The one downside of the undying Steamed Hams meme—aside from the worry that one good Simpsons scene from a long time ago is occupying the creative energies of our generation’s best and brightest—is that it reminds us, always, that we cannot just order some steamed hams in real life. Principal Skinner may not be much of a chef, but the plate of hamburgers he serves Supernintendo Chalmers looks way tastier than you’d expect anything from Krusty Burger to be.
Luckily, we now have a collaboration between Binging With Babish’s Andrew Rea and Alvin Cailan of First We Feast’s The Burger Show that demonstrates how to make our very own steamed hams from the comfort of home.
“We’re steaming hamburgers like a couple of true sociopaths,” Rea says after explaining that the video is him finally answering one of the most common requests the channel receives. He and Cailan, faced with the daunting task of trying to make cartoon food, decide to follow the example of a restaurant in Connecticut famous for its steamed cheeseburgers, but make a few changes to compensate for the fact that neither of them own a dedicated steaming machine.
Former Simpsons writer and showrunner Bill Oakley shows up to comment on his creation being turned into a real burger along the way. (He says he’s never eaten a steamed burger, which is a real shame.) By the time the video is done, two different real-life steamed hams have been created. Rea says his isn’t great, but burger-expert Cailan’s more liberal approach to the recipe gives him a ham worthy of its reputation.
Now we just need Jughead’s piles of hamburgers to be turned into a persistent enough meme that Cailan and Rea are forced to turn those into real, delicious-looking food, too.
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39 Comments
But steamed hams aren’t steamed, they’re called steamed hams despite the fact that they are obviously grilled.
This.
If you watch the video you’ll see they purchase fast food and disguise it as their own cooking. It’s delightfully devilish, really.
Make sure to stretch your calves first, though.
Isometric exercises!
Then they reverse cook metal in the microwave with the door open to localize the Aurora Borealis in their kitchen. But that’s an old trick.
Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
Being from Utica, I’ve never heard of this.
Steamed Hams are pretty popular in Albany though.
Oh not in Utica no. It’s an Albany expression.
Unlike the Ribwich, no animals were hunted to extinction….
Okay, but what about the Krusty Partially Gelatinated Non-Dairy Gum-Based Beverage?
Isn’t White Castle a steamed ham?
Nope. I state this from experience of being drunk and watching them cook them for YEARS.
The grill is heated with steam, but it is still a dry heat cooking method.
They’re closer to steamed than fried. They place the raw patty on a bed of onions and it’s really the steam from the onions that cooks the burger, more so than the heat from the grill itself.
As an aside, the actual “steamed ham” aka “obviously grilled Krustyburger” at Universal is pretty decent, though it’s no big pink donut.
That picture at the top looks FUCKING DISGUSTING, is all I have to comment here, thank you.
What, you don’t find gray, mushy meat appetizing?
they say if it’s gray, it’s good for you
That was the shitty one…the good one looks BAF, and I’m definitely going to try to muster something similar up at work this weekend (although I don’t have access to custom-ground beef).
I agree. Steaks are meant to be served medium rare, not hamburgers.
As AVC’s own Mike Vago explained in a recent Wiki Wormhole entry, there is such a thing as steamed cheeseburgers and they’ve been around (localized in central Connecticut, rather than Principal Skinner’s kitchen) for almost a century:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamed_cheeseburger
What does a steamed cheeseburger have to do with steamed hams?
That is such a Central Connecticut thing to do. Some Hartford insurance yutz came up with it, no doubt
Yes, they discuss that at length in the video.
I have eaten at Ted’s, one of the places mentioned on that Wikipedia link. I quite enjoyed their burgers. Very juicy.
That burger looking good, ya know it?huh? Dude down the road, frickin 5 grand to fix his waterline. Actually, $4900, no insurance. Dude down there just chillin in the hole, water gushin. I asked him if he wanted a beer, a coors. I got fucking coors at the store, fuckin rocky mountain high. Dude down there by the store asking me for some beers, said give me 4. I was like, take 6, 8 even. He’s like, nah. Dude actin high class grabbing beers from me, fuckin coors. Shit.
““We’re steaming hamburgers like a couple of true sociopaths,””
So, this guy isn’t familiar with The Simpsons?
There was a food truck in SF that made steamed hamburgers a couple of years ago, which I just realized probably related to the Simpsons somehow. Although not mentioned anywhere on the truck.
http://www.thesteaminburger.com/about-us.html
A “krusty” burger? Well, that doesn’t sound too appetizing. What kind of stew do they have today?
Tomacco stew!
Creamed eel
Sorry, people seem to like the Krusty Burgers, but I’ve always been a Krusty Krab kind of a guy. Only there’s no Krabby pattys to be found near me (well, there’s a Crusty Crab, but that’s not all the same thing), so I have to settle for Kickin K’Asian. Yum, I’ll take it out alright!
If you ever microwaved a hamburger, it’s the same thing. (Not that I ever did that. Even late one night whilst very drunk and really hungry. Nope. Never.)
Rubbish not-funny thing is still rubbish. Wow.
The second burger’s pretty legit, doh. Agreed; I never got the joke…I just assumed Skinner was serving Smithfield pork “burgers” that had been steamed.No, they’re not good. At all. The last time I cooked with them I added Italian seasoning and served them on biscuits; you don’t really get enough meat with a sausage biscuit, so I made burger-sized sausage biscuits. The seasoning really needs to be blended with the meat first, because they came out tasting like utterly tasteless pre-formed pork patties covered in Italian seasoning…same with BBQ sauce; didn’t taste like a McRib at all, even though I used a proper sauce.
Rubbish, pointless comment is… rubbish. Wow.
Forget steamed hams, I would much rather learn how to have an Aurora Borealis completely localized within my kitchen.