Hey, brainiacs.
I'm Cristen Conger from Stuff Mom Never Told You here
to tell you about where the word "hamburger" came from.
Because guess what, y'all?
It don't got no ham in it.
Now the short answer is that hamburgers
came from Hamburg, Germany.
There was a little guy named Hans hanging out one day
and he had some meat in the fridge and some spices.
And he was super hungry, and so he
decided to put it all together and make
a hamburger, or a Hansburger, as he liked to call it.
Unfortunately, that is not actually
where hamburgers came from.
But I like to think of a man on a mountain eating a hamburger
way back in the day.
No, but there is something about Germans
and loving barbecue foods.
Because not only is Germany the home of hamburgers,
it is also the home of hot dogs.
Because hot dogs were invented in Frankfurt,
Germany, aka, frankfurters-- get it?
But instead of old Hans on the side of his mountain making
ye olde hamburger, it actually goes back to the Tartars,
a nomadic people who invaded Central Asia and Eastern Europe
in the Middle Ages.
And y'all, the Tartars were really intense about
their beef.
They ate it raw, hence the name "steak tartar."
And according to one account, they tenderized their beef
by putting it between the saddle and the horse as they rode.
This is stuff that's straight out of Game of Thrones.
George R. R. Martin, take note.
You should put that in your next book.
Now the Tartars then introduced the food to Germany.
And then the Germans took the beef,
spiced it up, and then fried or broiled it,
and thus we have the Hamburg steak.
Now when German immigrants then came over to the United States,
they brought their Hamburg steaks with them,
along with some clothes and pictures of loved ones.
Now it showed up on New York City restaurant menus
in the 1880s, and in no time at all,
hamburgers became a sensation as sandwiches at the 1904 World's
Fair in Saint Louis.
And now, for all of you people who get cravings for hamburgers
after you smoke something that is not legal-- in 1921,
White Castle was founded in Wichita, Kansas, which
is the oldest chain of hamburger restaurants.
Now, the hamburger's popularity exploded in the United States
after World War II when burgers became the main menu
item at drive-in restaurants, spawned by a growing
number of cars in the United States.
Because what's better than a drive-in date
than the smell of greasy meat in a car
mixing with pheromones and blooming passions?
Now, speaking of fast food chains,
McDonald's started also as a hamburger stand
in San Bernardino, California, and spread the hamburger
around the world, for better or worse for our bodies.
The world's largest restaurant chain,
McDonald's, has more than 26,000 restaurants in 119 countries,
and has served billions and billions of hamburgers.
But what I would like to see is the return
of the Tartar method of beef tenderizing by putting it
between a saddle and a horse.
Because while I would not want to eat that,
it sounds pretty cool.
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