Daily Dose of English 145
Hamburgers
Daily Dose of English 145
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about hamburgers, because I am hungry right now, and the only thing that came into my mind when choosing a topic was food. And I'm gonna make a burger tonight, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about hamburgers. I've briefly talked about them in the past, I think, because they're a very, very popular food all over the world at this point. You can find like a burger in, so many big cities, like probably most of them, right? But they're an American food that is spread around the world because of how easy they are, how customizable they are, and how delicious they are, honestly. And so I want to talk a little bit about burgers and how I enjoy a good burger. And I guess we'll just go from there. So, I'll start with talking about the different kinds of burgers that I enjoy, because there are different types, right? The typical one that you get if you go to a quick and fast restaurant is often called a smash burger, and these are burgers that can be made very, very quickly, which is why they're called smash burgers, because you can, well, they're called smash burgers because you smash them. You take a bunch of onions, what? You take a bunch of, who? Huh? You take a bunch of meat and you make a ball out of it. Why did I say the word onions? But you take meat and you make a ball out of it and then you put it onto a very hot skillet or stove top or whatever you're cooking on. And then you take the flat side of a spatula and smash it into the hot metal. So it spreads out into a circular shape and it becomes very, very thin is how it should be done. And this is the kind of burger that you'll get at a lot of fast food restaurants, at things like White Castle, I think Five Guys, like pretty much any of the good fast food restaurants are going to be like this. And they are They're really good because they're so, they're really, let's see. They're good because they're delicious, right? And they go very quick, and so you can put a bunch of stuff on them. And since the meat is cooked very quickly on a very hot surface, you get a bunch of the crispy brownness on the meat, which ends up being really, really nice. You can also cook them with a bunch of other kinds of toppings, like onions, cheese, pickles, whatever you wanna put on it, you can put on your burger. And that's how they're done. The other common fast food type of burger is just a frozen patty, like a pre-made patty. And that's what you'll find at a lot of the big chains like McDonald's or probably Wendy's or whatever. Those are burgers that have been pre-made. So they just throw them onto the grill and they cook them up in whatever the two minutes that it takes or something like that. And so they're not really smash burgers and they end up usually having a little bit less flavor because they were not usually made in house, they were made somewhere else. But many people like them, so who am I to judge? Getting frozen burgers like that is also a great way to save time when you're cooking for a lot of people. So if you have like some sort of cookout, it's very common to get like 20 patties in one bag and then you just throw them one at a time on the grill, they defrost and they cook in a couple minutes and it's really easy. So they definitely have their uses, they're not just bad food or anything like that. And then the other kind that I know of is called a steak burger. And these are usually the fancier burgers that you might make because they are cooked slower and thicker. So why are they called steak? It feels like a steak in there. It is ground beef still, ground meat, but you get a nice, thick, meaty burger. And a good steak burger is usually made with a couple of different kinds of meat of very high quality with lots of fat in it and to not be tightly packed. And that's the key to a really good steak burger is you don't wanna like super duper compress the meat so it becomes like a puck. It should fall apart a little bit in your mouth and when you're eating it, not totally so it just crumbles, but like you want a little bit of fall apart in the steak burger. and you should make the burger a bit too big for your bun, because it's going to shrink when you cook it. And this is actually the ideal burger to make at home if you're cooking for like one or two people. Because you can buy the ground beef pretty cheap, and so pretty good, you make them into nice light patties, and then you throw some salt and pepper on there, and then just throw them into a pan that's not blazing hot, but it's still hot, and it will cook in a couple of minutes. This is what I'm gonna do when I'm making dinner. and they end up being a lot easier to cook for one or two people and they become really delicious because you get more meat, there's more flavor and then they're not just sort of the crispiness and the very thin piece of meat. You can also throw some cheese on there and whatever toppings that you prefer. I will say it is not standard in the U.S. to put anything inside the burger. You can find often filled burgers or something like that at the supermarket. That is not the most typical thing, and I think that's kind of weird. I would much, much rather put stuff on top of my burger than have it in my burger. That's just sort of odd to me. But what you can find is cooking things into the burger. putting it on top and then flipping it over so that