A Hamburger Love Story

I am a confessed carnivore. Even more, I am addicted to hamburgers. If I don’t get a good hamburger at least once a week, I go into a decline. The key is the word “good.” For that, I now have to make them myself, due to the e. coli phobia running rampant through the population. I used to be able to get good ones away from home.

The History channel recently broadcast one of those food shows featuring hamburgers from all over the country. It got me to thinking about Hamburgers I Have Known.

I once worked with a girl from Hamburg, Germany who ate raw chopped beef on sliced pumpernickel bread. It had finely chopped raw onion and something else in it and wow, was it good! Steak tartare is raw chopped beef with onion, raw egg, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, and black pepper and may have preceded the Hamburg chopped-beef sandwich, which may in turn have been the origin of the ground beef burger we eat on this side of the pond. We changed it by cooking it and putting it on a white-bread bun.

The best standard short-order hamburger I ever ate I had in a dumpy little diner in Quince Orchard, Maryland when my father was teaching me how to drive. He didn’t trust the Drivers’ Ed course at school to teach me correctly and he was working nights when I got my learner’s permit. I would get home from school and he would take me out driving, through all kinds of weather, on all kinds of surfaces, and even finding “impossible” parallel parking spaces. He was tough, but I really, really learned to drive.

On one of our outings, we stopped in this little dump. The hamburger was juicy and medium rare and luscious. I don’t even remember what I had on it, but I suspect chili, onions, and mustard. Those were my druthers in those days.

When I got my first job, as a sales clerk in a paint and wallpaper store for the summer, there was a hamburgers-only short-order restaurant about a block away. That’s where I started experimenting with toppings. They had a lightly smoky barbecue sauce I haven’t had the equal of since; a Swiss-and-mushroom that was to die for; and another reddish mushroom topping I haven’t tasted since. Always, of course, rare to medium rare.

Some white-tablecloth restaurants used to offer a good burger. Hamburger Hamlet was pretty good, though pricey. I’ve had a few other good burgers in that sort of place, but I don’t get out much any more. They won’t cook it rare, either.

Roy Rogers restaurants used to make a good hamburger. They served it medium rare unless you requested well done. You could put on your own toppings from the toppings bar. I sort of segued to tomatoes-and-mayonnaise with lots of pepper. Then the e. coli panic started and they now cook them well done. The bacon cheeseburger is still OK, and even better on sourdough bread, but the few remaining franchise outposts of the chain just aren’t as good overall as they were before McDonald’s bought out the company-owned stores. We won’t even discuss the tough, dry hockey pucks one gets at other fast-food places, and good luck finding a short-order restaurant anywhere any more. How does one make hamburger tough? Its very nature is the antithesis of tough.

That leaves the home hamburger to reign supreme in my life. I prefer ground chuck, which is about 80% lean. Any leaner and they sort of singe in the pan, they don’t brown, and they’re tasteless. I don’t buy packing-house hamburger. It must be ground in the store the day I cook it. That takes care of the e. coli problem. I warned Giant when they quit grinding in the store, and it wasn’t more than a couple of months before there was a recall of their packing-house ground beef. I laaaaughed and laughed. Freezing ruins the texture and diminishes the taste.

I cook my hamburger so it’s crusty on the outside and warmed through to make the juices flow. I always pepper heavily. When I have enough time, I make a sauce with lightly cooked scallions and Dijon mustard with the pan juices. That one I eat on a plate with no bun. When I was still working, I would take a lunch of cold cooked hamburger with a topping of mixed Dijon mustard and mayonnaise. It’s surprisingly good.

Buns really aren’t particularly important, though I prefer a potato or egg bread bun. The best I ever had were served at a science club meeting when I was in high school. The science teacher held the meeting at her house and her cook made homemade rolls for the hamburgers. I don’t remember the hamburgers, just the buns.

When I’m putting it on a bun, I like tomato and mayonnaise, sometimes with a thin shaving of sweet onion. I’ve added sliced avocado at times. If I add cheese, I like Dijon mustard, sweet onion and tomato. I haven’t eaten or bought yellow mustard in many, many years and I reserve spicy brown mustard for hot dogs. I don’t put ketchup on anything, anywhere, any time, any how. Yech. That is, of course, personal taste. I know people who actually like ketchup. Everybody I live with, as a matter of fact, and they’re otherwise bright people with good taste. Go figure.

I’ve never been able to duplicate that diner burger but it doesn’t matter. I make a really, really good hamburger at home and I’ve learned a lot about toppings and preparations from places I’ve been and hamburgers I’ve eaten. Let me have my weekly hamburger and I’m a happy eater.

(c) Katherine DeWitt