you that foams are the way of the future or that your eggs
need to be cooked in a steam-injected, pressure-controlled
oven to come out right. I’m not here to push some sort of
newfangled, fancified, plated-with-tweezers,
deconstructed/reconstructed cuisine. Quite the opposite, in
fact.
My job is simple: to prove to you that even the simplest of
foods—hamburgers, mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels
sprouts, chicken soup, even a g&#amn salad—are every bit
as fascinating, interesting, storied, and delicious as what the
chefs wearing the fanciest pants these days are concocting. I
mean, have you ever stopped to marvel about exactly what
goes on inside a hamburger when you cook it? The
simultaneous complexity and simplicity of a patty formed
from the chopped muscle mass of selected parts of a
remarkably intricate animal, seasoned with salt and pepper,
seared on a hot piece of metal, and then slipped into a soft
toasted bun? You haven’t? Well, let me give you a quick
rundown to show you what I’m talking about.
ON HAMBURGERS
Hamburgers start as patties of beef . . . , no, let me back up a
bit. Burgers actually start as ground beef that’s then formed
into . . . , no, sorry, even further back. Hamburgers start
with whole cuts of beef that are then ground into . . . Wait a
minute, let’s get all Inception on this and go one level
deeper: hamburgers start with cows—animals that live
exceedingly complicated lives, that can differ not only in
breed and feed, but also in terms of exercise, terrain they’re