it kind of like fuses itself to the burger. And there's a couple of different styles of burger that use that, right? There's a, I think it's called an Oklahoma burger that uses a bunch of grilled onions. So you put down some very finely shaven onions and then you put the burger on top of that. And so that the onions, after they're cooked a bit, they kind of sink into the burger a bit. Those can be really good if you like onions. There's plenty of other kinds of burgers. A very common one is a bacon burger, bacon cheddar, bacon cheese, something like that, because bacon is delicious, and who doesn't love a little bit of bacon on their burger, right? I've had a lot of burgers in my life. It's there, it's definitely a common food and something that I like about burgers is that you can usually count on them being pretty good. If a restaurant has at least okay food, their burger's gonna be fine. If you go to a restaurant that's like very mid, not super great and you order something like, something that can be kind of difficult, maybe like, What's sort of a difficult food to make, a difficult dish? Like a pasta dish. If you get a pasta dish at like a medium restaurant, it can end up being pretty bad, right? They use too much cream or something like that, and it's just not very good. But a burger is sort of hard to mess up. It's never going to be just like downright terrible. I've had terrible burgers before. Once I had a, I ordered just a rare burger, which you should, uh, which is how done the meat is. And a rare burger should have a little bit of, of red and pink inside, right? It should be, uh, it was called rare. And It adds a little bit of flavor, right? It's not dangerous. But this place just, it was raw on the inside. That is not rare, that is raw. You have to actually cook the burger to get it to be rare. And it was just barely cooked on the outside. I was like, this is disgusting. This is just ground beef you gave me. Please do this again. But most of the burgers I've had have been fine. A couple of places that stick out in my mind as having really good burgers. The first one is a place in Portland that I really like. I don't know if it's anywhere else, but it's called Little Big Burger. Little Big Burger. And Little Big Burger, not Berber, Burger. Did I put, oh no, I did it right. Little Big Burger, yeah, it's based in Portland, Oregon. So if you're ever there, I would definitely recommend it, but they have little burgers that have a lot of flavor. You usually only need one, even though they are much smaller, but you can get two if you're a hungry person. But the key there is their fries. Their burgers are good. I like their burgers a lot, but their fries are really, really good. They have... Ah, what's the word? Truffle fries. Truffle fries are freaking insane. Truffle oil is something that you can get from truffles. I don't really know how it's made, actually. But it is so flavorful. And you don't need that much to make some truffle fries, but they end up being so good and salty and just delicious. There's also another place in Portland that I like a lot called Deschutes Brewery. Deschutes, and that's one of the rivers there in Portland, in Oregon. And it is, they have very good burgers and will, yeah, I don't know, they're just good. I don't really have anything else to say about it. If you're ever in Oregon for some reason, or really in a lot of the US, There end up being a lot of really good restaurants in small towns, especially in towns where they make like a specific beer or something like that, like there's something that the town's known for. So if you're ever traveling in the US, I definitely recommend trying to go to some smaller places, because you can find some really fantastic restaurants in places that you wouldn't expect there to be much. Right, oh my, good God, it is thundering outside. Holy bananas. that my entire room just lit up with lightning. Wow, somebody's car alarm is going off now. That was a big old thunderclap. Anyways, what the hell was I saying? Oh yeah, small town restaurants. So as an example, in Oregon there's a place called Hood River, which is relatively close to Portland, but it's pretty small. There's not that many people that live there. Let's see, Hood River, Oregon. Hood River has less than 10,000 people as of 2020, so maybe a little more, but there's not very many people that live there. But there's a lot of really good restaurants because it's a place that people go to relax or for a holiday of some kind. And so you can end up finding some really, really good spots in Hood River. fairly small towns, right? 10,000 people is not very many people. But in this case, Hood River is very close to a big mountain. So there's a bunch of just touristy stuff. But it's also just a nice place, right? There's actually This is probably one of the things that I like a lot about the U.S. and even Oregon, honestly, is that a lot of the smaller places that you go through end up having a lot more interesting stuff than you might think. Food, sights to see, or attractions. There's just a lot of kind of cool stuff to do outside of the big cities. Um, but yeah, I've gotten off topic. I'm over time. Um, but I would like to thank you so very much for listening to this episode and I hope that you enjoyed and let me know down in the comments what you like on your burger. I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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