Cheese-Burger.net » Burger Stories

Woman Hits BK Drive-Thru… Literally

Todd — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:07:39 +0000

Oh, the burger blotter just keeps growing and growing. There was the Kansas City woman who trashed a Mickey D’s when her order got screwed up. There were the dudes who landed their small-engine planes on a frozen lake in the middle of Minneapolis to grab lunch at a local burger bar. There was the 300-pound cheebie sculpture dropped on a California woman’s lawn in the middle of the night. And there was the Oregon dipshit who called 911 after getting incorrect change during a burger run.

The latest installment of BurgerWorld’s Most Wanted comes from Michigan. It started in the early morning hours Thursday, when a local woman tried to satisfy her late-night cheeseburger craving.

She pulled up to the Burger King on Leonard Street in Grand Rapids (coincidentally, the home of the famous Fifth Third Burger) around 3am. Upon attempting to enter the establishment, she found the doors locked. A manager inside the restaurant told her that although the restaurant itself is open 24/7, the lobby closes at 11pm, and that she would have to go around to the drive-thru to place an order.

When she showed up at the drive-thru window on foot, the staff once again intervened, telling her, “No, ma’am, you have to get in your car and drive through.”

So that’s exactly what she did:

You can see in that picture from Dave Odette at the Grand Rapids Press that the woman plowed her car right into the side of the building. When police arrived, they found her still trying to place a food order at the counter inside. She was arrested and taken to a nearby hospital with minor injuries.

Ready for the real Whopper? Police say they think that alcohol “may” have played a role in the incident. (Stellar detective work indeed by Grand Rapids’ finest.)

Damages were estimated at somewhere between $10,000 and $50,000. Dan Fitzgerald, chairman of Quality Dining, Inc., who owns the BK location, told reporters, “This isn’t a fender-bender you can drive away from. It’s real damage.“ But they do consider the crash an accident. “Typically, in a case like this, it’s impossible to prove she did it with malice,” Fitzgerald said. “And we’re pretty sure she didn’t.”

If only she’d waited for Burger King’s beer ‘n’ burgs Whopper Bar concept to make it to Grand Rapids.

Oscar Night Cheeseburgers

Todd — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:07:47 +0000

Sandra Bullock, Hollywood superstar, with almost 40 film credits on her resume, was just hours away from the biggest moment of her career. She was up for an Academy Award for her lead role in “The Blind Side,” part of a list of nominees that included perhaps the greatest actor in history. She was the center of attention as she walked the red carpet, flashbulbs popping, fans screaming her name, every TV camera within sight trained on her slightest move. And all she could think about was cheeseburgers.

“What are you going to eat after this?” a reporter asked as she headed into the Kodak Theatre. “You know, I’m thinkin’ like a nice, juicy burger,” she replied. “Deep, deeply-fried French fries. Like, double-fried, maybe. And, like, maybe a milkshake and some pie.” (How can you not love her???)

But lest you think it was just a snappy off-the-top-of-her-head comeback to a goofball question, it seems that Sandy did indeed have cheebies on the brain throughout the evening’s festivities. Shortly after picking up her first Oscar, she told E!, “Now we can wash the face, eat the cheeseburger, get back to life as we know it, walk the dog, do the things that everybody else does.” You know, like get your Oscar personally engraved tableside at the Governors Ball:

Another quote from Miss Congeniality at the after-party: “I just want to eat! I just want to sit down and take my shoes off, take my dress off, and eat a burger. And not worry that my dress is going to bust open.” (And yes, she was quite specific that the dress would come off first, AND THEN a burger would be eaten. I’ll let you do with that mental image what you will.)

And to Oprah after it was all over: “I am going to go have lunch with the husband. I am going to have the burger I have been wanting for three months. A juicy burger with fries and soft-serve ice cream.”

But Sandra wouldn’t have had to wait, because burgs were on the menu at the swanky Governors Ball. For the 16th year in a row, Wolfgang Puck catered the star-studded event on the top level of the Hollywood & Highland Center, the complex where the Kodak Theatre is located. While Tinseltown’s elite were thanking the little people, Wolfgang was whipping up a menu to feed over 1500 guests immediately after the ceremony.

