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Hamburgers, like hot dogs, are a familiar food at cookouts and quick dinners. In fact, they have become one of the most popular fast foods on the market. They come in many different sizes with many different toppings. The most common are ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and onion.
The big question is, however, why are they called hamburgers? There's no ham in them. Well, this story goes back a long time. Back to when the only people in Russia were nomads. These people were called the Tartars, and they liked to steal cattle, shred the meat, and eat it raw! Time passed, and the Tartars introduced this food to other people, often adding salt, pepper, and onion juice. This kind of meat got called steak tartare.
One of the people the Tartars traded with were Germans in a town called Hamburg. The Germans decided to cook the steak, and the cooked version got called Hamburg steak. Well, people from Hamburg moved to America many years later, bringing their food with them. The Americans called these people Hamburgers, and eventually applied the name to their food, too.
Since then, we have had hamburgers, but without the bun. The hamburger bun was first introduced in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904.
The main ingredient of hamburger is ground beef. Depending on who's making the hamburger, salt, pepper, ketchup, or onions may be added. For the classic hamburger sandwich, the fried or grilled meat is placed on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard.
Hamburger is a part of the meat/protein group. How healthy it is depends on how it is cooked and what comes with it. If the hamburger is fried, it is usually less healthy than if it is grilled, since the grill tends to burn off the unhealthy fats.
The hamburger-as-a-sandwich can be found as a cheeseburger, double decker, and infinite variations in the fast food restaurants. Hamburger meat is also made into meatloaf, taco filling, and sloppy joes.
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