Burgers

What connects the dots of Burger King’s new summer menu is barbecue sauce. Its new Rib Sandwich is a “juicy boneless rib patty with a sweet and tangy BBQ sauce served with sweet pickles on a warm toasted artisan-style bun.” Barbecue sauce is on the menu’s Carolina Whopper, Memphis Pulled Pork and new BBQ Chicken Salad as well. Source: Mintel Menu Insights And it’s not just Burger King that has embraced barbecue sauce as a burger condiment: it has become a standard topping choice at many chains at independents. I’ll go so far as to say that barbecue sauce has supplanted salsa as the No. 3 burger sauce (after ketchup and mustard). It was in 2006 that a researcher declared that salsa had passed ketchup as top condiment (leading Jay Leno to quip, “You know it’s bad when even our vegetables are starting to lose their jobs to Mexico.”) I think ketchup and mustard still reign with burgers, and I don’t think barbecue sauce wasn’t on the list of condiments for that research. At the request of BurgerBusiness.com, researcher Mintel searched its Menu Insights database to determine the number of dishes that included barbecue sauce as an ingredient (including a burger topping) over the past five years. They looked at quick-service, fast-casual and casual dining restaurants and found a striking 34% increase in barbecue sauce use just since 2009. It should be noted that the numbers come the first quarter of each of the years. Since January and February aren’t the biggest barbecue months, use of barbecue sauce on menus may actually have accelerated even more. Blanc Burgers + Bottles’ Dark Truth BBQ Burger Occasionally, burger joints will use a branded barbecue sauce as Hook Burger in Oxnard, Calif., does with its Hickory Burger (topped with thick-cut bacon, Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce, house-made crispy onions, lettuce, tomato and mayo). But Mintel found that of the 975 dishes using barbecue sauce in Q1 2013, only 62—or 6.4%—were branded sauces. Most were unnamed or perhaps house-made like the barbecue sauce that Blanc Burgers + Bottles in Kansas City, Mo., makes in-house using local brewer Boulevard Brewing Co.’s Dark Truth Stout. That sauce goes on Blanc’s Dark Truth BBQ Burger, which also is topped with smoked Gouda, applewood-smoked bacon, onion ring, mayo and onion, all on a brioche bun. A BurgerBusiness.com compilation of “15 Great BBQ Burger Builds” from burger joints around the country can be seen here. In addition to developing barbecues-sauce topped burgers here, Burger King and McDonald’s have been actively exporting the idea globally. For example, there’s the new BBQ Classic at Burger King in Japan now. There’s also barbecue sauce on the Steakhouse burger that Burger King is selling in the UK, on its X-Tra Long Spring BBQ burger in Germany, on the Grilled Chicken Barbecue it’s currently menuing in The Netherlands and on the BBQ Bandit offered at Burger King in New Zealand. American-style barbecue sauce is key to the 1955 Burger (named for the year Ray Kroc’s first restaurant opened) that McDonald’s has been selling in Europe for several years. New barbecue burgers are arriving as well. One is the the new Louisiana BBQ Burger (a beef patty with bacon, barbecue sauce, slivered onions, shredded lettuce and cheese on a cheese-topped bun) that is part of McDonald’s “Great Tastes of America” promotion going on now in the UK. In Denmark it’s offering a Grilled Beef Barbecue burger and it has a new “Grill & BBQ” menu in Austria. Soon burgers with barbecue sauce could become a true global mainstay.

