Hamburger

A hamburger (or in the United Kingdom, a beefburger) is a variant on a sandwich involving a patty of ground meat that is almost always beef. The meat can be grilled, fried, steamed, or broiled, and is generally served with various condiments and toppings inside a bun baked specially for this purpose. Burgers are often served with french fries.

Etymology and history

Precursors and origins

The word "hamburger" originated from Hamburg, Germany. In Hamburg it was common to put a piece of roast pork into a roll, called Rundstück warm, although this is missing the "essence" of the modern hamburger, which is ground meat.

In the Middle Ages, Hamburg was an important center of trade between Arab and European merchants. The theory is that Arab traders introduced Kibbeh, which is ground lamb mixed with spices, often eaten raw. The locals then adapted the dish by replacing the lamb with pork and/or beef, and more significantly, by cooking it to make a fillet of ground meat, i.e., a "Hamburg Steak" or "Hamburger" as it eventually came to be known, and from this they made a new and unique kind of Rundstück warm that came to be strongly associated with the city.

There is still a German tradition of making ground beef sandwiches, thought to descend from the original "Hamburg Rundstück," and which tend to be elongated like an American sub sandwich, and feature very different condiments than the typical modern hamburger. These are often referred to as "German hamburgers" outside of Germany, and are served in many German-food restaurants.

Within Germany, the specific connection between the food and the city of Hamburg became lost as the sandwich spread throughout the country and became a somewhat common dish, while in other countries the historical term "Hamburger" remained in popular usage to describe ground meat rolls and sandwiches. In modern times, "hamburger" refers to the ground beef used to make the sandwich, rather than the sandwich itself.

Development of modern hamburgers

Although Hamburg, Germany is credited for the precursor to the hamburger, the origins of the first "modern" hamburger is often debated among scholars. [1] Of much debate is what exactly constitutes the "modern" hamburger, although there is general consensus that it refers to a hamburger patty's placement in a hamburger bun (not just any piece of bread). The hamburger bun is said to have been invented in 1916 by J. Walter Anderson, a short-order cook, who went on to found White Castle in 1921. Before the bun, hamburgers are said to have been served between two pieces of bread. In fact, a ground beef patty was known as "Hamburger steak" (first mentioned in an American cookbook in 1891); when this was put between bread or in a bun it was called a "Hamburger sandwich".

One claim of inventing the Hamburger sandwich comes from Charlie Nagreen of Seymour, Wisconsin, U.S.. In 1885, he tried selling fried meatballs at the Outagamie County fair, but customers found them hard to eat while walking around the fair, so Nagreen flattened it and made it into a sandwich he called the "hamburger". (Seymour is home to the Hamburger Hall of Fame and the world's largest hamburger, weighing in at 8,266 pounds [3,749 kg].)

Hamburg, New York, U.S. (not to be confused with the previously mentioned German city of Hamburg) also claims credit for the invention of the hamburger. This village celebrates a "Burgerfest" every summer, held to mark the anniversary of the hamburger's creation at the Erie County Fair in 1885 by the Menches brothers.

Another claim is made by a small lunch counter in the town of New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., named Louis' Lunch. It is sometimes credited with having invented this quick businessman's meal for busy office workers in 1900. Louis' Lunch was serving hamburgers from its closet-sized original location in the 1970s until it had to be re-located to 261-263 Crown Street to make room for a high-rise. Their burgers are made the same way they were since the beginning, which means toasted bread instead of a hamburger bun and no condiments; the only permitted garnishes are cheese, tomato, and onion.

Due to widely prevalent anti-German sentiment in the USA during the First World War, an alternative name for hamburgers ("salisbury steaks") became more common for the duration; hamburgers' popularity even after the war was severely depressed until the White Castle chain of restaurants created a business model featuring sales of large numbers of small hamburgers (later sometimes called "sliders", "grease grenades", "gut bombs" and other dysphemisms) in the mid-1920s. The original "Salisbury steak", however, was simply well-cooked plain, bunless hamburger, and was "invented" in 1888 by Dr. James H. Salisbury, an English physician. Today, Salisbury steak usually contains egg, bread crumbs or other extenders, and seasonings and is topped with gravy. A thin, fried, hamburger steak is sometimes referred to as a "minute steak". In many parts of the U.S., the same term is sometimes used for a thin, mechanically tenderized (nearly chopped) piece of round steak.

Hamburgers today

The fast-food hamburger began its ascent to modern popularity when Ray Kroc purchased the McDonald's hamburger chain from the McDonald brothers in California, and opened his first McDonald's franchise in Illinois in the mid-1950s. Richard and Maurice McDonald had started the chain in San Bernardino, California, in 1948.

