Putting the "Urghh" in Burger

It was National Burger Day this Thursday just gone. Did you know? Do you care? Probably not. Every pub and restaurant under the sun seemed to be tweeting about it to get the punters in, but prior to that the only reason I'd heard about it is that it was organised, and promoted ad nauseum, by Mr Hyde, one of the many email newsletters I find in my inbox on a daily basis. It is effectively an online spin-off of the men's lifestyle magazine Shortlist, though most of its content seems to be reviews of places to eat and drink in London, generally fairly biased in favour of anywhere that serves up huge slabs of meat, alongside plenty of craft beer with which to wash it all down.

There's certainly no shortage of places for them to review, with the explosion of places serving up American-style pulled pork, ribs, hot dogs and burgers over the last few years. The latter in particular is nothing new to British high streets of course, but it is only recently that the so-called 'gourmet' burger joints have started appearing everywhere, focusing on high quality ingredients for maximum flavour. Such places certainly aren't suggesting that these are healthier options though - in fact some places play on that by marketing their products as somewhat of a guilty pleasure. The Dirty Burger chain is a prime example, with their menus asking "How dirty will you go?" - i.e. how much extra cheese, bacon and so on do you want to add to their already calorie-laden eponymous burger.

So in their case, "dirty burger" means something naughty but nice - so bad, it's really, really good. But the term could just as well mean a burger that's so bad, it's just bad - and for that, it's time to crack open a tin.

Yes, tinned burgers in gravy, made by a company called Goblin. I found this on the shelves of a branch of Morrisons during a rare visit a few months back. I have to admit to being slightly disappointed that they've called them hamburgers, rather than just burgers, as otherwise they would be "Goblin burgers", suggesting they were made from the minced meat of some kind of grotesque malevolent dwarf-like creature. Maybe the Goblin company wanted to avoid that potential confusion.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the poem Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti (although that concerns a market run by goblins, rather than one selling its meat). I wrote an essay about it at university, looking at its presentation of women in the Victorian age. It was, by quite some way, the worst essay I wrote during my time as a student. Apologies - that was a bit of a random sidetrack. But would the burgers be any better than my essay? It seemed unlikely. They didn't sound all that appetising to begin with - and then I looked at the list of ingredients:

Water, Burger (43%) [Pork (69%) [Pork, Water, Salt, Preservatives (Sodium Nitrite, Sodium Nitrate, Potassium Nitrate), Antioxidant (Sodium Ascorbate)], Water, Breadcrumb [Fortified Wheat Flour [Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin], Water, Oatmeal, Wheat Bran, Sugar, Yeast, Salt, Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Mono- and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Wheat Protein, Spirit Vinegar, Soya Flour, Palm Oil, Rapeseed Oil, Malted Barley Flour, Palm Fat, Flour Treatment Agent (Ascorbic Acid)], Fortified Wheat Flour [Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin], Seasoning [Fortified Wheat Flour [Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin], Salt, Herbs, Spices, Dextrose, Stabilisers (Diophosphates), Yeast Extract, Spice Extracts, Citric Acid, Onion Powder, Antioxidants (Ascorbyl Palmitate, Alpha-Tocopherol)], Beef, Beef Fat], Onion (6%), Modified Maize Starch, Tomato Puree, Sugar, Autolysed Protein [Autolysed Yeast, Salt, Dextrose], Yeast Extract [Yeast Extract, Salt], Malt Vinegar, Onion Powder, Colour (Plain Caramel), Salt, Pepper Extract, Flavourings.

Wow. That's quite a list. And actually incredibly difficult to make sense of, on account of the multiple sets of brackets everywhere. Each time an ingredient is listed which contains other ingredients itself, these are all listed in square brackets afterwards, and again if any of those ingredients also contain other things. Round brackets are used to clarify what another ingredient actually is - for example what unpleasant-sounding chemicals are present as Preservatives, Antioxidants and so on. There is a hint of pedantry in all this - Fortified Wheat Flour is listed three times (it's used as an ingredient itself in the burgers, but is also present in the breadcrumbs and the mysterious 'Seasoning' contained within the burgers), and we are given its constituent ingredients each time, which seems a bit unnecessary.

