My Burger Manifesto

I had a friend tell me that I should have an entire blog dedicated to this since I apparently have so much to say about it. Maybe it just means I should shut my mouth. Anyways, so I decided to take him up on the challenge, and basically share my love for one of America's great comfort foods: the hamburger. Actually, I'm not sure it's really American, and I really don't know much history behind it, but it doesn't matter, because I love burgers. I'm not going to regale you all on where burgers came from, because you don't need me rehashing everything that you can look up yourselves on Wikipedia, and frankly, I could care less where it came from in a historical context, I just know where they're going, into my stomach. A friend once asked me what my favorite food was, knowing that I liked cooking and was something of a gourmand, or "foodie", he was genuinely surprised when I said frankly, "Burgers." I was dead serious. Quite simply, I can't really imagine myself ever really getting sick of burgers. There's just something about a well-made burger. A few weeks later my friend and I had a get-together where we made some homemade jalepeno-cheddar-stuffed cheeseburgers. After we had a couple, he said, "Now I understand why burgers are your favorite food."

Now that I've gotten all the anecdotal stuff out of the way, let's go through exactly how I intend to go about doing this. Some of you might be wondering at the name "The Burger Snob" and why I decided to go with that. So, since I'm a "foodie" of sorts, or so I've been told (I'm not entirely convinced of it enough myself), and burgers are my favorite food, I decided that this would be a venue to share good burgers with everyone, but since burgers are my favorite food, I'm going to be somewhat critical about the places I go to. My intention with this blog is not necessarily to figure out how to create the tastiest burger, but rather, who does make the tastiest burger around. So with every post I intend to do a mini-Yelp kind of deal where I only deal with burgers. Hopefully I'll have some pictures and stuff to go with my posts and hopefully you don't get tired of my writing style.

I suppose this is the point in time where I divulge the criteria by which I will determine how I will judge a burger, simply put: how I like my burgers or what I think goes into a good burger. If we think about it conceptually, the fundamental construction of a burger is really quite simple, and can be broken down into what I consider 4 distinct parts.

The first and foremost is obviously the beef. Call it what you will: ground beef, chopped steak, whatever, the beef is what makes the burger, because unless there's beef in there, it's not a burger. This isn't really a bash of boca or turkey burgers, but honestly, I don't believe they taste anywhere as good as a legitimate all-beef patty burger. According to Adam Richman the best burgers have an 80-20 lean-to-fat ratio, because you need some of that fat to flavor the burgers as you cook them. I generally agree with the concept, dunno for sure about the number precisely, and in this case, it doesn't really matter, since it's not like you'll be able to tell if it's 80/20 or 70/30 beef or anything just by eating it. However, let me reiterate, the beef makes the burger. When you bite into a burger, what you want to taste is the beefy flavor of the burger patty. However, if that were all you wanted to taste, why make a burger? Obviously, there's a sense of balance that is to be had in dealing with the concept of a burger, otherwise, we'd just be eating ground beef patties the same way we eat a normal sirloin steak.

The second part that I consider to be important in a burger is the "holder" of the beef, or the bun. Generally, if you have a normal bun that's fine and good since the beef makes up for everything, and some places have fancier buns, like onion kaiser rolls and French style rolls and stuff like that in fancier places like Red Robin, but what is important isn't necessarily the flavor of the bun but rather the balance it has. I can't exactly specify what the proportion of bun to meat should be, it should be enough where the noticeability of the bun in the overall flavor of the bun is subtle but not overbearing. It's really hard to describe in words. However, additionally, the bun should serve a functional purpose, that is, to hold the burger. Ideally, in the perfect burger you'd be having both bun and meat in every single bite.

The third aspect of the burger is something I simply call "fixings", which is basically the "other stuff" in the burger. This is inclusive of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, etc... Like the bun, you don't want this to be overbearing the meat as well, and it's pretty flexible what you can put on it. It's really a matter of preference then at that point. I personally prefer some fixings as opposed to none, but I sometimes don't mind a plainer burger, but the meat then has to compensate for more.

The last aspect of a good burger are the condiments. Ketchup, mustard, mayo, steak sauce, BBQ sauce, even Sriracha chili sauce, I've seen it all. Hopefully you don't go around mixing ALL of these together. Like everything else, there needs to be a balance. You want the condiments to flavor the beef and burger, but you don't want the condiments to be the flavor. So, there needs to be a balance.

Thus in my ventures, I hope that I can find a good burger, and share that with you.