Burgers! Drool!
Is there anything more American than a hamburger? Big, thick, juicy. Grease running down your arms, toppings falling out everywhere. Crispy fries on the plate soaking up all the drippings.
Come on, admit it. Even if you’re a health nut now, you loved burgers as a kid. You know you did.
I just found this fabulous burger breakdown over at HuffPo and I was drooling by the end of the first description. In “Hamburger Heaven: A Taxonomy of the Different Species of Hamburger,” Craig Goldwyn has written up the burger as few before. Grab a bib if you decide to read it.
Steak house burgers, diner burgers, and patty melts are only the beginning. Smoked burgers, steamed burgers, butterburgers. The list goes on. Deep fried burgers? Pimento cheese burgers? Gourmet burgers? They’re all in there. Varieties I’ve never heard of and some I’ve no desire to try.
Personally, I’m a a bit of a purist. I don’t like my burgers all fancied up with exotic gourmet ingredients. (Not that fancy isn’t good. It just isn’t really a burger.) I like a big, thick, juicy patty, not overcooked, with a yummy grilled taste I can taste. Don’t smother my beef with all that non-burger stuff. Give me good fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. Stick ’em in a toasty bun with a little mayo. Yeah, yeah, I know; mustard is the standard. Humor me.
I also love a really good chili cheesebuger, but that gets more complicated because it requires both a great burger and great chili. And my all-time favorite may well be the onion burgers I used to get at a certain little place in north Oklahoma City. Almost as much onion as beef, smashed together on a sizzling griddle, served piping hot and greasy in a basket with some great crispy fries. We used to rush miles across town from the office to get out there and back on our lunch hour. Ah, the memories! I tried the onion burgers at another place years later, and they weren’t nearly as good. Or at least not as good as I remembered. But you know how that memory thing works; today’s burger will never be quite as good as the ones you remember back when.
Anyway, if you love burgers, go read the article. Me, I’m going to go Google for a north Denver onion burger.
Back when I ate meat, I considered it a sacrilege to put mustard on a burger. Mustard is for hot dogs. So sayeth the New Yorker.
Good! My thinking is that mayo doesn’t add another flavor; it just adds grease/moisture. Definitely mustard on the dogs, although I seem to recall as a kid I put ketchup on them. Yuck!
With those onions, who needs any other condiments? Except bacon of course.
Never had one with bacon. That sounds so good, I might even deign to try it.