Along with a kitchen staff of 250 and a 900-member catering crew, the 60-year-old Austrian chef assembled a feast that included spring rolls and potstickers, several kinds of sushi, his famous chicken pot pie, miniature chocolate Oscar statuettes dusted in real 24-karat gold, and the item that Tom Hanks (for one) raved about afterward, Mini Kobe Cheeseburgers with Remoulade:

Want a taste of Oscar night for yourself? Forget the years of acting classes, slaving at Starbucks while you pour your heart into auditions for bleach commercials, and dealing with sleazy agents and the infamous casting couch. Here’s Wolfgang’s burger recipe. (The chocolate Oscars dusted in gold? Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.)

Wolfgang Puck’s Oscar Night Mini Kobe Burgers with Remoulade:

Makes 12 slyders

3/4 pound prime ground beef, such as Kobe

pinch of kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

12 small slices cheddar cheese

12 mini sesame brioche buns

arugula leaves

6 cherry tomatoes, sliced

3 cornichons, sliced (these are artsy-fartsy baby gherkin pickles)

For the remoulade:

3/4 c Thousand Island dressing

2 tbsp bottled BBQ sauce

diced red onion to taste

To make the burgers:

Prepare remoulade by mixing dressing, BBQ sauce, and red onion in bowl. Set aside.

Preheat grill or grill pan. Combine beef, salt, and pepper with your hands. Pinch off small amount and roll in palm to make 12 meatballs. Flatten the top slightly, place burgers on a plate. Drizzle burgers with oil, season both sides with more salt and pepper. Place burgers on hot grill, cook for 3 minutes, then flip.

Place cheese slices on burgers, allowing them to melt. Place buns on grill to toast slightly on both sides, about 2 minutes total.

Assemble burgers by spooning remoulade onto bottom bun. Place burger (cheese-side up) on top, followed by arugula leaf, slice of tomato, slice of cornichon, and top bun.

Recipe courtesy of Wolfgang Puck Catering.

The Vortex: Spanish Fly Burger

Todd — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:03:21 +0000

Last Thursday, while the overexposed celebrichefs and starry-eyed foodie gawkers were noshing their way through Rachael Ray’s VIP event in Miami, I decided to have my own personal burger bash at my favorite spot, the Vortex Bar & Grill.

While their location in Midtown Atlanta isn’t as in-your-face crazy as the Little Five Points store with its 20-foot-tall skull facade, this is the neighborhood where the Vortex- and the burger that’s consistently ranked the best in Atlanta- was born. (The first restaurant opened on West Peachtree Street in 1992, and then moved to the much larger space 5 blocks away in ‘97.)

Readers of my previous gushing love letters objectively-written articles about the Vortex know that they pride themselves on a certain funky, urban attitude. If you’re offended by framed-and-autographed pictures of nude centerfold models on the wall or would be put off by your waiter’s pierced eyebrows and tattooed neck, you may be more comfortable getting your cheeseburger on at a run-of-the-mill sports bar.

But the real draw of the Vortex is, of course, the big fat burgers with outrageous toppings. And God love ‘em, they don’t rest on their laurels, ‘cos a recently-revamped menu offers some new burgs, including a monster that lords over even the Double Coronary seen here:

But that bad boy kept me full for a solid 24 hours the last time I had one, so going twice as big (that’s what the new Super-Stack Heart Attack is) just didn’t seem worth the trouble (or the 26 bucks). No, this time, I was after something a little smaller and lot spicier. Feast your eyes on the Spanish Fly:

That’s the signature Vortex patty- half a pound of perfectly-seasoned sirloin- crowned with two slices of pepperjack cheese and a healthy serving of their “secret” chorizo mix. It was ground very fine, with a consistency like the chili you’d ladle onto a chili dog. Flecks of various spices were plainly obvious and made my dinner almost too pretty to cover with a bun. But I did anyway.

The first thing you should know about the Spanish Fly is that it’s a messy burger. That chorizo mix tends to ooze out and drip down the sides and makes the top bun slide around a lot. It takes a lot to hold this baby together, and after a while, I just gave up, content to devour the whole thing by any means necessary… and lick my fingers clean afterward. Another sensational and winning cheeseburger from the Vortex… not that they serve any other kind.

