How Did a Guy Like This Get Sick in the First Place?

Acidman asks what people like on their hamburgers.

You may know that he recently got out of the hospital, after being treated for a perforated ulcer and peritonitis. Now his healthy recovery diet includes cheeseburgers with Chinese mustard. This is a man who truly cares about his health.

Lately, I've been eating a lot of grilled cheeseburgers. When you have a gas grill, burgers are ridiculously convenient to cook, and naturally, that appeals to me. You just turn on the grill, get the burger ready while it heats up, throw it on, and take it off. And then there's almost no clean-up. Or, in my case, none.

Here's how I fix them these days. I start with between a third and a half of a pound of ground chuck. "Ground beef" probably tastes better, but God knows what's in it. Everytime you go to McDonald's, you probably eat half of a bovine penis and seven sphincters. I assume ground chuck is a little less disgusting. But I refuse to buy ground sirloin, because it's dry.

Anyway, I throw the meat in a bowl and salt it generously. I'll tell you something I have learned through experience. A burger with salt mixed into it will taste a lot better than a burger with salt ON it. Try it yourself and see. I also add pepper, and then I press a clove of garlic into the meat. Powder isn't the same. Then I mix it up and grill for 3.5 minutes per side. That makes it a little black on the outside, but not completely cooked inside. I don't care about the bacteria. Once you get to a certain age, your body deals with filth pretty well.

I like using Swiss cheese on these things, not just because of the taste, but because it's a fairly tough cheese that doesn't break up and fall into the grill or on the patio when you handle the burger.

I generally use Pepperidge Farm "Farmhouse" sandwich buns with onions or sesame seeds. These buns are bigger than the tiny, stupid regular buns, and they're always available. Homemade buns or something from a bakery would be better.

I prepare the buns by throwing them on the rack above the grill when I start cooking, dark side down. That warms up the outsides of the buns and takes the limpness out of them. Then a minute before the burger comes off, I put them face-down on the grill, and I toast them a little. When the burger is done, the buns are hot, and you can throw the cheese on the burger and put it on the bun and count on it to melt. You don't have to put it on the burger while it's cooking and stink up the yard.

It works really well. Hamburger has lots of flavor, so you don't really need to pimp it out much, although you certainly can.

Some people mix Lipton onion soup mix into their burgers. That's pretty good. I was thinking one of these days I might start adding a few carraway seeds, like on the famous Ollie burgers of the Seventies.

I also like a fried egg on top of a cheeseburger. Wonderful. I ought to try bleu cheese some day, too.

I don't salad my burgers up, but if I did, I'd go all the way, like a Whattaburger or a Whopper with everything.

Oh, hey, have you tried grilling bacon for your cheeseburgers? It's very nice. More flavor than stove bacon, and you don't have to clean a skillet.

I'm not a burger expert, but you'll get good results if you try it my way. If you learn nothing else from me, make sure you learn to mix the salt in before cooking.

Man, a couple of these babies with fries cooked twice in beef fat...oh, that would be sinful. Oh. Oh.

I'm back now.

You should probably also butter the buns after they toast. I'm too lazy.

Geez, that sounds good. Now I'll be thinking about it all day.

Jimmy Buffett was right about Heinz 57 on cheeseburgers, by the way. I also like ketchup and brown mustard, but Heinz is excellent.

Damn it. Why did I go read that? I just know I'm going to go turn the grill on.

In other news, Dan From Madison tried the ribs recipe from my cookbook, and he really liked it. Now that I'm set up for convenient smoking, I don't use my fake-rib recipe any more, but it really is good. Also, Dan is well on his way to becoming a troublemaker and agitator like me.

I may as well accept the fact that I'm going to grill today.