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| Cheeseburger |
A cheeseburger is a hamburger topped with cheese. Traditionally, the slice of cheese is placed on top of the meat patty, but the burger can include many variations in structure, ingredients, and composition. The cheese is normally added to the cooking hamburger patty shortly before serving, which allows the cheese to melt. As with other hamburgers, a cheeseburger may include toppings, such as lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, or bacon.
In fast food restaurants, the cheese used is normally processed cheese, but other cheeses may be used instead, such as cheddar, Swiss, mozzarella, blue cheese, and pepper jack. Also, in rare cases, spinach and olives are added.
By the late nineteenth century, the opening of the vast grasslands of the Great Plains to cattle ranching had made it possible for every American to enjoy beef almost daily. Hamburger was one of the cheapest way for even the poorest of Americans to eat beef.
Adding cheese to hamburgers became popular in the late-1920s to mid-1930s, and there are several competing claims as to who created the first cheeseburger. Lionel Sternberger is reputed to have introduced the cheeseburger in 1926 at the age of 16 when he was working as a fry cook at his father's Pasadena, California sandwich shop, "The Rite Spot", and "experimentally dropped a slab of American cheese on a sizzling hamburger."
An early example of the cheeseburger appearing on a menu is a 1928 menu for the Los Angeles restaurant O'Dell's which listed a cheeseburger smothered with chili for 25 cents.
Other restaurants also claim to have invented the cheeseburger. For example, Kaelin's Restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, said it invented the cheeseburger in 1934. One year later, a trademark for the name "cheeseburger" was awarded to Louis Ballast of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In in Denver, Colorado. According to Steak 'n Shake archives, the restaurant's founder, Gus Belt, applied for a trademark on the word in the 1930s. Another example of the hamburger invention. "The history of the hamburger appears to be divided into two aspects: the American-type hamburger, with which most people are familiar, and the idea of the hamburger from Hamburg, Germany. The essential difference is in the name and sandwich. Hamburgers may have been inspired in the German city with the profusion of beef from cows in the country terrain. Given the lack of refrigeration, the meat had to be cooked immediately, and the Hamburg beef patties became popular.
The largest cheeseburger ever made in the world weighed 2,014 pounds, "60 pounds of bacon, 50 pounds of lettuce, 50 pounds of sliced onions, 40 pounds of pickles, and 40 pounds of cheese." The record was broken by Minnesota's Black Bear Casino breaking the previous Cheeseburger record 881 pounds.
In the United States, National Cheeseburger Day is celebrated annually on 18 September.
The ingredients used to create cheeseburgers follow similar patterns found in the regional variations
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| A cheddar-stuffed cheeseburger |
of hamburgers. First start with the beef ground chuck would make the best tasting burger to make it even better and healthier use grass fed grass finish beef. Popular regional toppings include bacon, avocado or guacamole, sliced sautéed mushrooms or onions, cheese sauce and/or chili. Less common ingredients include egg, feta cheese, salsa, jalapeños, and other kinds of chili peppers, anchovies, slices of ham, mustard, gyros meat, or bologna, horseradish, sauerkraut, pastrami or teriyaki-seasoned beef, tartar sauce, french fries, onion rings, potato chips, a pat of butter, pineapple, and tofu.
A cheeseburger may have more than one hamburger patty and more than one slice of cheese. A stack of two patties is called a double cheeseburger; a triple cheeseburger has three, and a quadruple has four. Some cheeseburgers are prepared with the cheese enclosed within the ground beef, rather than on top. This is sometimes known as a Jucy Lucy.
