Though Ball Park and Oscar Mayer franks are ubiquitous at grocery stores, you can do a lot better—especially with the wealth of hot dogs made in Portland and Oregon. We did a taste test to choose the hot dog most worthy of your next barbecue.

Our methodology: we prepared six basic frankfurters, weiners, and hot dogs from Otto’s, Edelweiss, Hebrew National, Hill’s, Zenner’s, and Olympia Provisions. After grilling each over charcoal, five staffers tasted each sausage plain before tucking it into a Franz hot dog bun with mustard. Our criteria: snappiness, flavor, and juiciness.

Which dog reigned supreme?

Best Dogs

Best all-around: Hebrew National

We included this widely-available, non-Oregonian hot dog just for comparison’s sake, but it ended up being the favorite dog of four of five testers. It has everything you’re looking for in a hot dog: juiciness, a straightforward salty, meaty flavor, and a hint of snap from the casing. “It tastes like being eight years old,” sighed one contented tester. Our one criticism is that these dogs are thin, so the meat-to-bun ratio is low.

Best locally-made beef-forward dog: Otto’s 

We expected nothing but greatness from Portland’s hot dog palace, and Otto’s delivered. The old-fashioned wieners at Otto’s, just a little thicker and much longer than the Hebrew National dogs, have a flavor reminiscent of a dried meat stick, but with good snap and generous amounts of juice. They’re dark reddish in color and made with a beef-pork blend, though beef flavor dominates here. Otto’s website describes it as having “wonderful snap and delicious creamy meat,” and while we didn’t necessarily pick up on the creamy notes, we still enjoyed the dogs. On its own, it can be a bit short on salt and flavor, but once the bun and toppings were added, this dog really sang. “It’s really good when you put stuff on it,” said a tester.

Best Oregonian pork dog: Hill’s

This self-described old-fashioned frankfurter, made in Pendleton, Oregon, really surprised our testers. We’d been burned by the other, thicker hot dogs in our taste test already, and the thick, pale appearance didn’t do much to attract us. Plus, this dog was 100% pork, as opposed to others that were all beef or a beef-pork blend. Yet it had that classic well-spiced, hot dog flavor profile, and was juicy with a mildly coarse texture. As one tester commented, “Usually a hot dog has to have beef for it to taste like a real hot dog, but this one is really good.”

Other Decent Dogs

Edelweiss

These dogs were long and of medium girth, and a little paler than others we’d tried. We unanimously agreed that the snap was good, but the smooth texture of the sausage and the lighter flavor was off-putting to some. “It has a weird eggy flavor that I don’t enjoy,” said one tester. Another didn’t like the way his “teeth slid through it.” A third declared, “It doesn’t really have that hot dog flavor, but the snap is great.”

DIVISIVE DoGS

Zenner’s

The only Zenner’s hot dog we could find after hitting up four grocery stores was the Coney dog, which was pale and thick and looked nothing like the Zenner’s dogs we’d eaten and loved before at Kim Jong Grillin’ and at Pickles games. The snap of this pork-beef dog was good, but after that, it was all bad news: bland and overly smooth, “like baloney in a hot dog.” As one tester put it, “It doesn’t taste like beef or pork to me. It’s just a kind of generic meatiness.” Moral of the story: we've enjoyed other Zenner’s sausages, just not the Coney dogs.

Olympia Provisions

These all-pork, foot-long frankfurters didn't taste like hot dogs, but were still tasty. They are thin with a distinctly brown-orange color, and all of our testers agreed that they're quite oily, though in a flavorful way rather than a gross way. The texture was also unusually coarse for a hot dog, and the herby seasonings leaned a little strong. “It’s more brat-like than hot dog,” said one tester. Another added, “I think if I gave it to a kid, they’d be like, ‘What’s this?! This isn’t a hot dog.'"