Wander around any suburban neighbourhood in Canada or the U.S. this month and you will get a whiff of North Americans’ favourite pastime. The month is the start of the annual grilling season and many millions of people will be barbecuing everything from beef steaks to ground beef patties. And yes, there will be plenty of pork chops, hot dogs and even chicken legs and wings. But hamburgers will be number one. The number consumed annually in the U.S. is around 50 billion. So it’s worth considering how the burger became a staple of the American diet.
George Motz, a burger scholar of sorts, has dedicated more than 20 years of his life to travelling across the US. researching hamburgers. According to Motz, the hamburger’s story starts in 13th century Mongolia when Mongols and Tatars were fighting. “Apparently, the Tatars had a taste for raw mutton. They would ride all day long with raw mutton under their saddles. When they finally set up camp, they would take this raw, warm mutton, chop it up, probably add some spices or something and eat it that way,” he says.
The dish eventually made its way to ship workers and ports lining the Baltic Sea, which allowed it to reach more westward parts of Europe including Scandinavia. From there, it made its way to Germany and the port of Hamburg many centuries later. The dish by then had shifted from raw mutton to chopped cooked beef, which is known today as frikadellen. As German migrants waited for their ships, they ate frikadellen as a cheap and tasty meal option. When they left Hamburg for the U.S. in the mid-19th century, migrants brought knowledge of the dish with them.
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As German migrants moved westward across the U.S. to farm, state fairs also began popping up. Farmers from all walks of life would attend these fairs to learn about different agricultural practices and equipment. According to Motz, German migrants set up their own stands serving Hamburg steak, which was considered an ethnic food at the time. While hot dogs predate hamburgers as fair food, Motz says he believes the hot dog inspired several places to eventually start putting Hamburg steaks onto bread, making them Hamburg sandwiches and eventually hamburgers.
Hamburgers are now a point of pride in American cuisine, says Motz. It is pretty much the only food invention in America in the last 100 years or so. It started as ethnic food from Germany, but the U.S. adopted it and made it different by putting it on bread.
Americans this grilling season might find themselves turning more to hamburgers than ever because of the much higher price of steaks. In addition, monthly beef prices so far this year have been far above past years’ prices. USDA reported that the average Choice beef price in March was up 18.7 per cent from March last year. Its All Fresh beef price was up 15.2 per cent year-on-year.
These prices led to trading down by consumers, who focused on buying more ground beef and cheaper cuts and less on high-priced steak items. This might change in May with more aggressive retail pricing. But analysts are concerned that some consumers have already been priced out of the top end of the retail beef market.
Yet even ground beef is not cheap anymore. The strong March retail beef price was driven by a record ground beef price of US$4.76 per pound up 17.7 per cent or $0.72 from 2021. It wasn’t that many years ago that ground beef prices averaged US$2 per pound.
