Great Australian dishesAustralia news This article is more than 10 years oldBurgers with beetroot: a great Australian dish
This article is more than 10 years oldTo stop any sogginess, it's best to add beetroot, and maybe a canned pineapple ring, at the last possible moment
This isn’t a thesis on the joys of beef and bread. Nor is it a study of those other great toppings that often grace Australian burgers: bacon, preferably rashers of the soft and pliable kind; a fried egg with slow-motion oozing yolk. Instead, let us reflect on the long-life miracle that is canned beetroot, and the distinctly antipodean twang it lends to the hamburger.
As ubiquitous as they are, hamburgers are a relatively recent addition to our diet. Claims as to the origins and inventor of the sandwich are many – among them, Genghis Khan and the German city of Hamburg, as well as Australia’s beloved rissoles – with the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair regarded by many (but not all) as its world premier.
Australian hamburger sightings started during the ’30s: a by-product, no doubt, of our blossoming post-first world war relationship with America, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that beetroot began regularly appearing alongside tomato, lettuce and onion on burgers. That was thanks largely to the openings of the Edgell and Golden Circle canneries in 1926 and 1947 respectively – but one of the more interesting theories, however, suggests the trend has its origins in pranking US troops ashore on R&R.
“Maybe it was our desire not to be Americanised?” ponders Warren Fahey, Australian folklore collector and author of Australian food history compendium, Tucker Track. “For some reason the idea of hamburger wrapping stained by beetroot juice was accepted as the sign of a great hamburger. People get quite emotional over the subject of Australian hamburgers. Some say a real hamburger must have slices of canned beetroot and others still declare its inclusion as a travesty.”
According to Fahey, beetroot on burgers had its heyday in the ’50s and ’60s. Following the simultaneous 1971 arrival of fast food’s big two – the first McDonald’s opened in the Sydney suburb of Yagoona, while Hungry Jacks, the Aussie nom de plume of Burger King, began its Aussie campaign in Innaloo, just north of Perth – the combination’s popularity began to wane, as did that of milk bars, beachside kiosks and other traditional hamburger vendors.
Despite the sustained growth of American franchises, however, Australia’s burger-with-beetroot population remains stable. Even once the big players pull their seasonal go-Aussie burgers after 26 January, the odds of finding a beetroot-enriched specimen at a neighbourhood lunch bar or new-wave “gourmet” hamburger chain remain good.
Still, they’re far from a restaurant-only treat and preparing winning burgers at home is within the grasp of even the most novice of cooks. It’s all about structural integrity, both in the beef and the bread (say yes to soft white buns and no to chewy sourdough).
A good, proportionately scaled patty is the nucleus of a good burger, so buy buns smaller than your patties. The meat will shrink as it cooks. Better yet, make your own patties and shape each one slightly larger than the buns you’ll be using. While budget and taste will dictate the beef you or your butcher will be mincing – grass-fed or grain-fed? Ribeye or rump? – avoid lean cuts like eye round or topside: a healthy percentage of fat in your mince will yield juicier, tastier burgers.
It’s also important not to overload your base. Taking the extra minute to properly spin- or pat-dry your lettuce will be time well spent. If you’re chasing a little extra nutrition, baby spinach leaves are an ideal stand-in for iceberg lettuce.
Rather than the single thick, ungainly disc of tomato, make your slices thinner but put more of them in the burger. One neat trick Mum taught me as a kid was separately packing “wet” ingredients like tomato, pineapple rings and beetroot, then adding them to your burger at the last possible moment.
Soggy sangers in lunchboxes and picnic baskets are a sad, sad, thing – as is the fact the country’s last Australian-owned cannery shut in 2013. Fortunately, the signs are promising that farmers in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley might soon have a processing facility to call their own. It’s a cause we can all get behind, not just for the sake of a rural Australian community, but in the name of national pride: an Aussie hamburger made using beetroot processed overseas just doesn’t seem fair dinkum.
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