A Burger Scholar Breaks Down Classic Regional Burger Styles | The Burger Show

how many hamburgers have you actually eaten you think probably the last 15 years of like hardcore research probably listed like 12,000 burgers oh my god [Music] for some people burgers bring some mind the perfect proportions of an emoji keyboard for the familiarity of the golden arches but fanboys like me the beauty of the burger is in their differences no one understands the nuances of burgers across the country like burger Lord George Motz whose badass book hamburger America became the holy grail for burger fans today I'm heading to his house in Brooklyn for a crash course in three regional burger styles so going through my burger journey I'm starting to figure out like burgers are kind of like barbecue you know like there's Carolina style barbecue there's texas or santa maria saal barbecue and a lot of people don't know that burgers are the same way there's like a bunch of regional differences I mean there must be you know around a hundred different that I know of a hundred different regional varieties and hamburgers in America and each one is a little piece of history that's attached to the original American hamburger what's the history of the original burger in America you can actually go back as far as 13th century Russia the Tartars and the Mongols apparently they would ride and they would take bits of mutton and put it under their saddles as they rode away it would tenderize the meat and they would take it out and eat it somehow the raw mutton made its way across the Baltic Sea into Germany and then became raw chopped beef and it was in Germany for the first thing they actually started to cook the beef and serve it on a plate and call it a Hamburg steak because it was mostly served in Hamburg as people emigrated and left the port of Hamburg they would end up in New York City at the base have been happy but they would find yet again Germans selling Hamburg steak brother turn of the century the popularity of the Hamburg steak had grown so much that it was being served at state fairs things were becoming portable so someone said why don't we take Hamburg steak and put it on bread and that was the beginning of the hamburger yeah in America the rest is all history it's what I've learned is that it's really not about toppings I mean anybody could take top and put them on a burger but in America it seems like in these regional pockets it's about method right it's about how the burgers made I'm gonna make three regional burgers today okay I'm gonna make the deep fried burger from Tennessee the Oklahoma fried onion burger and the steamed cheeseburger from Connecticut awesome let's do it before the days of flat tops or drains and you know catch up in the cooked in skillets and the skillet would eventually fill up with beef tallow they realize that they don't have time to dump it out it's too hot to just keep going and they've realized after they're after a while that people like the flavor of the deep-fried meat there's one place you go to in Tennessee called dyers they actually had the oil the same grease in the pan for over a hundred years Wow infinity Japanese people have that with their yakitori sauces like it's a continuous thing exactly it like that's what love comes from so measured scoop marble surface only because this is what they use it dyers I don't know what as well for 100 years of using marble relatively inexpensive um you can find this for like a couple bucks this is this is a four dollar piece of marble from pogi bone right it's a sample from Home Depot you get smashed press it down look at this gets nice and thin yeah so we try to gently scrape it off of here boom there you go and it gets here yes you know they cooked very fast right so but it's crying it's developing a crust exactly it's pretty much done already it's already done so fast this is what they do a dire as a Tennessee they take the cheese right and I gently stick it back into the grease somehow yeah yeah it's melted yeah we're done that's it he's out of the but bad look at that actually would be some onion right on top of that pickles in here this the devil 375 oil yep we're talking about like a little bit over an eighth of an inch thick cheese on there you do that part yeah yeah sledding on it back in we go this this part is blowing my mind yeah I'm not I'm not the best but that's pretty good there it is did it yes that is just a thing of beauty go for it man this is so good this doesn't have ketchup mustard no mayo you can if you want but a Jew doesn't need it I mean Greece's economy the cheese yeah it's almost like if cheese was like pouring into all the crevices of the beef oh my gosh some reason they keep their traditions alive in Tennessee I feel like we just broke DaVinci's code on like what's gonna be the next level of burger trend in America which is deep-fry everything all right George you took me to Tennessee where we going next we're gonna move over to Oklahoma so what's going on when we've got all this heavy machinery here we got the Oklahoma fried onion burger okay it sits in the center of what I like to call the burger Belt of America there are some of the best burgers in America to be found from Texas South Alwin North to Wisconsin Minnesota okay and so of course that makes Oklahoma the buckle right it makes perfect sense because some of the best primary source hamburgers can be found in Oklahoma unaffected by time trend anything the trick to the oklahoma fried onion burger is thin sliced onion so here we high so let me do this goggles have to go and i can't do with that guy that's the pasta safety first guys try this at home don't try to be a hero because then it ruins the next 10 minutes of cooking you can't can't see anything I'm right I tell people if you're making onion juice just go one step further and