Don’t like the hot stuff? That’s cool, too, because the Spanish Fly is actually not particularly spicy. The pepperjack and chorizo came together for a nice warming bit of heat, but it wasn’t a blast of fire. (They have plenty of other burgs that really bring the heat: the Ragin’ Cajun, the Black ‘n’ Spicy, and two newbies called the Tasmanian Devil and the Hell Burger.)

But I discovered an odd side effect to this cheebie. Just like the famed aphrodisiac it’s named after, this Spanish Fly had me ready to go again in record time. I sat there with an empty plate and my check from the waiter, and realized that I was still hungry. A steady run of always ordering the Coronary Bypass or Double Coronary had me so jacked up about this Vortex visit that I realized I had practically starved myself all day in anticipation. And while the Spanish Fly is an excellent burger, it isn’t abnormally large or insanely filling.

So I got an Elvis Burger for dessert.

The Cheeseburger Turns 75!!! (Maybe…)

Todd — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:31:44 +0000

Friday, March 5 should be honored as a momentous day for all of us in BurgerWorld. It was on that date in 1935 that the glorious cheeseburger was born. That is, if you believe one version of the story.

If you head to 2776 North Speer Boulevard in Denver today, you’ll find Key Bank. In the mid-1930s, however, you would have been at the Humpty Dumpty Barrel Drive-In:

(Cool shot from the Rocky Mountain News, by the way.) Louis Ballast owned the place, and when things were slow, he would experiment in the kitchen, always on the lookout for the next big thing. At one point in early 1935, he turned his attention to the humble hamburger, trying to find some new ways to jazz it up. His tinkerings included peanut butter (hello, Elvis Burger!) and even a melted Hershey’s chocolate bar. Then he tried a single slice of American cheese, and the gods smiled upon him. Customers immediately gobbled up the new offering. (One wonders if people then gawked and rolled their eyes about this “extreme” burger the way we marvel at current cheebie trends like this or this.)

Ballast sensed that he had a winner on his hands, so on March 5, 1935, he showed up at the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. There, he filed an Application and Affidavit for Registration of a Food Trademark. Louis Ballast, a high school dropout, had just officially trademarked the word “Cheeseburger.”

While the paperwork is still in the family’s possession, Ballast’s son says that his father never tried to enforce the trademark or exclusivity rights to the name as cheeseburgers (with a small “c”) became all the rage across the country. “He didn’t know what the procedure was and he couldn’t follow up to keep other people from using the word,” said David Ballast, who himself worked at the Barrel as a teen.

The Humpty Dumpty Barrel Drive-In stayed in business until 1974, a “Home of the Original Cheeseburger” sign hanging proudly on display right up until the end. The place reportedly became a topless club and then burned to the ground in a 1976 fire. Now it’s a bank, the only clue as to the site’s unique place in American culinary history being a modest stone marker in the parking lot:

Other now-defunct joints in Pasadena, L.A., and Louisville, Kentucky, all have fascinating, nearly-impossible-to-verify tales that position them as the true Ground Zero of Cheeseburger History. These legends have the fateful moment occurring anywhere from 1928 to 1934, well before Ballast’s brainstorm. Maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore. The cheeseburger belongs to all of us now.

So eat a cheeseburger this Friday in celebration. Whether it was really the first cheeseburger or just the first cheeseburger with official paperwork, do you really need an excuse to go grab one at your favorite burger bar?

Iron Chef Michael Symon Wins 2010 Burger Bash

Todd — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:29:15 +0000

Twenty-seven top chefs from around the globe descended on Miami last week to take part in the 2010 Burger Bash, part of the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival. And while beermaker Amstel Light is the event’s title sponsor, it’s generally seen as media darling Rachael Ray’s party. Here she is cramming one in at the 2009 Bash, in a pic from Manny Hernandez:

Sadly, yours truly apparently does not rank high enough within the burger blogosphere to score an invite to this fancypants foodie fete. And at $200 a head just to get in the door to the sold-out event, going on my own dime simply wasn’t a practical option. (So much for the simple cheeseburger being a food of the people, by the people, and for the people. I guess what they really meant was “the rich people.”)

