The Secret History of America's Fast Food Burgers | Burger Bucket List

All I want to do now is drive around the Midwest with you eating burgers. Can we make that happen? Let's do it. We'll go camping. Can I call you dad? Like, let's just... What are we doing, dad? My name is George Motes, and it's my job to make sure that you appreciate the American hamburger as much as I do. Good luck. When I think of fast food burger, sometimes I think, meh, so what? But think about it. Those burgers have to come from somewhere. They have to have historical roots in something. Every fast food burger came from some small town burger. Follow me here for a sec. Close your eyes. Think of a square patty. What do you see? You see a girl with pigtails? Named Wendy? Dope. That's the easy answer. But today we're going to go much deeper. Today I'm going to show you three historical burgers that inspired fast food giants. These are the primary source burgers that begat burger empires. The friendly neighborhood favorites that spawned international icons. But I'm not going to do this alone. I'm going to go on this journey with a guy who loves fast food. Hey. How you doing, man? Joth. Joth, sorry. Jothro Tull is what I go by. Look, it's Josh from Mythical Kitchen. How you doing, man? Thanks for having me. Good to see you. Thank you for being here. No, it's incredible being in the burger museum. I see this, you know, Hamilton Beach original shake mixer over here. It's so funny. We're also just in a lovely home. I walked in, I was like, I should take my shoes off. And I'm like, wait, we're cooking a lot. Hold on. We should figure this out. This is incredible. I'm in hallowed grounds. You need shoes to cook? Is that what's going on? A little bit. I watched my dad drop a kitchen knife into his bare foot once on Thanksgiving. And now, ooh, ooh, don't feel that. Ooh, no, it's not good. No blood, just burns. We're going to talk about three fast food icons today. Ready? Wendy's, Cheesecake Factory, and Steak and Shake. All three of those were inspired by local favorites. You ready? Absolutely. Let's do this. That was freaking good, man. That was nailed it. God, we're insane. Finishing each other's. Damn right. We're going to make the burger that inspired Wendy's. I noticed from the square shape. What is that? This is a very unique rectangular prism of ground beef, I imagine. I don't know why it is though. Because we're going to do something that they did back in the day. There's a place called Kewpie. Do you know Kewpie? Kewpie the mayonnaise? No, no, let's go back further. Kewpie Hotel Hamburgs in Flint, Michigan. At one point, there were over 400 locations at Kewpie Hotel Hamburgers all over the upper Midwest. Never heard of it. Opened in 1923, there was a location in Kalamazoo. And guess who grew up going to the Kewpie in Kalamazoo, Michigan? Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's. Interesting. That's right. Wendy's was opened in Columbus, Ohio, right? That was the first Wendy's? Which is funny because that's like kind of significantly later than a lot of its competitors. It's true. Burger King with McDonald's and he exploded on the scene. I know the Frosty was inspired by a local Columbus racetrack. That's true. They had frosted malts and he combined chocolate with vanilla because he didn't want the chocolate flavor to overpower the hamburgers. But I know nothing about why their burgers are square. Remember when I said I could provide fun ancillary information but I know nothing about the burgers? George, this is it. We have some theories about why they had square patties, right? I'm flummoxed. It was for space on the griddle. Otherwise, you'd use every inch of the griddle when you had a square patty. Interesting. Right? Actually, we haven't done this before, so we're gonna give it a shot. This is for cutting cake. You've seen this before, right? This is like a garrote. Like, this is what you... Right. Yeah, yeah. It's gonna work. I was slicing. Slicing. Oh, this is not working. That didn't work. Do you need me to stabilize? No, it's not gonna work. I'm gonna try a knife. So, do they have these extrusion machines at Kewpie that just, the loaf goes through and slices? Oh my God. Oh. Solid. That's exactly what it would look like if you were making a burger at Kewpie, right? Wait, so how did Wendy's get to square burgers? He later on said he wanted the beef to stick out over the side of the bun. It looked like it was more beef. Oh, interesting. But the reality is that it was the burger he grew up on. Yeah, sure. It's his hometown burger. That's gorgeous, dude. Is this how she looks, Liv? Totally accurate. She's