Pineapple on hamburgers

Right out the gate: “Hamburger” does not refer to limp, overprocessed concoctions like the Whopper or Big Mac. While I admit to an occasional craving for a McDonald’s hamburger, when I want a hamburger, I just won’t be moved by any McThing. Furthermore, “pineapple” does not refer to anything accessible only with a can opener or a pull-tab. While canned fruit has its place, it’s outside the scope of this discussion.

A hamburger is a substantial, but not indecent, patty of ground or chopped beef cooked until it’s at least medium rare and hopefully not until it’s too well done, situated between two halves of a roll, bun or any other subcategory of bread hearty enough not to go soggy in the presence of juices. Pineapple is a fruit. It grows on stiff-leafed flowering plants. It’s difficult to open. It’s really tasty.

Put together, however, and the hamburger is reinvented. More than mustard or catsup or lettuce or cheese (which, despite my Wisconsin heritage, is to me more of a contaminant than a complement to hamburgeoning goodness), a ring or disc of fresh pineapple is the ultimate accessory to any burger, even those of turkey or veggie orientations. Sweet with a hint of sourness, the fruit is well complemented by the salt and spices present in any well-seasoned patty.

The combination of the two hardly seems like a left-field, “you got peanut butter in my chocolate”-caliber revelation — they go together so naturally, so happily. Blame their long separation on the tomato lobby. The cold/sweet function of burgers has long been relegated to the tomato, a fruit that wasn’t all that even before it was reduced to hydroponic misery on supermarket shelves. Even the best tomatoes tend to have an unseemly balance between the toughness of the skin and the quality of the flesh inside — it’s too fleshy, in a literal sense. (I suspect cannibals really like whole tomatoes.) Not to denigrate how much I value tomatoes in my daily existence — in sauces, in pastes, sun-dried, etc. — but their long-standing relationship with hamburgers is like Kid Rock touring with Afrika Bambaataa.

Pineapple, on the other hand, can stand up to the heartiness of the patty without overpowering it. The consistency of the pineapple-laden burger is above reproach as well — the firmness of a ripe or slightly underripe slice of pineapple slows the teeth as they cut through the bun, and the extra force needed to slice through the fruit carries all the way through the patty as well, releasing the juices of both simultaneously to flood the palate. All of the traditional condiments, with the possible exception of cheese, provide fine accompaniment to the fundamental flavors the two main ingredients supply. And while the slipperiness of the pineapple may favor the British idea of approaching a burger with fork and knife, the satisfaction of the dish provides demands it be lifted, two-fisted, to the American maw.

Because the readership of Flak Magazine has a reputation for being comprised of innovators, early adopters and free thinkers, this is a call to action. You are hereby exhorted to put pineapple on your hamburger and to write in with your praises or, improbable though it may be, your criticisms. They’ll be printed here and cultural anthropologists will, in coming years, regard your comments as a signpost of the movement that transformed the face of one of our nation’s culinary cornerstones, bringing a new level of gustatorial greatness into the mainstream. Having a pineapple-enhanced hamburger soon is something you owe your nation. Like voting.

Besides, I mean, really: tomatoes?

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)