DOG DAY: Organizers of the Independence Day...

DOG DAY: Organizers of the Independence Day celebration at Hansen Dam Park will cook up no fewer than 3,000 hot dogs Tuesday. After all, the frankfurter is inextricably linked to this holiday. Americans will gobble more than a half-million wieners by day’s end, according to some estimates, and this meat byproduct frenzy will kick off National Hot Dog Month.

CRUSH: Valley supermarkets and butcher shops have already felt the onslaught of barbecuers. Anthony’s Old Fashioned Butcher Shop in Woodland Hills reports that the phone has been ringing with orders all week. Said a harried Michael Obermayer at the Atlas Sausage Kitchen in North Hollywood: “It’s bratwurst time. We have to try and hang in there.”

OLD WORLD: On a Saturday afternoon at European Meat Specialties in North Hollywood, you rarely hear a word of English. Many of the Valley’s best butcher shops serve up a heavy ethnic flavor and are run by men like Obermayer (above) who speak with thick accents. It was immigrant butchers who first brought the frankfurter to this country. The term hot dog, however, is American. . . . It was coined in 1905 by a newspaper writer describing the “red hot dachshund sausages” peddled by vendors at the Polo Grounds in New York.

TOP DOG: Those not satisfied by a standard pack from the supermarket can seek fancier links. Obermayer suggests a hearty Thueringer sausage. Italian-style, both mild and hot, is king at Anthony’s. In Glendale, butcher Eugen Goetz specializes in Nuremberg sausage: “A fine texture. You want to cook the outside a little crispy. Very nice.”

WIENER WISDOM: Ralph Nader ranted against sodium nitrate in wieners during the early 1970s. More recently, a USC study suggested a link between high hot dog consumption and childhood leukemia. But barbecuers need not fear the occasional splurge. “You can even have two on the Fourth of July,” said June Payne Palacio, a professor of nutrition at Pepperdine University.