A discussion
Snip...."What I found was a bit more burger history: Oklahoma claims to be the birthplace of the hamburger itself—served on a bun, that is. (As opposed to just the standalone meat patty or the 1885 creation of 15-year old Charlie Nagreen of Seymour, Wisconsin, who was selling meatballs at a county fair and took to smushing his wares into patties to be served between bread slices for easier eating.) No, this is the classic bun-burger-bun hamburger as we’ve come to know it.
The year was 1891, when Oscar “Weber Bilby” grilled beef burgers on a pig-iron grill for a 4th of July barbecue in Tulsa and served them on dedicated bread rolls. They were a big hit, and he continued to make his burgers for picnics and the like. The Bilby family eventually opened a hamburger stand in 1933 and grilled those burgers on that original grill from the Independence Day picnic.
Lo and behold, Weber’s Superior Root Beer Drive-in is still in operation, though it’s moved across the parking lot from its previous location. Weber’s is not 10 minutes east off of the historic Route 66 where it passes through Tulsa, the capital of the famed highway. Oscar’s grandson Rick Bilby and his wife, Jennifer, managed the joint for more than 45 years, retiring in 2022 and leaving their daughter, Michelle, and her husband, Bryan Merrell, at the helm. Jennifer can’t remember exactly when she started working for her parents, but she said, “I started *getting paid* to work here when I was like ” snip...."Making the Onion Burger If there was anything good about the not-so-great Great Depression, it was the mettle of those who lived through it, and part of that was the ability to find substitutes and stretch ingredients. (See the Depression Cake my grandmother used to make without eggs.) Burgers filled out with cheap and abundant onions quickly became a thing.
Bryan started with a heaping pile of sliced onion on the grill, enough to fully cover a wide smashburger patty. He gave them a squirt of water to quickly steam them a bit, then added beef tallow to let them brown a bit. Meanwhile, he laid out a prepped third-pound beef patty with parchment paper on it, which prevented the meat from sticking to the round cast-iron press he used to smash the patty on the grill. He sprinkled this with his secret seasoning blend (salt and pepper at a minimum). He caught me eyeing the motley collection of spice bottles above the prep station as I tried to guess what his recipe might be. Red herrings. “Those are up there just to throw people off,” he laughed."