The "cheese hamburger," now simply the cheeseburger, is said to have first appeared in 1924, and credited to grill chef Lionel Steinberger of The Rite Spot restaurant in Pasadena, California. The term "burger" has now become generic, and may refer to sandwiches that have ground meat, chicken, fish (or even vegetarian) fillings other than a beef patty, but share the characteristic round bun. By the mid 20th century both terms were commonly shortened to "hamburger" or simply "burger." A "hamburger" today can also be made with finely chopped beef as well as ground beef.

Hamburgers are often served as a common picnic and party food cooked outdoors on barbecue grills. Hamburgers are also very good for backyard grilling and for home use. Hamburger patties are raw when first bought and may contain harmful bacteria, therefore caution is needed when handling them. Hamburgers should be fully cooked to kill the bacteria.

Hamburgers are also served in many fast food restaurants. The McDonald's chain sells a burger called the Big Mac that is the world's best selling. Other major fast-food chains – such as Burger King, Whataburger, Carl's Jr., Hardee's, Wendy's, Jack-In-The-Box, White Castle, In-N-Out Burger, Fatburger, and Sonic – also rely heavily on hamburger sales. Fuddruckers is a popular hamburger chain that specializes in the higher-end "restaurant-style" variety of hamburgers. The "slider" style of mini hamburger is still popular regionally in the White Castle and Krystal chains.

Ingredients of the meat of the hamburger

In most countries, a commercial hamburger usually contains no ham or other pork product. It is made primarily of ground beef, although it may also contain spices and other ingredients. This is also known as a beef hamburger or a "beefburger." A beef hamburger that contains no other ingredients besides the beef itself is referred to as an "all beef hamburger" or "all beef patties." Some prepare their patties with egg, bread crumbs, onions, parsley or other ingredients.

Recent years have seen the increasing popularity of new types of "burgers" in which alternatives to ground beef are used as the primary ingredient. For example, a turkey burger uses ground turkey meat, a chicken burger uses either ground chicken meat or chicken fillets, a buffalo burger uses ground meat from a bison, an ostrich burger is made from ground ostrich meat and a veggie burger, garden burger, or tofu burger uses a meat substitute (such as tofu, TVP, seitan (wheat gluten), or an assortment of vegetables, ground up and mashed into patties). Many of these other types of burgers are generally lower in fat or calories than traditional hamburgers.

Serving style

Methods of serving hamburgers vary considerably in different countries.

United States

In USA restaurants, burgers can be divided into two main types, fast food hamburgers and ones served at sit down restaurants. The latter is traditionally offered "with everything" (or "all the way," "the works," or in some regions "dressed") which includes lettuce, tomato, onion, and often a pickle (or pickle relish). Cheese (usually American processed cheese but often cheddar, Swiss, or blue, either melted on the meat patty or crumbled on top), is generally an option. Condiments are usually added to the hamburger, but they may be offered separately ("on the side"), with the two most common condiments being mustard and ketchup. However, mayonnaise and other salad dressings are also popular.

Other popular toppings include bacon, guacamole, sliced mushrooms or mushroom sauce, chili (with or without beans), salsa and other kinds of chile peppers. Heinz 57 sauce is popular among die-hard burger enthusiasts. Less popular ingredients include fried egg, scrambled egg, feta cheese, slices of ham and tartar sauce, however, standard toppings on hamburgers can vary by geographical region, particularly at restaurants that are not national or regional franchises. In portions of the Carolinas, for instance, a hamburger "with everything" may be served with cheese, chili, onions, mustard, and cole slaw (usually a vinegar-heavy slaw with little or no mayonnaise). In Hawaii hamburgers are often topped with teriyaki sauce, derived from the Japanese-American culture, and locally grown pineapple.

A hamburger with two patties is a "double decker" or "double hamburger," of which, the Big Boy claims to be the first commercially, while a hamburger with three patties is a "triple hamburger," with the Wendy's restaurant chain being among the first to offer this as a regular product. Doubles and triples are often combined with cheese and occasionally with bacon as well, yielding a "double bacon cheeseburger" or a "triple bacon cheeseburger," or alternatively, a "bacon double/triple cheeseburger." The Hardee's restaurant chain gained extensive publicity within the United States following its introduction of the Monster Thickburger, with three meat patties, three slices of cheese, six strips of bacon and coming in at nearly 1,500 calories and 108 grams of fat.

A patty melt is a sandwich consisting of a hamburger patty, sautéed onions and cheese between two slices of rye bread. The sandwich is then grilled so that the cheese melts thoroughly. A patty melt can also be made with tuna salad in lieu of hamburger.

