle. But “hope springs eternal” for me. 

And strangely enough, now that so many years have passed, I’m not sure if I’d even be able to properly place the taste of that sauce. Its flavor is so intertwined with memories, history, and lore, it’s a legend unto itself now. 

And . . . I’ve been eating chili from The Varsity for so long, my taste buds may be tainted; I might not have an objective recollection anymore. Yikes!

Will I try again? Yeah, most likely. Hopefully on a smaller scale this time; six and a half pounds of tomatoes was a lot to work with, on top of the expectations of an entire generation. 

I’m already searching for more West Virginia chili sauce recipes on  . . . yeah, the blog.