awesome. So we're gonna go ahead. Onto the flat top. We gotta watch this. See this? You can do that. Oh, you can't do that with a round patty. We're trying to move product here. We're being efficient right now. There you go. Look at this, look at this. I never would have thought to do it in a loaf like this. Yeah. Salting. I'm gonna toast some buns. Do you know about Michigan's regional burger? No, I don't. They have a regional favorite. Interesting. And it actually has never left the state. It's called the olive burger. I have heard of this. Yes. Kewpie was one of the very first, if not the first place to put olives on a burger. Do you stand by olives on a burger? Because to me that- Oh yeah. That's fun. If you go to like a hamburger restaurant, like Halo Burger or Kewpie, they actually take, they make an olive sauce, which is made of just chopped green olives, some of the olive brine, sugar, and mayonnaise. This looks like something that my Nana would have made and set out at Christmas with a bunch of Triscuits next to it and like the port wine cheese ball. Right. And it'd be like Nana's special olive dip. Right. Exactly. Ow, ****. George, no, you said it would happen. No blood, just burns. Ow, shit. Do you want me to help? Yeah. Can I spot you in any way? Okay. Love it, there you go. Hold on. There we go, there we go. You didn't burn yourself. Good, hold on. They gotta be efficient. You gotta put them, tuck them in there. Hold on, hold on. Good luck. Flip them, then tuck them. One more flip, chef. All right, we're going back, we're going back, we're going back. Tammy, over here. Look at you. These look fantastic. You can see that's a clear link to Wendy's right there. That is. The fossil record can confirm. Okay, so we are gonna put this here. That's it. That's all we're doing. It's simple as that, right? So, Wendy's, they have this, their icon is a cupid doll. And they spelled it wrong. Cupid doll? What's a cupid doll? So, cupid... What is this? Ohio, look at that. Oh my God. There it is. Wait, is this a cupid doll? Yeah. What's a cupid doll? A cupid doll was something that existed... It looks like it's gonna come alive at night and gonna murder me in my sleep. It is. Literally, that's probably what it could have done, but it was a collectible in the turn of the century, turn of the, you know, century. Over 120 years ago. Hamburg pickle on top makes your heart go flippity flop. A slogan that everybody can remember and love. That's right. You know how you look at foods and you can immediately tell what they're going to be in your mouth and it makes you so happy? The combination of olives, mayonnaise, and beef fat is making me so, so excited right now. Yes, ma'am. Sir, sir, sir. What? Wait, I have a controversial burger eating method where I flip, I will let it rest with the gravity reversing. Look how square that is. Look at that square. Gravity reversing, why? Because the juices are, they're falling into the bottom of the bun right now and if you just hold it here for a couple of seconds, it starts to, the juices reverse the flow. That's some serious physics right here. That's like, see, I just think. Why are they laughing? I'm serious. It's like, yeah. We doing it? Oh, cheers, yeah, here we go. Oh my God, sir. This is the burger that inspired Wendy's. That's fucked up. That's incredible. Yeah. The olives, they're giving you the same salt and brine as a pickle. Yeah. But there's like, just this extra like, mustardy punch and depth in there. Oh yeah. Mm. Oh. Oh, it's so good, darling. So hot. Oh, so good, so hot. Oh, you're gonna like it. You're gonna like it. The bun! The only handful of the restaurant that inspired Wendy's left on the planet. It's an endangered species and you are nursing it back to health, like a baby bird. Exactly, like a baby, baby, baby bird. Yeah. I don't know where that was going. I was like, this makes sense in my head. I'm just happy to be eating then. Two more. Me? Yeah, you. All right, yeah. Burger number two. Ready? Hi. Burger number two. Hi. Good to see you again. Welcome back. Burger number two. Cheesecake Factory. Would you believe, ready for this one, that there's a burger on that menu that is perfect? I would not. Yeah. And you couldn't find it because it's buried. It's a needle in a haystack, George. It's not. I'm distracted by the orange chicken. It's actually not orange chicken. You're right, the orange. In the appetizer section of the menu, there's a very special thing called roadside sliders. You ever see that? Never. So here we go. Is it really a slider? These guys know what they're doing. They do. There's a reason why. You ready for this one? It's because