then you get almost ready can see so you've made onion ribbons a bit onion you get a scoop of meat right put it in the pan a little bit of salt here's the here's the cool part watch this ready [Music] all of the onion juice will actually render out you need a heavy spatula because this thing has to be smashed this is alright we actually take this and we're gonna push this then like the moment of its life here that's it the onions are marrying with the beef like I had to see the cheese is marrying with the beef right this came about because there was a time when there was people don't have enough money to pay for just having a beef all beef burn right we had it from this side for maybe a minute and a half we always do cheese on flip this is something that I give myself all always is this all rides it's all it's all becoming sort of a hamburger country yeah yeah yeah a bunch of burger magic happen exact there again you're butting into history there it's a very important part of American it's all it's like ugly beautiful it's like the Willem Dafoe burgers amount like any stuff with onions my whole career I've never really liked having onion that tasted that way because it's usually caramelized slow and slow or yeah fried crispy what's wrong yeah Rob this is like a hybrid between both the beauty of this burger is it is the the sum is greater than its parts Oklahoma yeah knows what they're doing this is the Connecticut steamed cheeseburger right it exists only within about a seven mile radius of this geographic center of Connecticut what do we do it it's a bit of an anomaly the 1930s in Middletown Connecticut place called Jack's lunch so there's a reservoir on the bottom which is boiling water okay right and then on the inside you have a shelves but the trays go in here they slide in and they cook the meat and the cheese separately and then the it comes out and goes on the bun that's serious that's serious business yeah there's a place in Connecticut this place been around 1959 called Ted's right so I put two get five this from tents if you talk to them you're nice I'll tell you is the guy down the street who this is a gift she's like I'm Asian so steaming meat you know it's natural right it makes the dumplings it makes sense to me and also we have a very large block of Vermont cheddar it's a very specific size has to fit into this thing so we're gonna cut off blocks let go will it go into the steaming pans of this tray will get beef so we're gonna pack beef in here straight for it is not just straightforward Chuck it's a very hard way to make a burger obviously you're packing into a burger what do we do it's burner mold right it's weird I think we're not actually making a mold of the burger we'll put in the mold itself into the serum just yeah oh that hot steam here the beef goes in it in the cheese goes in we close it up kaiser rolls are hard a little harder needed something sturdy gonna handle it like the hot you'll see what comes out of it so yeah hot molten cheese and the soft the soft in a roll would just go just collapse will fall apart so a little bit sturdier any good kaiser roll leave this structure yeah to get a traditional steamed cheeseburger its Mayo ketchup and mustard together they use green leaf lettuce you're adding a lot all those together because it's esteemed exactly Oh normally this would take 15 minutes or so to come Christy right this spatula is perfectly fit for this bad boy oh so I'm gonna do this it comes out of here look at that it's not there it's a little weird looking okay I'm used to like my wanton opening up and showing me great me yeah we're good here we go this is the other it's the crazy part right here yeah this is this is a magic right here magic right yes so you want to make sure oh yeah baby yeah oh yeah that is a steamed cheeseburger that is the craziest thing ever see that's why we changed the bun cuz you're gonna need that stability man look at that yeah okay try oh my god oh no cheese dough it's like a dumpling me I get some it's really it's delicious it's very beefy that's what I like about actually a you really berry flavor of the beef like there's like the pure beef shine through so no amazing burger people today I think who are making burgers think you have to add a lot of stuff to the burger all right have you know avocados and foie gras fried oysters you don't need that stuff you know stuff you asked of these people when you go to the classic places in America why is it why don't you add more stuff and they said because grandpa never did what that's the way we've been doing it for a hundred years why would we change did you have a favorite oh man you know I think as like a burger aficionado Epirus I like the Oklahoma onion burger that was awesome man yeah I think that that's one of those burgers that you know needs to sort of break out of Oklahoma this is amazing you've definitely taken me to three places I've never knew existed my pleasure thanks for coming House Hospice [Music] you can't tell me but that's very suit don't tell me

Channel: First We Feast

Views: 5,706,228

Rating: 4.8978052 out of 5

Keywords: First we feast, fwf, firstwefeast, food, food porn, cook, cooking, chef, kitchen, recipe, cocktail, bartender, craft beer, complex, complex media, Cook (Profession)sean evans, the burger show, burger scholar, alvin cailan, george motz, deep fried burger, cheeseburger, steamed cheeseburger

Id: cdvZC91YpMs

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/thebendavis]

Steamed hams?

[u/NeoDweezil]

That burger with the onions made that a couple times already. So simple yet so delicious!

[u/ReallyNiceGuy]

The burger expert sounds like he'd be an awesome friend to have.

[u/mythrowxra]

This dude loves burger, I bet he has a whole kitchen filled always ready for 50+ burgers of every type lol. Damn it... my mouths watering