- [Narrator] It is a thing of beauty.

A meaty hotdog dipped and fried in a pillowy sweet corn meal mix, a delight to the memory and senses alike.

The corn dog is a treat like no other.

That's why I am proud to call Indiana the home of the corn dog.

(gentle music) This small Indiana town produces 80% of the world's corn dogs.

Welcome to Bristol, Indiana, where the doughy delights outnumber residents 14,000 to one.

Let's look inside the factory responsible to see what makes this small town the corn dog capital of the world.

(gentle music) This is JC Kennedy, the operations Manager at Monogram Comfort Foods.

- [Speaker] This is a USDA facility.

Because we deal with meat, it's a lot more.

- [Narrator] The plant produces an estimated one billion, 66 million corn dogs a year.

That's enough to feed every child in the state of Indiana, 657 corn dogs a year.

The majority of those corn dogs come from the mega mini line, which produces 50 corn dogs a second.

Mini corn dogs start their journey here and a sausage maker, their meat discard is blended with other ingredients to form a meat paste.

This paste is then extruded and tubed into miniature wiener shapes.

We weren't allowed to record that though, so here's the rest of the process.

The bite-sized dogs are then sent to the cooking station, or they're either boiled in water or flavoring.

- You see there is just water, but in other instances it'll be liquid smoke that passes through.

Now the dryer allows the corn dogs or allows the to dry with the liquid smoke in it.

- [Narrator] After cooking, our friends slide on down to pre-coat.

The coated dogs have been sent through a flower turbine for a light flower dusting.

- This is just for wash.

It doesn't have a lot of flavor.

The batter itself doesn't have all the good stuff.

- [Narrator] This is the first dip.

The second and most famous dip is at the batter reel.

- It goes through the batter.

Once it goes through the batter, into the fryer, the frying process is only 22 seconds.

It comes out at 198 degrees.

Fryer temperature is set at 398 degrees.

In those 22 seconds, we don't wanna cook the hot dog because the hot dog's already cooked.

All we want to do is cook the batter.

That's why it is only a 22 second cook.

- [Narrator] The minis then roll on down to packaging.

They're weighed, scanned and you guessed it, packaged, but that's not all they're known for.

No, in town, they're more beloved for the Monogram Corn Dog Festival.

The company first hosted the festival in 2021, and it was such a hit, they've decided to bring it back year after year.

- The first festival, we expected a couple hundred people to show up and support.

We thought honestly, mostly our employees were gonna show up and show support, and I think we received about 5,000 visitors that day.

We were shocked.

Every year has kept getting larger.

We are hoping to double our audience from last year.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] And if you were concerned about how much fun can be had at a Corn Dog festival, there's no need to worry.

Monogram Foods has pulled out all the stops this year.

- We have several things going on in the main stage.

We do have comedians, we've had magic shows in the past as well.

The Bristol Theater, who puts on a show every year, different food vendors.

We have free activities for the kids as well and we have a firework show at the end of the night, which the feedback we've gotten is that it's the best firework show in the area.

(upbeat music)