the guy who started Cheesecake Factory, a guy named David Overton, grew up in a suburb of Detroit called Farmington. In Farmington, there was a place called Green's Hamburgers and they sold sliders. He would actually take his paper route money and go down to Green's and spend it on sliders. You wouldn't think of Cheesecake Factory as a preservationist, the hamburger preservationist, right? No, I think of them as double Snickers chocolate toward upside down cheesecake. Right. So David Overton, who's the CEO, he said every single Cheesecake Factory they open in the world has to use fresh ground beef, onions, and make these little sliders. And he wanted to make sure that it was the exact same burger that he ate as a child. So if you eat those burgers, they're actually eating a piece of, very important piece of his history and in a way, our hamburger history, our heritage, which is very important. That's such an emotional story for cheesecake. For a place that you go and you get something called a cheesecake teeny. You know? Right. It's odd, right? So we're gonna make that here. It's like his rosebud, you know? Right. A slider technically is not a mini burger. It's unto itself its own thing. Okay, a slider is beef pressed on a flat top with onions and served on a small roll, potentially served with cheese and a pickle on the side. May I ask, who is creating these definitions? What is the governing body? And the answer could be you, George. I believe you. You are the authority. You're looking at him. I'm nothing more than a steward of history. My job is to make sure that I'm getting it right and everyone else knows that. Yeah. We're gonna start with a very small bowl. This is actually not even an ounce and a half of beef right here, right? Just salt, that's it, right? Okay, this is just, this is what they would do at Green's. I use my smasher. They just do this. They just kind of do this. They kind of get it flat. All they're trying to do is make the burger fit the bun. So you've explained what a slider is, but why is it important to Hamburger History? Very simply because this burger goes back before any other burger. This is, the slider predates just about every single burger you could dream of out there. What about the ancient Roman burger? That's tomorrow's episode. Flipping. Oh, beautiful. Simple as that, right? If you go to Green's and you ask for a burger and you look at the griddle, you'll see they do exactly this. They set it up, this is called letting it ride. What I call letting it ride. Letting it ride, right? And what's happening is you've got this beef steam coming up over there, right? And it's, you've got the rendering, the rendered beef fat with the rendered onions is now steaming and going up into the bun and softening the bun. Just watch this, see this, ready? This is, get down in there, right? This is called the pinch and pull, ready? You pinch, pull. Look at that. Wait, tell me about the cheese on the bottom. That's a unique feature. Right, I don't know. I would normally put the cheese on the top. I mean, when I make burgers in my restaurant, they're pretty similar. I use a lot more onions and it's a larger patty, a bigger bun, but I put the cheese on top so you actually can't peel the top off. I realize I kind of like it this way better. You can take the top off. Never stop learning. And you can put stuff on there, like condiments. I've just learned from myself. There you go. This is a slider from Green's, look at this. And you can find the same thing on the menu at Cheesecake Factory. The onion, it's a steam. It's a steam in the onion. Kind of, it's mouthful. It's a little goo. Yeah. This is like the quintessence of burgers. Like, this is the perfect. Thank you, I agree. I'm assuming that when you get back to LA, it's right to Cheesecake Factory to check it out, right? Oh, I need a couple Chocotinis and some sliders in me stacked. Easy on the teeny, I like to taste the Choco. Third burger, Steak and Shake. Are you familiar with Steak and Shake? I am, it's, I've only been a couple of times, actually. But very, very thin, very hard-pressed burgers. Yes, Steak and Shake is important because they help to commercialize this hyper-regional smash burger. There's an epicenter of the Lacey Edge Burger in Illinois and parts of Indiana. People think the Lacey Edge Burger is something new. It's a new fad or a trend. And it is definitely a trendy thing right now. But it has roots in a burger that is over 90 years old. It's kind of amazing, right? Wow, beautiful. Kind of like a smash and smear. Interesting. Yeah, and they have to use a very special tool for it also. You can't just use