Let me tell you something about a hamburger. I’m willing to be it’s a hamburger you never heard of. It’s technically not even a hamburger. Maybe it’s something better. Who knows? All I can tell you is that it’s great, it’s easy to make, and I have fallen hopelessly, irretrievably in love with it.
The name of this hamburger is the Maid-Rite.
The Maid Rite is a regional hamburger variation, a so-called “vernacular” hamburger cooked up by a butcher in Iowa only a few years after the invention of the hamburger itself. In it’s simplest form, it’s merely a loose ground beef sandwich. In a way, you could say it was a prehistoric ancestor of the hamburger. It bears the same relationship to it as, say, space dust does to the shimmering brilliant star it eventually coheres in. It’s a sandwich so apparently artless that it barely has any form. It’s chaos on a bun, a sloppy joe so indifferent that it lacks even a dab of Manwich sauce to make it palatable.
At least, that’s what you think until you eat it. The best Maid-Rites are not the ones served in the Great Plains chain of that name, but the handful of restaurants in southeastern Iowa that still make it. Essentially the beef is slow cooked with beer, which essentially braises it; mustard and pickles give it color and kick on its soft squishy bun. There’s no seared surface to speak of, but this burger is infalliably juicy. What’s more, you can cook it ahead of time in a crock pot and it’s just as good as burgers painstakingly pressed and flipped on a griddle. What follows is a recipe for this amazing coelocanth of the burger world. Try it and tell me it isn’t great!
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Ingredients:
- 2 pounds hamburger
- 1 medium onion
- 3 tablespoon ketchup]
- 2 teaspoon mustard
- 1 tallboy of beer (16 oz.) I used Pabst.
- 3/4 cup beef broth (or demi glace)
- 2 tbsp salt
- Optional: ½ cup instant oatmeal (in burger mix)
- Shredded Velveeta (on bun.)
Instructions:
- Sweat the onions in some butter or oil. Salt them liberally so they give up water while they soften.
- Add the hamburger, (barely) browning over medium heat. Basically keep working it until there is no raw red color left.
- Add beer, ketchup, mustard, and salt. Cook and cook on low heat for 20 minutes or so.
- Serve on untoasted Wonder or Sunbeam buns, or their off-brand equivalent. Dress as you would an ordinary hamburger, minus lettuce and tomato, which nobody likes anyway.
Here’s another recipe, one that foresakes beer for broth, for our tea-totaling readers. Other recipes sub in Pepsi, cider vinegar, and even pickle juice. Pickle juice! Can you believe it? What else is going on out in Iowa that we don’t know about? I haven’t tried any of these recipes, but if you have, and like it better, I’d like to know!
Josh Ozersky is a James Beard Award-winning food writer, as he will tell you immediately upon meeting you. His most recent book, The Hamburger: A History (2008) is available in paperback. Listen to his “The Mr. Cutlets Show” radio program at Heritage Radio Network, or via iTunes. He writes a weekly column on food and dining for Time.
03.14.10 @ 6:46 am
We have a maid-rite shop right here in town. It’s been here for years. It is one of the handfull of shops remaining from the original franchise.
03.14.10 @ 6:05 pm
Maid-Rite in Quincy, IL is the home of the world’s best maid-rite. The restaurant has been around since the 1920’s. It is not affiliated with the Maid-Rite chain, it has been owned since the beginning by the same local family. The maid-rite in the photo looks good. I like mine with mustard, onion, and pickle. No ketchup!
03.15.10 @ 7:20 pm
This is not the Maid-Rite I grew up with in Hammond, Indiana. Ours did not have beer, mustard or anything but a little onion cooked in it. If what you say is really true, they have changed the recipe. Our wonderful M-R’s were only steamed. When you ordered, you asked for M, MP, K, O or any combination of condiments you wanted.
Please do some more research before you tell the public that M-R’s are made with beer, Pepsi or whatever.
Sorry, but you are mistaken.
03.17.10 @ 10:07 am
I grew up eating Maid-Rites in Davenport,Ia. The bes sandwich ever made. Unfornetely, I haven’t had one for over 20 yrs. I have always tried to make one but could never get that wonderful taste! I remember them being steamed too. I know the buns were! Can’t wait to have one again!!!!
03.17.10 @ 1:00 pm
I love Maid Rites! I grew up with them. Bad thing my mother moved us out of Iowa when I was barely a teen.We moved to Chicago and now I do not have acess to them unless I drive at least 5 hours to my home town to visit my Aunt. I really do miss them.They are delicious.
03.17.10 @ 1:27 pm
we have Maid rite restaurant in our town that they are so good they are to dye for the place is not a very big resttaurant but you can bearly get in the door, people stand in line to get one. The town is La Crosse Wi and the restaurant is called the Maid Rite Cafe and it is on Caledonia Street in our town.
03.17.10 @ 7:04 pm
maid rite is made right. there are not many foods that i miss from iowa after 20 years of the feast
of fresh foods at the seattle table. after all these years i still crave a maid rite. i remember the soft bun as key to holding it all together. can’t wait to try these. the wrapped meat filled buns will go in the wok steamer briefly to try to replicate the real thing. thanks. -stephen
03.24.10 @ 8:02 pm
We have an alternative recipe for the Maid-Rite hamburger that is SO good, the Maid-Rite lawyers issued us a “cease and desist” order.
http://hhs59.com/maidrite.htm
Our Hammond (Indiana) High School website for the class of 1959 has a treasure trove of history of growing up in Hammond, Indiana. This includes Jean Shepherd of “The Christmas Story” who grew up in Hammond, Indiana (”You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”), where the first Sears Roebuck catalog was printed, and so much more.
But one great memory is the Maid-Rite hamburger which was treasured by all. We make the recipe available here, so close to the real one the Maid-Rite hamburger guys wanted it removed….
We didn’t…
Enjoy!