Cheeseburger
From Free net encyclopedia
Image:Mac-Cheese Humberger.jpg A cheeseburger is a hamburger with cheese in addition to the meat. The first cheeseburger was cooked sometime between 1924 and 1926 by a young chef named Lionel Sternberger in Pasadena, California (though the cheeseburger's invention might also be attributed in part to a passing vagrant who allegedly suggested that Sternberger add cheese to one of his burgers). The trademark for the name "cheeseburger" was awarded in 1935 to Louis Ballast of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In in Denver, Colorado.
A juicy lucy is a type of cheeseburger developed and popularized in Minneapolis, Minnesota where the cheese is placed inside the raw meat, and then cooked until the cheese melts.
Giant cheeseburgers in the United States
Several restaurants offer eating challenges in which an abnormally large meal is free if it is eaten within a certain period of time. While the most famous challenges involve huge steaks (such as the 72 ounce steak from the Big Texan steakhouse), giant cheeseburgers have been increasing in popularity as a challenge item. At the start of 2005, the largest commercially available cheeseburger was Ye Olde 96er from Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. The 96 refers to the number of ounces of post-cooked hamburger. Cheese, a bun and an inundation of toppings increase the total mass of the sandwich to about eleven pounds. Competitions involving the 96er were featured on several Food Network shows. No customer was able to finish the 96er within the challenge's time limit of three hours from the 96er's debut in 1998 until the beginning of 2005. Competitive eater Eric "Badlands" Booker, who weighs over 400 pounds, was able to complete the sandwich in 7 1/2 hours.
On January 12, 2005, Kate Stelnick, a 115 pound college student from Princeton, New Jersey finished her colossal cheeseburger in two hours and 54 minutes, becoming the first diner to defeat the challenge. The freshman attending The College of New Jersey had apparently never eaten competitively before and had no notable training other than the gastronomic conditioning an exceptionally large appetite provided her. As of August 2005, she has yet to participate in another eating challenge or contest.
After Denny's and Ms. Stelnick obtained a moderate degree of fame following her feat, the Clinton Station Diner in New Jersey came out with a 12.5 pound "Zeus" burger in February 2005. Denny's countered with a fifteen pound "Belly Buster" burger in May and offered a challenge in which the "Belly Buster" was free to a team of two eaters finishing it in less than four hours. Restaurants in South Carolina and Ontario then continued the escalation with 19 and 30-35 pound cheeseburgers respectively. The Clinton Station Diner has since added to its menu the 50 pound "Mt. Olympus" burger, which is free to any team of no greater than five eaters that can finish it in three hours or less. To date, no eater (or team of less than five persons) has completed any of these titanic cheeseburgers.