anything. You have to use a bricklayer's trowel, ooh. Oh my God. A lot of places you go in the Midwest, even today, they take an actual trowel and they just cut the tip off and they saw it down. Feels like you should be laying bricks, right? Is this a thing that people do? Of course, yeah. I'm too young and soft. It's difficult to pinpoint the place that inspired Steak and Shake to make this Lacey Edge Burger. So what I'm going to do for you, because that's meant for me too, I'm going to make a Lacey Edge Burger that would have inspired Steak and Shake 100 years ago. Well, you can't just smash it like that. It won't work because what will happen is this will get stuck to the beef or the beef will get stuck to the spatula. So what I do is I get a little cooked patch on one side. See that? Flip it over and then. Oh, that's smart. Right off, see that? Dang. Yeah. I feel like I have to train Karate Kid style to do this of just laying bricks. Now for my thousandth brick, I'm ready. A little roll, a little smear there. See that? The reason they did this, we think, back in the day was for speed. Oh, yeah? Just because it was quicker. Thinner, quicker, faster. It was it, simple as that, right? Yeah. So like the laziness is happening because there's so much fat in the grind, right? That when it gets spread thin, the fat literally evaporates and you're just left with air pockets. No. It's close. Stupid. I don't know. This is a very special grind. Look at the beef. You notice that it actually kind of looks a uniform color. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's actually a finer grind. The science is that the finer the grind is, the more it stays together when you smash it. That's the one thing people get wrong. They go, I don't understand. I'm like, every time I smash a burger, it looks like Swiss cheese on my flat top. It's because you don't have a fine enough grind. Simple as that. In the old days, a lot of times if you're making burgers, there were no standard equipment out there. You pulled this out without any attention. Yes, sorry. What is going on? What is this? The old days, they would use a skillet and the skillet would obviously, all the grease would eventually build up. You'd have basically a deep fried burger. Yeah, I like that. And they would throw little balls of beef in the oil and just smash them thin with one of these things. Cheese and rice. Oh yeah, oh shit. There it is. There's, you just gotta keep moving. Wait, there you go. Keep moving, keep, oh! There you go, there you go. No, no, you just gotta press back. Heel, hold on, where are we going? There we go. Heel, crown, heel, crown. Wait, here, oh no, I switched. Oh shit. Now we got it, now we got it. Now we just grab this. George, George, I'm gonna do it, man, I'll do it. Do it, man. So there's not much on here, this is just beef and cheese, so. This is the Lacey Edge burger from Illinois. If you wanted to do ASMR, you can hear the scratchy. No. That, that is excellent. Yeah. You get the best of both worlds here. You get to the center, it's a little bit thicker, almost like that McDonald's In-N-Out eight pound patty, but then like, the crispy edges are so fun. Yeah, so fun. Oh, so fun. Do you know what I could use? Ketchup? No. Olives, this burger needs olives. I'm gonna go to In-N-Out with my own olives now. You could really creep them out. Now, when you eat a Lacey Edge burger, you'll know where they came from, right? I love that. You understand, you appreciate the regionality of this burger. All I wanna do now is drive around the Midwest with you eating burgers. Can we make that happen? Let's do it. We'll go camping, can I call you dad? Like, let's just, what are we doing, dad? Let's do it, man. I'll give you classic rock trivia. Who was the first guitar in Jethro Tull? Tony Iommi. Really? Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Dad? You and I have something in common. We've both been stuffing our faces with hamburgers all day. That's great, there you go. We both have cookbooks. We sure do. I know those guys. It's us, man. How much fun was that? It was so much fun. Honestly, this dish right here, this is our animal style mac and cheese. Oh, yeah. You know, you preserve the history of regional burgers throughout America. I put Thousand Island on macaroni. We are one in the same. Oh, there you go. We are one in the same. Please, please buy it. I need money, please. Can I take a nap on your couch? Sure, yeah. Okay. I'm a little sweaty, is that okay? That's okay. You may not recognize me in this costume, but tis I, George Motes, Burger Scholar. Like and subscribe and watch more episodes over here on the left. Bye.