Route 66 Onion Burger

My take on this fantastic burger starts with a blend of rib eye and ground chuck. While this isn't exactly authentic it adds fat to the mix and that helps to really brown the onions. 

 **Get your butcher to grind the beef together without trimming the ribeye. This will be somewhere in the 2lb range total but you only need about a 3/4 lb to make 4 to 6 burgers. We usually take out what we need and package the rest.  If you cant afford the ribeye just get the cheapest fatty fresh ground beef they have.  

As you may or my not be aware, fried onion burgers have been made since before the great depression, no not 2008. I'm talking about 1929 to 1939. The 2008 was just a blip on the financial landscape.  At any rate, fried onion burger restaurants are sprinkled all over Oklahoma but specifically a man by the name of Ross Davis was the creator near El Reno, Oklahoma. 

According to local Oklahoman lore:

Davis began making fried onion hamburgers in the twenties during the depression. Since onions were cheap and meat was expensive, Davis would add a half shredded onion atop a five cent meat patty and smash the burger with the back of his spatula. It made the burger look bigger, while adding a tremendous amount of flavor.

John T. Edge explains how a local businessman and his idea became what is El Reno’s local delicacy, “Like other iconic American dishes, the taste for burgers laced with onions was wrought during days of privation. Eventually, acquired taste spurred localized tradition.”

There you have it. A "five cent patty"!?  I've never seen one of those. To this day, several restaurants near where Route 66 passes thru El Reno, still make this great all American classic born out of hard times and innovation.  I've even heard that they used a mortar trowel and cut the end flat and used that as one of their spatula to smash the burgers.