Among the participants cooking up burgs this year were such notables as Bobby Flay (a spice-crusted burger with slaw, Monterey Jack, BBQ sauce, and pickles), Rocco DiSpirito (a pork and chow-chow slider studded with walnuts, wrapped in bacon, and topped with pickled beets), Masaharu Morimoto (a beef burger with glazed pork belly on top), and defending Burger Bash champ Spike Mendelsohn (a “farmhouse” bacon cheeseburger), shown here with the 2009 trophy:

But it wasn’t just a celebrichef convention. An “Everyday with Rachael Ray” magazine contest winner was there, right alongside the big boys, serving up her pomegranate-feta burgers made with lamb meat. And Amstel Light sent Lori Welander, a volunteer cooking class teacher from Virginia to whip up her creation featuring the sponsoring brew in a burger dressed with cheese spread and carmelized onion jam. Here she is with Amstel Light chef Jake Linzinmeir in a photo from EarthTimes:

The burgermeisters were gunning for one of two big prizes on the night. The judges named Michael Schwartz the winner of the Golden Grill Award. Schwartz owns local Miami hotpsot Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink and offered up what he called “the perfect bacon cheeseburger.” By all accounts, it was a simple yet super-tasty burger: house-smoked bacon, white Cheddar, heirloom tomato, and local lettuce on a brioche bun. Jacquelynn D. Powers took this shot of him posing with the judges’ choice:

But the evening’s top award is the People’s Choice. In what hostess Ray told the crowd was a near-tie, Bobby Flay was edged out by fellow Iron Chef Michael Symon. His burg was called the Fat Doug: a beef patty topped with the chef’s own pastrami, Swiss, and coleslaw. The burger-Reuben-lovechild has long been a hit at Symon’s Cleveland restaurant, B Spot Burgers. Cleveland flood blogger Nancy Heller and her Fun Playing With Food site portray it thusly:

“I had no idea of the votes. I was in the back all night cooking the burgers,“ Symon said of his first Burger Bash. “You never expect to win something like this with a lineup of so many great chefs, but I am thrilled.“ Here he is basking in victory with his trophy in a photo from Seth Browarnik:

Word is that while Symon’s burger was fantastic, his side may have actually been the clincher in his dramatic win. While some chefs dished out fries or tater tots with their burgs, Symon poured sample cups of a concoction he called the Baconater*: a milkshake made with vanilla bean, apple pie… and bacon. (*Not to be confused with Wendy’s incredibly crappy fast-food burger.)

As for me, I’ll just have to imagine how good it all was… and keep my fingers crossed for an invite to next year’s Burger Bash.

Super Scooby: UK’s Biggest Burger

Todd — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:57:58 +0000

It was once famously said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” Well, if the Brits are looking to re-build, they may be starting with this behemoth of a burger, which practically has its own gravitational pull.

It’s obviously no Mallie’s, but this beastly burg actually gets cooked up and sold to real people on a regular basis. Apparently, “super-sizing” is no longer just an American phenomenon. In this photo, the sandwich on the right is a Big Mac:

On the left is the Super Scooby, created and sold by the Jolly Fryer, a tiny takeout joint (there, it’s a “takeaway”) in Bristol, the 6th-largest city in England. Opened in 1986 by the Lomvardos family, the Jolly Fryer proudly proclaims itself to be “Probably the best chip shop in the world.” (“Chips” are what we Americans call French fries.) The Super Scooby, though, was born from the desire to offer customers something beyond fish and chips.

Spiros Lomvardos, who co-owns the Jolly Fryer with his brothers Nick and Andreas, told FOXNews.com that the Super Scooby started out as a goof. “A few months ago, me and my brother and another gentleman, Karl Ford, who’s an employee, were sitting at work on a dead quiet night when we saw an ad from a well-known burger chain… And we said to one another, ‘The burgers always look big in the ads — but they never look like that in real life,’ and then we started discussing making our own big burger.”

The crew whipped up the Super Scooby that night, took a picture, and put it up in the store, thinking that was the end of a funny story. Until people began ordering it.

The Super Scooby is: 4 quarter-pound beef burgers, 8 slices of cheese, 8 strips (“rashers” to the Brits) of bacon, 12 (yes, twelve) onion rings, 4 additional onion slices, 2 lettuce leaves (how cute), 6 tomato slices, BBQ sauce, relish, and mayo… all between 2 burger buns (referred to as “baps” across the pond). It weighs 1.5 kg (that’s 3.3 pounds), costs 10 British pounds (about $15 USD) and stands over 6 inches tall.

