The best burger I’ve ever eaten was on Rollins Street in Columbia, Mo. The year was 2010. Like a first kiss, you never forget where you were standing when you ate that first burger that made you say out loud to the world, “This. This is why we are here.” The first kiss was at a science exhibit about the circus. I still can’t explain that one. The best burger is much more simple. On Rollins Street I discovered the glory of god’s perfect condiments, pickles and mustard.

A great piece of my life has been lived under the assumption that these two delights we’re not just bad, but reprehensible enough to be left for dead on the side of the burger plate like refuse along the highway. I spent over 20 years in denial, and when I look back I am ashamed to think that I spent nearly 80% of my life disrespecting these noble condiments.

That day things changed. I changed. I forgot to ask for no pickles or mustard on my cheeseburger and my worldview shifted. In that moment the rubbery, overcooked hockey puck of a burger I had on that corner stopped being lunch and became love.

I love pickles and mustard on a burger. In my opinion a burger exists for the sole purpose of delivering condiments. It’s a plus if the meat is good too, but the most important piece of the entire operation is not the patty, cheese or bun, it’s the pickles and mustard.

Pickles and mustard were what I fell in love with that fateful day.

I guess you can’t rekindle an old love, because this week’s attempt to ignite that old flame with a Diner-Style Smashed Cheeseburger (Page 552) literally ended up in flames. Specifically, the flames of a burning toaster oven.

Our tragic story began at the grocery store with a hunt for beef, buns and pickles. I got beef because turkey burgers aren’t burgers, they’re sandwiches. I got Colonial Buns because their tagline, “Colonial is good bread” really hits you over the head with a hammer of creativity. I got pickles because, as stated earlier, no hamburger is complete without pickles and mustard. My mustard was waiting faithfully at home, lonely without it’s pickle partner.

The Food Lab recommends grinding your own meat for optimum burger pleasure. Due to lack of time, skill and equipment I trusted the butcher, even though his answer to my question, “What should I use for hamburgers?” was a verbose and well thought-out, “Uhhh…Hamburger?”

While my pan was heating I got started on preparation work. I sliced an onion without crying and brushed my buns with butter.  The fact that the only brush I own is a toothbrush forced me to actually “spatula” my buns with butter rather than brush them. This means I also spatula’d my countertop, cutting board, hands and pants as well.

The pan is beginning to smoke as I create little Easter Island Meat Moai monuments, and I mentally prepare for the rush of raw power I’ll experience as I smash these perfect little meat-beings under the power of my heavy-duty metal spatula. I place my buttered buns delicately on the rack in the toaster oven.

The meat mounds are in the pan. I take out my anger at everyone who has ever wronged me as I smash the two burgers down with the force of the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs.

I may have overdone it. One burger looks like it spent 15 rounds in the ring with Tyson. The other looks like a meat pancake. I realize that love is delicate and in my foolish attempts to recreate it, I’ve crushed it.

Moral lessons be damned. I’m a man of solutions. What can I make out of my meat pancake? Meat crepes? A meat Frisbee? Put a hot dog inside of it and make pigs in a meat blanket? What’s that smell?

The toaster oven is on fire.

I did not expect buns to be my downfall. The smoke alarm begins to scream. This does not help the situation, and merely adds a shrill soundtrack to the horror I’m witnessing.

I took a picture of the fire, because I’m dedicated to this food blog even at my own personal risk. If the house burns down and the insurance company gets involved and they find my charred remains, they probably wont even have to pay my family with this type of damning evidence.

I turn the oven off and the fire eventually recedes, content with merely terrifying me today, and not taking my life.

A quick breath later, and now my hamburgers are overcooked, and under-flipped. I make the flip and throw some cheese on to cover up the burn marks of meat pancake and the scars of his poor mangled mess of a burger brother. They’ve seen some shit. They deserved a better end than this.

Cheeseburger construction begins, as I feel obligated to put my lover through a proper burial, covered in lettuce, onions, mustard and pickles.

Despite all that’s happened between us, like my cheeseburger trying to burn my house down, I needed to try to find that spark between us again. I take a bite out of pure respect, for the burger and my efforts. I tried so hard to find that blissful burger moment again. Maybe with this bite of cheeseburger, I will.

I didn’t. I’m out of goddamn mustard.

Recipe: 14/20

Did I do the dishes? No