PREAMBLE
T
here is no perfect. The hamburger is possibly America’s most recognizable and representative food. What started as the most democratic, wholesome square meal meant to be consumed quickly for a fair price has mutated into forms unrecognizable to those original burger salesmen, not to mention the ranchers who raised the beef. Since the hamburger’s creation, it has followed the revolutions and undulations of farming and economics in this country. Its path—and current forms—cannot be separated from the divergent systems of farming and animal rearing in the United States. On one extreme, there is the fast-food hamburger. Like the corporate industrial farms of which it is a product, it champions speed, quantity, and a price only achievable through subsidies and methods that compromise taste, animals, land, and the people involved in the systems that produce and consume it. On the other side is the well-intentioned, but often fetishized, higher-end product, which places importance on better values but struggles to make its product financially viable and accessible to the masses.
I have eaten a thousand hamburgers. Hamburgers made of young beef, old beef, dry-aged beef, wet-aged beef, goose, wild boar, venison. Hamburgers made of A5 Kobe, water buffalo, plant-based “meat,” brown bear (also made into burritos), elk, prosciutto. And hamburgers made of the crummiest, grayest, unidentifiably sad meat imaginable.
I have eaten hamburgers in cars, restaurants, backyards, ballparks, and the woods; on trains and boats; at the movies and the entrance to Machu Picchu; in Denver, Atlanta, Asheville, Seattle, Portland, Nashville, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Detroit, London, Paris, Beirut, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Vancouver, Montevideo, Mexico City, Lyon, Tokyo; and everywhere in between.
I have cooked close to a billion hamburgers, mostly in restaurants, many at home, on grills, in microwaves, in alleys, in a couple of museums, on rooftops, in art galleries, in parking lots, and in fields next to said hamburger’s still-grazing brethren.
I have looked a cow in its eyes before putting a bullet between them. I have seen cows birthed and watched them die.
What is presented in the following pages is the result of a lot of burger cooking and burger eating. With this book, I originally set out with very specific intentions, to write about the ONE way to make ONE burger using ONE very specific type of beef only. That was dumb. I am dumb. What I found, as Paolo and I dove deeper, is that there are many ways to make a better burger, in the choices you make both in your purchases and preparations.
Before and during the process of writing of this book, I tried as many types of beef as possible. I also explored as many variations of burger cooking as possible. I have talked burgers and beef with meat salespeople, burger eaters, fancy chefs, line cooks, and beef ranchers of many stripes. We very likely missed some points of view and more than a few closely guarded burger secrets. Maybe your dad cooks burgers over an old, abandoned well full of smoldering tires and lit fireworks. Maybe your grandmother swears by a burger ratio of 80 percent beef, 5 percent French onion soup mix, and 15 percent lean hawk meat. I fully respect your hamburger traditions.
The beef that I find to be best, in my home of Northern California, may not be available to you. Depending on where you live and cook, use the best of what is available, the ingredients you like the most. If you have access to lovingly raised animals that you can see from your driveway, you are very lucky. If you have the ability to dry-age beef and bake bread, you are very lucky. If you can’t go shake hands with the steer you eat and don’t have desire or space to slowly dry-age your meat, don’t worry, because we have useful burger information for every level of interest and devotion.
There is no “perfect,” but there
is bad. Bad should be avoided if possible. (Trust me on this one.)
I have watched hamburgers be eaten by the very young and very old, by cowboys and vegans, by beautiful women and equally beautiful boys, mostly resulting in smiles and elation, occasionally total revulsion.
Which hamburger was the best? Almost all of them.
You have eaten hamburgers, too. At least one. You may have even enjoyed it. What did it taste like?
This book is for you.
Copyright © 2018 by Chris Kronner with Paolo Lucchesi. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