Oh, yeah, and it contains 2,645 calories (although 86ing the lettuce and tomato would knock 29 calories off that total). That’s 145 more calories than an adult man should consume in an entire day. But if you polish one off, the Jolly Fryer staff will throw in a free diet Coke!

Among those who’ve lined up to try is this guy:

That’s local chef Luigi Armato. He works at a nearby Italian takeaway, and he’s ordered up a Super Scooby once a week since its debut. “You have to be a real man to eat one,” Armato says. “They’re delicious and I don’t care about the calories. I play rugby so I burn it off on the field.” (I’m wondering just how much rugby you’d actually have to play to negate the one-meal equivalent of 4.8 Big Macs, but whatever. Best of British to you, Luigi.)

I just found out that I’ll be in London for a week this summer. I’m not sure it’s worth a 5-hour round trip to the outskirts of Bristol to see the Super Scooby in person, though. I love a great cheeseburger more than the next guy, but the extreme-challenge burgers just don’t do it for me. I’m certainly hoping to stumble across a bloody brilliant burger or two during my British Invasion, but I think I’ll leave the Super Scooby to the arse-over-tit drunkards and the barmy rugby players.

BK Cuts the Cheese in $1 Double Cheeseburger

Todd — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:23:20 +0000

Consider me royally disappointed with the King’s latest declaration. Burger King has announced that their $1 Double Cheeseburger will cost $1.19, beginning April 20.

Franchise owners had complained since the Double Cheeseburger’s introduction in October that they were losing more than a dime on every one that was sold. (Waaah. Ask one of them how much they make on every cup of Coke they sell and they’ll clam up in a hurry.) Some of them even sued the King, maintaining that the company did not have the right to fix a maximum price on a menu item. So it appears that the King has backed down from this fight and will just charge more for the burg.

Dollar menu fans may take solace in the fact that the chain will replace the Double Cheeseburger with something they’ll reportedly call the BK Dollar Double. But beware: the “Double” in the name refers only to the number of flame-broiled patties. This new cheebie will feature just one slice of cheese, half that of the current $1 Double Cheeseburger.

Caution: corporate spin just ahead…

“We are excited to offer two great-tasting sandwiches to our guests at prices they appreciate,” a Burger King spokeswoman said Wednesday. “BK continues to test innovative new products that will appeal to both value-conscious consumers and those seeking premium indulgent products at affordable prices.” Translation: We were afraid customers might storm our stores with torches and pitchforks if we just got rid of a slice of cheese one night, so we’re going to stick it to them by charging more for that sandwich. But we’ll throw an inferior burger out there so we can say we have one on the dollar menu.

It’s a little reminiscent of the cheesy switcheroo that Wendy’s pulled with its Bacon Deluxe. And it’s the exact same strategy that McDonald’s employed with the McDouble, when a double-patty-single-slice burg replaced the double cheeseburger on the clown’s menu. I have always maintained that BK is better than both of those chains: in quality of food, and certainly in offering what fans want. This move strikes out on both counts.

Wait, there’s more. BK also plans to “test” a price increase for its Whopper Jr. (Yeah, “test.” Like they’ll change their mind and drop the price if the test fails.) Some analysts, like Paul Ziobro of Dow Jones Newswires, speculate that this could be the first step in raising the price of the flagship Whopper as well. According to his recent article: “One franchisee said the Whopper’s price has been stalled for close to three years as the chain has held the price steady on the Whopper Jr. at $1. A higher price for the Whopper only makes sense, this franchisee said, with a concurrent increase for the smaller sandwich, since stores don’t want customers buying two or three Whopper Jr. sandwiches instead.”

So start digging under those sofa cushions, cheeseburger fans. Looks like BK is slowly going to jack up their prices across the board. It must be good to be the King.

