What's the Difference Between Corn Dogs & Pronto Pups?

Festival and fair season is right around the corner, and this week I noticed that you can get an early start on your grease intake because there are concession stands set up in the parking lot at Hy-Vee in Owatonna.

For a long time I assumed that the terms 'corn dog' and 'pronto pup' were interchangeable (and I love them both), but hold everything -- the dogs and pups are two completely different foods (kind of).

The well known 'Pronto Pup' booths at the Minnesota State Fair read, "America's original corn dogs." (Whaaaaaat?)

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Neel is an NY based foodie (from Hyderabad, India), whose in-laws are from Minnesota. He fell in love with the Minnesota State Fair in 2011 -- and adds to the great debate in this video.

The secret batter recipe of the state fair 'Pronto Pups' is said to contain corn meal, wheat flour, and rice flour (which qualifies these pronto pups as corn dogs).

So if a pronto pup can be a corn dog, can a corn dog be a pronto pup? I guess the bigger question is: ketchup or mustard?

If I could only have one food at the Minnesota State Fair for the rest of my life, it would be a batter-dipped hot dog on a stick from of of the many official 'Pronto Pup' stands on the fairgrounds. No new food will ever be able to pull me away from grabbing several Pronto Pups each year.

And my personal answer to the ketchup or mustard question: There's nothing like using the paint brush at the 'Pronto Pup' booths to apply a nice even coating of delicious, golden mustard.

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To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.