When I was a kid I always wondered why they were called hamburgers since there was no ham in them.  My mother explained that they were called hamburgers because they were originally from the German city of Hamburg.  This is in part true.  Like many elements in history, fact and myth have become intertwined. 

There is a belief that the hamburger had its origins with the Mongols who put pieces of beef under their saddles while they rode into battle, and that in this way, the meat, (which was later eaten raw) was tenderized. Just think about that for a minute.  What do you think is going to happen to a piece of meat that spends the day sandwiched between the heat of a running horse and the heat of a man?

It’s going to rot, decompose, putrefy!  Not very appetizing to eat, particularly if eaten raw.  Next consider this; what happens if you get a very small pebble or other foreign  object in your shoe.  It drives you nuts and makes  it difficult for you to walk, until you remove it.  How comfortable do you think a horse is going to be with a lump the size of a steak on his back, with the weight of a man sitting on that lump and bouncing up and down?

Now it is true that the Tatars, one of the nomadic peoples of the steps, did eat raw ground meat.  Actually, it wasn’t ground, it was scrapped.  This was because, being a nomadic people, their meat animals traveled with them, thus getting a lot of exercise and as a result being far tougher than animals that are kept in pens or grazing in confined pastures.   The Tatars scrapped meat became popular with urban Russians

and gradually moved westward across Europe.  Steak Tatar became particularly popular in Germany.  Remember, in the early days, almost all meat was tough, so it is no wonder that this method became popular.  Europeans however soon began cooking the scraped meat. 

Now, just when the scraped, (later to become ground) meat was formed into patties and cooked is a matter for conjecture.  Ground meat was little known in America until the waves of European immigration in the 19th century.  One of the major ports of embarkation was the German port city Hamburg.  It is surmised that Hamburger derived its name because the emigrants arriving from Hamburg brought the concept with them.  What is very cloudy is whether ground meat, (Hamburger) arrived in America already in sandwich form or whether that was a purely American invention.

 In researching the subject I discovered that nearly every State and County Fare claims to have originated the hamburger as does almost every carnival and board walk.

The substantiated factuality of all the above may be in question, however, what is absolutely undisputed fact is that a good ol’ All American Hamburger is not only here to stay, but is a thing of joy to millions and has been for a century.  The hamburger, like ourselves, may have its roots in other places and other cultures, but, once it reached these shores those varied cultural origins blended together and became Pure American.

I love a good burger and to me the ultimate burger is made at home, preferably grilled in the back yard.  Thick patties of ground beef, perfectly grilled to juicy perfection, still slightly pink inside, placed on a lightly toasted Sour Dough French roll with mayonnaise, good brown mustard, thick slices of tomato, sweet  purple onion, dill pickles and lots of fresh, crisp lettuce.  No commercial hamburger relish, no catsup and no yellow goo (yellow mustard).  I’m sure everyone has their utopian burger.  The following are a few of my favorites for this American icon.