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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — there are a lot of special days on the calendar.
In my mind, however, some days are just a little more special than others.
Q: OK, Doug, what separates the merely special from the extremely special?
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A: It’s simple: if the day requires me to fire up the propane barbecue in my backyard, it’s a sure sign that we are celebrating something that goes beyond being just special.
Which brings us to today — Sept. 15, 2021 — which just happens to be (and, yes, I realize the headline on this weekly newsletter tends to give the topic away) National Double Cheeseburger Day.
“National Double Cheeseburger Day is enjoyed every year on September 15. This iconic food item is way up on the charts of everyone’s favourite foods. Full credit has to go to the person who decided that double cheese is better than single cheese. After all, one can never have too much cheese, right?” drools the holiday website nationaltoday.com.
“A double cheeseburger is comfort food for many with its extensive flavour profile and cheesy goodness. It can transport you straight into a food paradise. You can either simply enjoy a plain double cheeseburger, or have your choice of meat or vegan patties to go with it. Add your choice of toppings or don’t add them, as long as you have your double cheese in it, it’s qualified to be a double cheeseburger.”
Tribune Media TNSDouble cheeseburger and potato chips (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune / TNS files)
Now that we’ve whetted your appetite, let’s take a moment to chow down on some burger history. For starters, according to the website, it was back in 1926 when a guy named Lionel Sternberger created the first cheeseburger in Pasadena, Calif.
“While working at his father’s sandwich shop, The Rite Spot, he saw a sizzling piece of hamburger that just needed that one extra thing. So he decided to slap a slice of American cheese on it to see what comes out of it. Technically it was a cheese hamburger, not a plain cheeseburger, but that’s how cheese found its way in our burgers,” nationaltoday.com explains.
By most online accounts, the world’s first double cheeseburger (cue heavenly music) was slapped together in 1937 at the legendary Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in southern California. But — and this is a big but — that burger also contained something else, by which we mean a third bun, meaning it was the same burger blueprint McDonald’s followed when it created the Big Mac.
Anyone in their right mind knows that a real double cheeseburger doesn’t need an extra bun or filler of any kind. It just needs two perfectly grilled beef patties topped with gooey melted cheese. (Hold on, I need a napkin to wipe the drool off my keyboard.)
I know what you are thinking right now. You are thinking: “Gee, Doug, if a double cheeseburger is better than a single cheeseburger, then a triple cheeseburger would be even better than a double, right?”
Ha ha ha! Wrong! That just goes to show how little you know about the science behind cheeseburgers. Anyone who has ever tried to wrestle a triple cheeseburger into their cake-hole — and I have tried; oh, how I have tried — knows it can be completely unmanageable and a disaster for whatever you happen to be wearing.
Consider what Nick Kindelsperger wrote for the Chicago Tribune in a profound 2016 article headlined: “It’s a double cheeseburger world, and we’re just living in it.”
According to this burger expert: “If a double cheeseburger bests a single, what stops a triple cheeseburger from taking the crown? This gets to the issue of proportion. The best burgers ensure that you get all the components in each and every bite. If too large, you run the risk of the dreaded burrito distribution dilemma — the sad fate of a poorly constructed burrito when all the components are unevenly spread, leaving you with a bite that is all sour cream. Keeping things compact helps avoid this problem.”
Got it? Good! So let’s stop beating around the bush and get on with the vital task of firing up the grill and putting together a double cheeseburger that will send your daily drool production off the charts.
But before we fill our bellies with burgers, let’s first stuff our still-beating hearts with the following juicy batch of highly digestible, uplifting and joyous news reports.
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