A Hamburger Today- aht.seriouseats.com

Grilled: John T. Edge

Posted by Adam Kuban, May 29, 2007 at 1:36 PM

Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a while since we "Grilled" someone here on AHT. Sorry 'bout that. But we're back, and with a most illustrious guest indeed. John T. Edge is the author of one of AHT's favorite burger books, Hamburgers & Fries, and he's here with some fascinating burger talk—and a recipe for bacon-infused burgers. So, without further ado, let's get Grillin'

Name: John T. Edge
Location: Oxford, Mississippi
Occupation: Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, contributing editor at Gourmet magazine, and writer for various folks

How often do you eat burgers? Or did all the burger-eating you did for the book turn you off burgers altogether?
I eat more burgers now after the book than I did before. I eat them about two a week: One is a burger I cook, and the other is one someone else cooks.

Where did you eat your most recent one?
At Phillip's Grocery here in Oxford. It's a much misunderstood burger. Phillip started out in Holly Springs, Mississippi, with a burger that has linkages to the doughburgers and slugburgers in the book. It's a burger with a strange consistency at its core. It's a creamy consistency—as if there were peanut butter in it: Is there soy in there? Is there bread in there? There's some extender in there, most likely a bread-based extender, and it crisps up the burger as it cooks. I like it drenched in chili. A nice chili cheeseburger, with pickle, mustard, and onion.

It's a great burger, but it's a tell of something else—it points its way to the early days of burgers. It's a remnant of an earlier time when almost all burgers had some sort of meat extender added. You could say it's a vestigial hamburger.

Interesting. So on that chilli cheeseburger, or any burger for that matter, do you prefer American, cheddar, or other?
I don't look down my nose at the processed slice of cheese goo because it melts really well. Of late, I've been taking those blue cheese crumbles in the tubs, you know what I'm talking about? I mix those in red wine vinegar or cheap balsamic, then add some spicy brown mustard (we use Zatarin's, but any spicy brown mustard will do—anything but yellow ballpark mustard). Mix that up, and you don't need any dressing. It's kinda self-contained.

So, while we're talking condiments: Ketchup or mustard?
Mustard. Ketchup tastes saccharine sweet. It's for pantywaist burger-lovers. It's a pantywaist condiment. If you look at the best burgers today, ketchup is banished and mustard is relished.

Fair enough. Let's talk buns: Sesame-seed or plain?
I don't much cotton to sesame seed or poppy seed. I like an unadulterated burger crown. Most buns, though, are too bready, so I carve out a notch in the crown to balance it out. Recently, someone brought over supersize Brobdingnagian onion rolls to cookout we were having, so I spent most of my time carving out the space in the crown.

Grilled, griddled, or broiled?
I prefer a flattop-fried burger. I like the way, if it's fried well, you get that nice crunch from a flatop-fried burger. Larding it though with onions or chopped bacon—I like the way the flattop will caramelize that. In fact, the flattop is the reason we got our fancy-pants Viking range; it had one built in.

And how would you like that done, sir?
Well, when I chop up bacon and mix that in with the meat, I cook it to medium. I was long an advocate of rare, but I've gravitated away from that—not so much from a food-safety standpoint but for the texture. I'm now somewhere between medium-rare (without bacon added) and medium (with bacon, medium).

As you mention in the book, the burger is a food item with which most Americans have strong childhood associations. Do you remember your earliest encounter with this delicious dish?
I don't, but I bet you money it was a Krystal burger. I'd like to say I remember the sky opening up and Moses handing me a burger, but I don't. I do remember as a child getting the little square Krystal burgers, just stinking of onions, served on a china plate—this was back when Krystal still used china plates with the black lettinering. That would have been just an onion-mustard-pickle burger.

Krystal vs. White Castle? Who wins?
As a Southerner, I'd have to say Krystal. Krystal is, of course, an imitation of White Castle, but they do just fine. Plus, I grew up on Krystal, and before that, I didn't know White Castle from the Black Death.

What's your favorite fast-food burger?
Milo's, a very small Birmingham, Alabama–based chain. It serves crinkle-cut fries with seasoned salt that looks like powdered cheeese (but isn't), molar-aching sweet tea, and nickle-thin burgers cooked on a flatop with a thin goo that tastses lke A1 sauce that someone's beaten the hell out of.

It's been around since the '40s, and, like a lot of Birmingham restaurants, it's Greek-owned or -founded. It's everything people say they don't like about burgers—thin patty, $3.50 meal—but, oh, that sauce and those fries.

What topping or condiment, in your opinion, should never grace a burger?
I don't know. I 'm ecumenical; I believe in anything going on a burger as long as it doesn't ... Heck, I've seen people put hot dogs on a burger ... at Mike's Sandwich Shop in L.A. It's called a Hockey Stick Burger and is served on Armenian flatbread.

Does that rank up there with your most unusual burger experience? Or is there one ever crazier?
The stuffed burgers in New Orleans. There are people there who would take eggs Benedict then mound a burger around it and deep-fry the whole damn thing. It worked, but it wasn't something I'd want to eat more than once I admired the inventiveness of it, but it's the oddest thing I've seen done with a burger ... to put the constituent ingredients of eggs Benedict in a burger—that's beyond the pale.

One guy began doing it. I haven't checked in after the levee breaches, but just before the flooding, it was beginning to spread, and the guy who was originally doing it—at Tucker's Tavern—began to take umbrage at others doing it. The best thing about it was that the first time I walked in there were all these people in surgical scrubs from the hospital just across the street. It was like they were guaranteeing job security.

Heh. Job security as long as they were operating on each other, I guess. Last question: For some crazy reason, you're going vegetarian. Where do you go for your final burger?
I'd walk out in the backyard and cook up the following burger:

John T. Edge's End-of-the-World Burger
Chop up 1 slice of Allan Benton's bacon per burger (which is the best bacon there is) into bits the size of your fingernail, fry it in a skillet to about half done, let it cool, and mix it in with the ground chuck. Sprinkle with black pepper and Burger House seasoning (a cumin-heavy concoction you can buy by the shaker at Burger House in Dallas). Grill to medium.

Burger Joints Referenced
Phillip's Grocery: 2406 South Lamar Boulevard, Oxford MS 38655; Roadfood on Phillip's
Krystal Burger: Various locations, mostly in the South; krystal.com
Milo's: Various locations in Alabama; miloshamburgers.com
Mike's Sandwich Shop: 1717 South Soto Street, Los Angeles CA 90023
Tucker's Tavern: 635 South Roman Street, New Orleans LA 70112

Related
JohnTEdge.com: is where you can check in on all things Edge.
AHT's book report on Hamburgers & Fries, Mr. Edge's indispensable burger book.
Other Grilled interviews, from the AHT Archives.

Photograph by Kyle Hood, courtesy johntedge.com

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Tags: Alabama, food writers, Grilled, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Orleans, Texas