Ah, the noble hamburger. Where does it’s greatness come from? From the pride of reusing meat from the butcher shop floor? From the bravery of a food that cannot be less than 15% fat? No, I think the greatness that is hamburger comes from it’s overwhelming simplicity. Nothing fancy, nothing overwhelming. Just some meat on a bun, maybe a few vegetables across the top for the sake of irony.
Beautiful.
But for all it’s simple glory the hamburger is not without depth. Which is why I’m doing this series on hamburgers. We’ll look at some tips, talk about why you want to make your own(Hint: In America it’s fucking illegal to sell you a medium rare burger) and I just may give you a peek at my world famous veggie burger recipe.
photo credit: justgrimes
But first how about a little history of this ground wonder. There are many legends around the origin of the hamburger. Some say that Odin once smacked Thor so hard that he bled hamburgers for days. Odin quite liked them, and developed the habit of beating Thor mercilessly whenever he was hungry. Others say the hamburger was a gift to the third Japanese emperor from a royal house trying to curry his favor. He immediately jailed the lot of them and had their holdings burned to the ground on the charge of witchcraft.
I believe another tale. The Mongols spend years riding roughshod over Asia and lived on horseback. They were known to keep tough cuts of meat under their saddles to pulverized it until it was edible. When the Mongols took their domination party to Russia they brought this meat with them, and the Russians made Steak Tar Tar out of it. Sailors brought it back to the port town of Hamburg Germany where diced meat(now using knives instead of a saddle, horse skin and butt force) was cooked and called a Hamburg Steak.
Naturally the German immigrants brought their food with them to America. But there things get fuzzy again.
The Menches Brothers claim their great grandfather invented the burger as we know it, ground beef patty on a bun. They were running a sausage booth at a fair in Hamburg, New York around 1885 and ran out of sausage(a critical error in sausage booth management). In a panic they fried the ground beef they had with every spice available(including coffee) just to have something to sell and when a customer asked what it was they called it a Hamburger on the fly.
However Louis Lassen claimed that in 1900 a young man ran into his luncheonette and wanted something he could eat on the go and quick. Louis pulled some Hamburg style steak out of the broiler and wrapped it in bread. There is one reason this version may be the true origin of the hamburger. Who would make up such a boring story?
The third contender is “Hamburger Charlie” Nagreen who in 1870 couldn’t seem sell his meatballs at a fair in Seymor, Wisconson(A common problem). So he figured if people could still walk around the fair with the food, they’d be more interested. He mashed one of the meat balls between two buns and Charlie went on to make a fourtune(in terms of 1870 Seymor, Wisconsin). Personally, I tend to believe this story. I mean, he has hamburger right in his name, they don’t just give that do you. You have to earn it.
Now that we know the anthropological origins of the Hamburger(always vital for cooking) we can get down to how you can build a better one. Next time.
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