Olympic Hero Wins Gold, Hits Golden Arches

Todd — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:36:33 +0000

(photo: Getty Images)

“Congratulations, Alexandre Bilodeau… you just won the first-ever Canadian gold medal on native soil! What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to… McDonald’s?!?“

That’s exactly what he did. The 22-year-old freestyle skier from Montreal torched the moguls course this past Sunday night to win the gold. As Bob Costas & Co. had been telling us every 8 seconds since the Opening Ceremonies of these Winter Olympic Games, Canada had never won a gold medal in its homeland. Bilodeau changed that with an unlikely upset over the sport’s defending champ, a Vancouver native who now competes for Australia. This shot of Bilodeau doing his thing comes from the AP:

His gold medal moment catapulted Bilodeau into The Great White North’s national spotlight, instantly making him the most famous Canadian since… since… um… somebody help me out here. Alan Thicke? Michael J. Fox?? Rush??? Almost immediately after winning the moguls competition, The Royal Canadian Mint and Canada Post reportedly announced the release of commemorative gold medal coins and postage stamps. And then Bilodeau did what any newly-crowned national hero does: he went out for a cheeseburger.

It was early Monday morning by the time Bilodeau wrapped up his press conference, interviews, and photo ops and made his way over to the Mickey D’s located inside the main Olympic media center. The staff gave him a “rousing” welcome as the gold medalist entered the almost-empty restaurant. “A few stragglers” from The Canadian Press were on hand to snap this pic of Bilodeau getting his grub:

To quote the liner notes from the 1992 debut album by Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies, “Coincidence? No, calculated image construction.”

Bilodeau, you see, has been sponsored by the fast food giant for 4 years, after joining the McDonald’s Olympic Hopefuls program, and has been featured in a number of Olympic-themed ads for the chain. And the late-night Big Mac Attack wasn’t even Bilodeau’s idea. The burgermeisters at McDonald’s were the ones to approach the skier about visiting the Golden Arches to meet the restaurant workers, according to Louis Payette, national spokesperson for McDonald’s Canada. He told the Toronto Star, “It was kind of spur of the moment, hours after he wins gold… he came down and really was so generous with his time and sharing with our crew, sharing the moment. Those kids were so proud.”

The tray of food seen in The Canadian Press photo was just a prop, it seems, handed back to the restaurant staff after the publicity shots were taken. (Nice job of leaning the French fries against the burger box just so. Somebody really should’ve turned that bottle of Coke around, though, to show the logo.) But before Bilodeau left, the crew did hand him his own Big Mac to go.

Loyal readers know how I feel about this iconic sandwich. I understand that Bilodeau was doing a good turn by granting his major corporate sponsor a drop-in, and offering him a free Big Mac was the very least that the staff could do. But the dude just won a friggin’ gold medal, the first ever won by a Canadian on Canadian soil!! I hope he used some of that new-found cachet to get himself a decent burger.

Ranch Burgers: A Sweet Taste of Summer

Todd — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:55:57 +0000

In the mood for a new cheeseburger? Start poking around online and leafing through cookbooks, and it won’t take you long to find all kinds of “secret ingredients” that promise to make your next homemade burger a culinary masterpiece. Hell, this site has a bunch of them. Walnuts, cola, cherries, curry powder, pepperoni: you name it, someone’s probably thrown it in a burger. If all you’ve ever done here is play a few levels of “Zombie Burger” and gawk at pics of the World’s Biggest Cheeseburger, take a minute sometime and click on “Burger Recipes” over there to your right. Lots of tasty ideas for burger lovers of all flavors.

Me, I love mixing it up on a pretty regular basis. Sure, I could just go back over and over to a proven winner like the cheese-stuffed Jucy Lucys I did back in May. Or the simply sensational burgs made with bacon fat from September. But nothing fires me up like lighting some coals and setting off into uncharted culinary waters.

Heading into this past weekend, a rogue winter storm bore down on my normally-fair-weathered Southern town, prompting over-eager TV meteorologists to get their Dopplers in a bunch and incite a citywide panic over the impending “Snowmageddon.” Friday night, we got all of 2 inches. By 10am Saturday, the temps had hit 40 and my kids’ miniature snowman was already wasting away. But the sudden dramatic shift in climate got me thinking about summer. That got me thinking about grilling out. And that, of course, got me thinking about a new burger recipe.

I decided on ranch burgers, a classic-backyard-cookout kind of flavor that I hoped would let me taste some summertime at dinner, even if I had to brush snow off my grill before lighting the charcoal. The thinking is that a packet of ranch dressing mix blended in with the beef patties adds a tangy little zing and results in a supremely juicy burger.