To decrease cooking and serving time, fast food hamburgers have thinner patties than their fancier counterparts. They are usually already packaged with a variety of condiments, and to get a fast food hamburger without one of these standard condiments, a special order may be required. Due to the recent low carbohydrate fad (popularized by the Atkins diet), many restaurants are offering their hamburgers without a bun, wrapping them instead with lettuce.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom hamburger patties - usually known either as "beefburgers" or just "burgers" - are either specified as 100% beef (with seasoning) or they often can incorporate extra ingredients such as egg, onion, breadcrumbs and have a sausage-like taste and texture, similar to what is known in the United States today as a Salisbury Steak. Burgers also tend to be described by their combined uncooked weight, with a single uncooked burger a nominal four ounces (a "quarter pounder"); so, instead of a "double hamburger" one might encounter a "half pounder" (i.e. eight ounces; burger weights are always specified in pounds). The dressings used are usually lettuce, tomato and onion with various condiments including ketchup, mayonnaise, brown sauce, chili sauce or mustard or additions such as fried eggs, cheese or bacon. The use of pickles is less common outside of U.S.-dominated franchises such as McDonald's.

Hamburgers are often available from mobile kiosks, particularly at outdoor events such as football matches. These are often known colloquially as "wagons of death," due to the often poor standards of food hygiene. Burgers from this type of outlet are usually served without any form of salad - only fried onions and a choice of sauce (mayo, ketchup, brown sauce, etc.)

Australia

Australian hamburgers almost always include tomato, lettuce, cheese, onion and meat (with BBQ or tomato sauce) as minimum, and can optionally include beetroot, egg, bacon, and pineapple (aka "burger with the lot"). "BLT" means the hamburger is being served with bacon, lettuce, and tomato. The "Aussie" burger is one with egg, bacon and cheese only. Hamburgers in Australia tend to be generally less oily and fatty then their US counterparts, and are more likely to include a full salad if available.

Hamburger meat is almost always ground beef. Outside of fast food restaurants, "home made" burgers are usually bought from fish and chip shops.

China

In China, restaurants such as McDonald's and KFC have been proliferating all across this country. In many parts of China, small hamburger chains have opened up to capitalize on the popularity of hamburgers with children. Restaurants such as Peter Burger, although they attempt to copy McDonald's, use hamburger patties that are not 100% beef, although they claim to be.

In supermarkets and corner stores, customers can buy "hamburgers" (hanbao) off the bread shelf. These unrefrigerated so-called "hamburgers" are nothing more than ultra-sweet buns cut open with a thin slice of pork or ham placed inside without any condiments or vegetables. These hanbao are a half-westernised form of the traditional Cantonese "hamburgers" called "Char Siu Bao", see Chinese cuisine. The Chinese word for hamburger (hanbao) often refers to all sandwiches containing cooked meat, regardless of the meat's origin. This includes chicken burgers, as KFC is very popular in China.

Other countries

In Japan, hamburgers are almost never made at home as sandwiches, but more as something closer to salisbury steak, which is referred to as a hanbāgu (ハンバーグ) or a hamburg. Although this is also the case at many restaurants, a separate word, hanbāgā (ハンバーガー), is used for the sandwich. These are almost exclusively the realm of McDonald's restaurants in Japan, but there are some home grown hamburger chain restaurants (for example, MOS Burger) which serve what many consider to be excellent, if unusual, hamburgers. One example is MOS Burger's MOS Rice Burger

In several East Asian countries such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, some fast food restaurants offer a hamburger variation that uses rice instead of bread for the bun. The "bun" is made from glutinous rice, which has a sticky consistency allowing it to form the bun without falling apart. Lotteria is a big hamburger franchise based in Japan, with restaurants also in China, South Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan. In addition to selling beef hamburgers, they also have hamburgers made from squid, pork, rice, tofu, and shrimp.

Hamburgers are often adapted to condiments that are already a part of the ethnic food of Mexico. Toppings such as jalapeños, bell peppers, cilantro, guacamole and chorizo are quite popular. Standard American dressings such as cheddar cheese and bacon are quite uncommon and have been replaced by mozzarella cheese and a slice of ham, the latter being almost unheard of anywhere else. In some parts of Mexico, the patty is made with baby shrimps, or surimi, and white cheese.

Cultural associations

In the 1930s (and TV re-runs through the 1970s), the best-known association to the hamburger was Wimpy, a moocher in the cartoon Popeye who would "gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today". The character was the inspiration behind the name of the Wimpy hamburger chain.

Another character associated with the hamburger is Jughead of Archie Comics. He would often beg his best friend Archie Andrews to buy him a hamburger and was constantly seen hanging out at Pop Tate's restaurant. At one point in the series, Jughead even entered a hamburger eating contest. After defeating his opponent, his only thoughts were to eat more hamburgers.

Characters associated with hamburgers have also been used in modern advertising. A notable example of this is McDonald's Hamburglar.

In the mid-2000s, some American fast food restaurants such as Hardee's and Burger King began intensely marketing eating "large hamburgers" (of one half pound of beef or more) as a sign of masculinity. Using scantily clad women and images of construction workers eating hamburgers, they introduced the notion that eating large hamburgers is a sign of manliness.

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