Cheeseburger Day

What the day is

Cheeseburger Day is observed on September 18. At least four American restaurants have claimed to have invented it, and none of the claims can be settled.

Origin and background

The competing stories cluster in the 1920s and 1930s and come from Pasadena, Louisville, Denver and elsewhere, each with a founding anecdote and none with documentation strong enough to close the question. This is the normal condition of food origin claims. Putting cheese on a hamburger is an obvious move that many cooks would arrive at independently, the people doing it were not keeping records, and the claims are usually first asserted decades later by businesses with an interest in the answer.

What is not in dispute is the handling of the meat. Ground beef is a loose mass of separate fibers, and working it, squeezing, kneading, compacting it into a tidy disc, dissolves and cross-links the muscle proteins at the surfaces so they bind into a continuous elastic network. That is exactly what you want in a sausage or a meatball, where a springy bound texture is the goal, and exactly what you do not want in a burger, where it produces something dense and bouncy that holds the juice in a rubbery matrix rather than releasing it.

The consequences are practical. Form the patty with as little pressure as will hold it together, keep the meat cold so the fat stays solid and does not smear, and never press it with a spatula while it cooks, which forces out the juice for no benefit at all.

Fat is the other variable, and around twenty percent is the usual recommendation, because leaner grinds have little margin before they go dry.

A dimple pressed in the center before cooking stops the patty doming, since the outer edge contracts as the proteins tighten.

How to take part

• Handle the meat as little as possible when forming the patty.
• Keep it cold until it hits the pan, so the fat does not smear.
• Never press it with the spatula. Nothing good comes out.
• Dimple the center so it cooks flat instead of doming.
• Salt the outside just before cooking, not through the mix.