The recipe I used also added minced garlic and bleu cheese crumbles to the mix. Formed up and waiting for the grill, they looked awesome: hefty third-pound patties studded with little bits of ranchy, garlicky, cheesy flavor:

Flipping these babies was a delicate matter. As with any burger with cheese in the mix (the best way to do a cheeseburger, as my grated cheese experiment back in May proved to me), I had some leakage, leaving little melted gobs of cheesy goodness stuck on the cooking grates. I also had some minor breakage in a few patties. And while they ended up holding together, I wished I had popped them in the fridge (or even the freezer) for 15 or 20 minutes while the coals ashed over.

After a 5-minute rest off the grill, my burgs were now sitting on a bed of baby spinach atop homestyle buns. I could almost smell the chlorine of the pool and hear the ice cream man off in the distance. “Snowpocalypse,” my ass. Tonight, it was summer again, with ranch burgers hot off the grill.

Cheeseburger on a Chip?

Todd — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:14:06 +0000

Prepping for my annual Super Bowl Buffet, I was faced with a dilemma. Given my “job” as official cheeseburger scribe of this website (a job which still elicits a response that usually goes something like, “You do WHAT? And they PAY you for that?!?”), I felt like cheebies should somehow be represented at this year’s table. But since we do the whole graze-and-snack thing at my house, full-size burgs just weren’t an option. If your plate is holding a half-pound Jucy Lucy or Bacon Fat Burger off my backyard grill, that doesn’t leave much real estate on the ol’ Chinet for cocktail franks or Southwestern chicken spring rolls or crock pot meatballs.

I considered slyders. But truthfully, I wasn’t excited about spending the afternoon manning hot coals (and missing pre-game festivities/commercials) for silver-dollar-sized sammies. Personally, I’m not a mini-burger fan, anyway. Unless you’re actually at White Castle or Krystal, they’re a too-cutesy cop-out to eating a real burger.

But just as I thought I might have to give in and do some burger shots anyway, I saw this displayed en masse on an endcap of my grocery store:

Regulars in the snack chip aisle are familiar with the “Late Night” line that Doritos introduced in 2009. The triangular chips, clad in glossy black-and-neon bags, were offered in two flavors- Last Call Jalapeno Popper and Tacos at Midnight:

I had dutifully tried both before. I could take or leave Jalapeno Popper. As much as I enjoy a piping hot basket of them down at the local sports bar, the taste just didn’t translate to a chip for me. On the other hand, Tacos at Midnight might as well be sprinkled with crack cocaine, because if I have even one, the rest of the bag is on very borrowed time. Addictive, to say the least. Intrigued by this new cheeseburger flavor, I added a bag to my own Super Bowl roster.

There was no mistaking the bouquet upon opening the bag: ketchstard. The aroma of ketchup and mustard certainly gave an air of authenticity to the All Nighter Cheeseburgers, even if I’m not a lover of either condiment. A quick scan of the ingredients showed a few surprises: “Natural Beef Flavor… Mustard Seed Powder… Cheddar Cheese… Swiss Cheese.” Nice. Two kinds of cheese. Some burger joints can’t pull off two-cheese burgs, but these apparently had it all… in a bag of chips.

The predominant flavor of the Doritos All Nighter Cheeseburgers, I am sad to report, is ketchup. It’s a pretty powerful blast right up front, but I also detected some subtle beef and cheese notes, too.

I felt there was something familiar about these chips. Then I realized that I had tasted them once before:

A 2007 campaign put these generically-labeled bags on store shelves. Inside was a “mystery flavor,” and they encouraged snackers to sample the chips, identify the flavor, and even give it a name. I tried them then and thought they tasted like extra-ketchuppy burgers. Sure enough, the “X-13D” chips touted on the bag as an “All-American Classic” were later identified as cheeseburger-flavored. And then they went away… only to be re-introduced with a new name last month as part of the Late Night lineup.

Will the success of the other 2 flavors give this second-chance chip a new lease on life? I’m not so sure. I don’t find All Nighter Cheeseburgers nearly as addictive as Tacos at Midnight, but maybe a little better than Last Call Jalapeno Poppers. They’re certainly no stand-in for a real cheeseburger, but perhaps an interesting change-of-pace to throw into the mix at your next party.