Saturday’s burger is the Bell Beefer, aka Doritos Bell Beefer. That’s a 5-oz. beef patty with taco seasoning and a Doritos crust topped with shredded Cheddar, lettuce, pico de gallo, ranch dressing and Tapatío hot sauce on a burger bun. “Burger Week” promotions have become marketing staples for a lot of burger joints. Sometimes they’re part of citywide celebrations; often they’re independent, as is the case with the weeklong burger promo upcoming at The Oinkster in Los Angeles. Their  event—the third annual—is so well put together that it merits attention as a case study from which others can learn. Beginning June 3, 2013, The Oinkster will feature a different burger creation from Chef Andre Guerrero and the staff on each of the event’s seven days. Nothing so unusual there except that they’re kicking it off with their own version of Wendy’s Baconator and closing the week with a re-imagining of McDonald’s McRib. They had me at The Oinkonator, which is two 3-oz. square beef patties topped with American cheese, six strips of bacon, ketchup and mayo on a kaiser bun. Their McRib redo—which anchors the menu on Sunday, June 9—is called The McRibster (a name McDonald’s actually used last year in Austria). The Oinkster’s version has baby back ribs topped with BBQ sauce, pickles and onions on a French roll. On Thursday, the guys from Grill ‘em All in Alhambra, Calif., will be at The Oinkster serving their legendary Weedeater burger. A few weeks back, BurgerBusiness.com featured an interview with Ryan Harkins and Matt Chernus, operators of food-truck-turned-restaurant Grill ’em All in Alhambra, Calif. One of the great things about The Oinkster’s event is that they are smart and cool enough to invite Ryan and Matt to take over the Oinkster Burger Week kitchen on Thursday, June 6. Ryan and Matt will be cooking and serving one of the legendary builds from their trucker days, TheWeedeater. That’s a half-pound beef patty with jalape?o bacon, Cheddar, Funyuns, garlic aïoli and seared pulled pork in Mosh Pit BBQ sauce. Click here for the details on the remaining daily burger creations planned for the Week. But there’s more. During last year’s Burger Week, The Oinkster promised to honor as a BurgerLord anyone who could eat each of the seven featured burgers and 180 met the challenge. Those who do the same this year will receive an exclusive BurgerLord t-shirt as well as the world’s admiration. See how the rules and regulations are set here. No promotion is complete these days without a social-media component and The Oinkster has that covered, too. Beginning May 28, the restaurant will conduct a Scavenger Hunt with clues available through Twitter and Instagram. The hunt’s three winners will earn VIP passes that put them at the front of the line for each day’s special burger. If you think your joint’s Burger Week is more fun than all that, well I’d like to hear about it.

From A Hamburger Today [Photographs: RocketNews24] Behold the latest fast food burger tower monstrosity from Japanese blog RocketNews24: Lotteria's new Ramen Burger topped with 10 extra servings of ramen. (Previous towers include cheese tower, onion tower, and bacon tower.) Yup, it has no good reason to exist. But I've got to give props to Mr. Sato—RocketNews24's resident burger guinea pig—for eating the whole thing. You can watch him go at it in the video below (warning: loud music ahead): [Video: rocketnews24] For a more reasonable food stunt, RocketNews24 also transformed Lotteria's ramen burger into a bowl of ramen, which they beefed up with extra water and sliced green onion. About the author: Robyn Lee is the editor of A Hamburger Today and takes many of the photos for Serious Eats. She'll also doodle cute stuff when necessary. Read more from Robyn at her personal food blog, The Girl Who Ate Everything. Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter while you're at it!

From A Hamburger Today [Photograph: Sutter Home] Congratulations to Erin Evenson from Brooklyn for winning the $100,000 grand prize awarded last weekend in Sutter Home's 2012 Build a Better Burger Contest. Her winning recipe for 7 Train Caramelized Green Curry Burgers features beef patties mixed with pancetta fat and basted in green curry glaze, crispy watercress salad, and fried pancetta, all sandwiched between toasted bun halves that get spread with minted basil aioli and dipped in chopped roasted cashews. The recipe's name is inspired by the 7 train—or in Evenson's words, "The Crispy Watercress Express"—that runs through Queens in New York City. I'll assume she's referring to SriPraPhai's crispy watercress salad, which is a damn tasty salad. Other winners are Mark Richardson's Indian Lamb Burger, which won $15,000 for Best Alternative Burger, and Mark Pyne's Grilled Green Tomato Burger and Kim Jones's Better than Breakfast in Bed Burger, which both won People's Choice Awards. You can take a shot at the $100,000 grand prize by entering the 2013 Build a Better Burger Contest at buildabetterburger.com until September 2, 2013. Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter while you're at it! About the author: Robyn Lee is the editor of A Hamburger Today and takes many of the photos for Serious Eats. She'll also doodle cute stuff when necessary. Read more from Robyn at her personal food blog, The Girl Who Ate Everything.