From what I can make out, everything in the list from 'Pork' down to 'Beef Fat' is what is contained in the burgers themselves, and thereafter, it's all gravy, so to speak. The ingredients in bold are all allergens, but in addition to this, the label points out that the product was made in a factory that also handles "Nuts, Sesame, Egg, Milk, Fish, Celery and Mustard". So basically, these burgers are full of pretty much everything under the sun, and all sorts of nasty stuff, so frankly if they were just made out of goblin meat, that would probably be preferable.

So I wasn't holding out much hope for the burgers, and I hadn't even opened the tin yet. On doing so, there seemed to be a lot of gravy - but with actual pieces of onion visible in it, which was promising. I tasted a little, and it wasn't too bad - a little thicker and gloopier than gravy really should be, but pleasingly oniony, and no noticeably starchy taste, which is what I had been half expecting from reading the ingredients list. I delved a little further into the depths of the tin with a fork to see what lay beneath, transferring the solid mass onto a plate to get a better look at it.

My first thought was "Gosh, that's a big burger" - before realising that this great puck of meat (of the size that would normally have the Mr Hyde reviewers salivating) was in fact all four of the burgers in the tin welded together. Prising them apart with a knife, they looked somewhat less substantial.

There was a definite porky whiff to them - no great surprise there, given that it is the main ingredient of the patties. But let's face it, pork really isn't what you want in a burger, is it? That's what sausages are there for. A burger should be beefy, but the beef in these ones came way too far down the ingredients list to make its influence felt at all.



The label advised heating the contents of the tin either in a saucepan, or in the microwave. As I was initially just planning on having two of the patties without the gravy, I went for the latter option. I suppose really I could have tried frying them instead - it might have given them a bit of extra colour and flavour - but I wasn't entirely convinced they would survive being flipped over, or even just the heat of the pan. So into the microwave they went, with a piece of kitchen roll on top to catch any spitting fat. So far, so depressing.

As everyone knows, you can't polish a turd - but you can roll it in glitter. As such, I felt it would be best to dress these sad looking patties up with as many other tasty things as possible, to create a bit of a better burger. Step up the supporting cast members:

A brioche bun, gherkins, sliced tomato, little gem lettuce, chilli-pickled red onion, and some kind of crumbly cheese which I can't remember the name of. As we know, the Goblinburgers may already contain traces of mustard, but a good proper slick of the yellow stuff was clearly called for here, and a bit of ketchup too. All of that made for a reasonably handsome-looking production...

 

...and a tasty one too, on the whole. Well, all the extra bits I had added were very tasty, but even the best of supporting players can't make up entirely for a lead that is miscast in the role, and just isn't good enough to convince you otherwise, as was the case here with the burgers. They reminded me of a flattened, flaccid, ever-so-slightly herbier version of the sausages you get in tins of baked beans and pork sausages. Which are fine in their own way (I haven't had them for years, in fact, but really must some time soon - watch this space!), but big juicy burgers they ain't, so in this context they just don't work.

The next day, I thought I wouldn't try to tart the two remaining patties up any further, and have them as the Goblins had intended, heated through with the gravy. The serving suggestion on the label appeared to show the burgers alongside a heap of mashed potato and some vegetables, which took me back a few years, as I have a distinct memory of my dad being offered "burger and mash" for dinner when in hospital many moons ago, a sad-sounding combination which I recall raised a characteristic eyebrow from him at the time.

While they may seem like curious bedfellows, having plenty of mash is actually very useful when your burgers come with copious amounts of onion gravy, as it soaks it up very nicely indeed. I can't say it improves the burgers in any way, but I had attempted to erase all thoughts of real burgers from my mind, and just accept that them this time for what they were - discs of some sort of vaguely meaty, sausage-like substance, which I found worked quite well in lessening the disappointment I had felt the day before.

So, there you have it. Tinned burgers. Dirty, yes. But definitely not in a good way. For next year's National Burger Day, I think I'll stick with Mr Hyde's recommendations.