May is National Hamburger Month. Celebrate by indulging yourself with a home-grilled burger decked with your choice of toppings.

By Ray Balogh
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — May is National Hamburger Month. Time to bypass those drive-thru offerings of prefabbed, mass-produced ever-shrinking amalgams of meat-plus-whatever.

Time instead to strap on a “Kiss the Cook” apron, fire up the charcoal and craft a good, honest burger, grilled on the backyard deck, for a savory celebration with friends and family.

Join the crowd. Americans love burgers, which top the menu as this country’s favorite food, as the 50 billion hamburgers we consume per year will attest.

That translates to three burgers each week for every man, woman and child in this nation. Pizza comes in a quite distant second.

There is little question the word hamburger derives from Hamburg, Germany, but the origin of the ubiquitous entree is a bit fuzzy.

The original hamburger was made in 18th century Germany by mincing beef and mixing it with garlic, onions, salt and pepper and serving it on a plate as a Hamburg steak. The concept of enclosing the patty in bread or a bun occurred much later.

German immigrants came to America with their beloved Hamburg steaks, which had morphed into the shape of a meatball accompanied by a piece of bread.

The steaks remained primarily a cloistered ethnic delicacy until the now recognized form of the hamburger was first made popular at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The New York Tribune credited the genesis of the burger as “the innovation of a food vendor on the pike.”

Some interesting facts about America’s favorite entree:

• White Castle, founded in 1921, was the first hamburger chain in the U.S. The first White castle “sliders” sold for 5 cents each.

• The Hamburger Hall of Fame is located in Seymour, Wis. The museum will hold its annual Burger Fest this year on Aug. 12-13. For more information, visit homeofthehamburger.org.

• McDonald’s sells 75 hamburgers per second, and has dished up more the 300 billion burgers to date. The Big Mac was introduced in 1968 and sold for 49 cents.

• During World War II, hamburgers were called “liberty sandwiches” to avoid the German reference.

• One Las Vegas restaurant, known for its self-deprecating honesty in declaring its own food unhealthy, serves the Quadruple Bypass Burger, a 2-pound patty. People weighing more than 350 pounds can eat at the restaurant for free.

• The world’s largest burger, tipping the scale at 6,040 pounds, was made in Saco, Mont., in 1999. The beef patty, 24 feet in diameter, barely fit edge-to-edge on the 576-square-foot grill made especially for the achievement. More than 3,500 spectators assembled to watch the burger fry for two hours.

So feel free this month, as often as necessary, to celebrate the nationwide tribute to the all-American burger. Try new ingredients and spend a bit of time discussing your fondest hamburger memories with your family and friends.

To prime the imagination and palate, a bit of self-revelation from this author:

The best burger I have ever eaten was maybe 30 years ago at the Rock Island Brewing Co. in the Quad Cities. Apparently, the kitchen rolled out the ground beef, slathered it with a layer of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt, and folded the sheet over.

The first bite was incredible, and the perk was to look at the inside of the burger to find two juicy layers of premium ground beef bisected by a thin orange ribbon of the seasoning of the gods. Hard to forget.

My favorite home concoction: a cheeseburger (two slices of cheese to one patty) in a bun, buttered and grilled and moderately brushed with mayo, ketchup and mustard, and generously topped with lettuce; slices of pickle (sweet, dill or bread and butter, depending on the moment’s whim and refrigerator inventory), green bell peppers and cucumbers; and finished off with a tuft of alfalfa sprouts and a sprinkle of oregano.

Bon appétit.