From A Hamburger Today [Photographs: Noah Arenstein] Fritzl's Lunch Box 173 Irving Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11237 (map); 929-210-9531; fritzlslunchbox.com Cooking method: Griddled Short Order: A worthy pub-style burger in a neighborhood lacking in good burger options Want Fries With That? Absolutely Price: Hamburger, $8; cheeseburger, $9; fries, $3 with a sandwich In residential Bushwick, the steamroller of gentrification rolls forward, bringing rising rents and new amenities to a section of the neighborhood where even the whisper of a hip coffee shop or a cozy restaurant sprouting among blocks laden with nail salons, hopping barbershops, and laundromats would have been unbelievable only a few years earlier. Fritzl's Lunch Box opened this spring on one of these blocks, just around the corner from the Dekalb Avenue stop on the L train. Fritzl's is the creation of chef Dan Ross-Leutwyler, whose previous cooking experience includes Roberta's, The Breslin, and Resto, among others. Though its opening is yet another signal that gentrification will soon breach Ridgewood and Queens, its wayward location means that crowds are manageable and prices are still comfortably low. Fritzl's is narrow, seemingly squeezed between its neighbors. The walls are painted a pale yellow and a long wooden bench parallels the arched, white ceiling. A lone bookshelf holds an eclectic collection of cookbooks, but the restaurant is otherwise relatively plain, making it feel more spacious than its dimensions. The effect is pleasant, seemingly closer to a comfortable bungalow in Hilton Head than north Brooklyn. It's especially sunny during the day, when doctors and nurses clothed in scrubs from nearby Wyckoff Heights Hospital crowd in for lunch. The menu is divided into sections ranging from snacks to "pastas and plates," but the focus seems to be on sandwiches, including a fried chicken sandwich ($8) and fried bacalao ($9). But I'm here for one reason, laser-focused on my goal. Ross-Leutwyler makes a fine burger, setting a new standard in an under-served neighborhood. At only $8 ($9 with cheese), it's a bargain. Patties are close to six ounces and made of a combination of chuck and cheek, which Ross-Leutwyler estimates to be about 75/25 meat to fat. Ross-Leutwyler grinds it himself, throwing slightly more chuck in the mix. The cheek hails from Pineland Farms in Maine and is a leaner (but more flavorful) cut, so Ross-Leutwyler combines it with a fattier piece of chuck, which comes from grass-fed and grain-finished California vintage beef. Together, these bi-coastal cuts result in a beefy, tender patty whose rough grind holds a steak-like chew. Too-soft burger innards. Better innards. On my first visit, the beef was cooked correctly, but its texture was a little too soft. A return trip revealed tighter meat cooked to a rosy medium rare with a burnished brown sear. Both times the patty has been perfectly seasoned. (Before you hate in the comments over rare/medium rare, be aware that low lighting and a crappy camera mean that color correction makes the meat appear more magenta than IRL.) According to Ross-Leutwyler, he wanted to emulate the original Resto burger. Some similarities are apparent (they're closely sized and the Resto burger famously incorporated beef cheek), but Ross-Leutwyler has made version 2.0, Americanizing the original. Here, the patty is cooked on a griddle and topped with two slices of sharp, sufficiently melty, extra-sharp cheddar, then slipped between a toasted, sesame-studded "Big Marty" bun whose bottom is spread with a "Special Sauce" (but really a charred miso aioli) and finished with a housemade relish made up of finely chopped pickles and onions. The pickles are a little too sweet, but they can't detract from what is a well-balanced, extremely satisfying burger. The kitchen is also adept with the fryer. A seasonal appetizer of beer battered asparagus

Categories: Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, Hot off the Grill, SausageTags: Carny food, Exhibition Food, Fair FoodFew things I appreciate more than some family out slinging ‘hash’ at small town festivals, county fairs, and the like.  Today’s occasion was a ginormous flea market in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, held several times over the course of the summer. (dates).  Reminded me of one Mrs. Burgerdogboy and I stopped at in Central Washington a couple [...](Read more...)

Categories: Hot Dogs, Hot off the Grill, SausageTags: Frankfurters, Hot Dogs, Oscar MeyerWhoa, that’s a long name.  Saw these the other day for the first time, when I was in the hunt for my usual brands, premium casing dogs like Usingers or Vienna Beef. These were $3.99, for a 14 oz, 8 frank package;  they are bun length, and a bit redder in color than most grocery [...](Read more...)

Categories: Hot off the Grill, Miscellany, Pizza, SausageTags: @_SammysPizza, Duluth Pizza, Minnesota PizzaNot much more I can say about Sammy’s, the small regional chain in the Upper Midwest, I’ve written about them a couple times.   Here’s the point:  I’ve had pizza all over the world, from Naples, Florida, to Naples, Italy;  from Boise to Beijing.  And Sammy’s is still my favorite, and worth a couple day drive [...](Read more...)

Categories: Hamburgers, Hot off the Grill, MiscellanyTags: Frozen Burgers, Heat & Eat, Heat and EatI’ve  reviewed a lot of these frozen patties, and to date, I’ve liked Ball Park brand the most, even though they are a ‘heat and eat’ product, not a raw patty. Extra Value is an economy brand, manufactured by the Holten Meat Company, outside of St. Louis. I bought a package of a dozen quarter [...](Read more...)

Categories: Ham & Bacon, Hot off the Grill, Miscellany, OtherTags: Fresh Market, Grocery StoresNice to pop into one of these recently in suburban Chicago.  I had no idea the company had sprouted so many locations in the past few years. I first became acquainted with the chain in New Orleans, Mrs. Burgerdogboy and I were having kind of a funky / downlow Thanksgiving, and we wondered into the [...](Read more...)