Ode to the Hamburger

There’s nothing better than a hamburger, the All-American classic meat in a bun heart exploder. Our reimagined version plays off the original with crunchier, tastegasmy alternatives like carrots and cilantro. You’ve had burgers before, we’re sure. But this ain’t yo mama’s burgers!

Most people would tell you that the key to a burger is ground beef, but you could just throw in any type of meat and you can still make yourself the best goddamn burger you ever tasted. We use liver pâté to classy it up and we put the emphasis on “ham” in our hamburger. The key to this is some good bread good meat, and good toppings.

Ingredients

Pork butt
Vietnamese or French baguettes
Homemade or high-quality store-bought mayonnaise
Pork pâté Large English cucumber, halved crosswise and sliced lengthwise into 1/8-inch-thick pieces
Fresh cilantro leaves
Jalapeños, sliced lengthwise into 1/8-inch-thick pieces
Fish sauce
Pickled carrots

Steps

1. Roast that pork butt.
2. Make the pâté.
3. Put that shit on the French baguette.
4. Add the other stuff we mentioned.
5. Say “Yoooooooo, this is nothing like a burger except that it has meat and bread.”
6. Stare at the burger and mumble “This looks a hell of a lot like banh mi!”
7. Eat it because it’s still delicious while realizing that this is the kind of shit that happens all the time with “ethnic foods” and even though food is ever-evolving, there’s a fucking line between a variation on a classic and something not even being that thing anymore, plus we immigrants spent years being ridiculed for the “smelly”, “weird-looking” foods you are trying to make your own. Thanks for loving our food now but still ignoring our faces.
8. Send complaints to Bon Appetit and the NY Times about appropriating other people’s food, making them unrecognizable and telling us how to eat our own foods. Because fuck them.
9. Give a shout out to Bad Appetite because they’re doing the Lord’s work.

Bonus: Listen to our Podcast