A couple of weeks ago, the editor of SeriousEats.com (which is a really great website) contacted me about using one of my pics for a post they were working on for regional hamburgers.
That post is here – it includes steamed, smashed, cheese-stuffed, green chile, onion, guberburgers, butter burgers, pimento cheese, Maid-Rites, and the hamburger that is native to a triangle-shaped area of north Alabama, north Mississippi, and south Tennessee: the slugburger.
A slugburger is a hamburger, but it’s had the ground beef “extended” with some sort of filler – bread, flour, etc – to make meat go further. These little hamburgers were developed during the Depression, when resources were tight.
Well, the slugburger, breadburger, doughburger, Dudie burger…there are several names for them, but for this they went with “slugburger”. Adam needed a pic of a slugburger and I made a set of slugburger pics on Flickr.
I think I was misquoted a wee-little bit because they’re not called slugburgers in Moulton like is stated on the seriouseats.com post, but the cute part was that he (correctly) quoted me about telling my friend that works with the Southern Foodways Alliance that they should do a Slugburger Trail just like they have a Boudin Trail, Barbecue Trail, Gumbo Trail, and a Tamale Trail.
Well, until then, I made my own little Slugburger Trail on Google Maps just now. If you know of any places that should be added, just email me (ginger —AT— deepfriedkudzu …DOT… com).
Oh! And Garden & Gun has a really-short film by Joe York with John Currence eating fried tamales at the Bourbon Mall outside Leland, Mississippi. Now, I think the best tamales are at Hick’s in Clarksdale but I’ve never had a fried tamale, either. And what tops it off is John saying “take something perfect, fry it, makes it better. Every time.”
(UPDATE: shortly after this, the Bourbon Mall had a fire and is closed)
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I have another friend who is working on the Delta Culinary Trail for Mississippi tourism and can’t wait to see how that is going to turn out!