Clash of the Hybrids: Pizza vs. Burgers
Pizza and burgers. The kings of the Western food world. Atop the food pyramid these titans sit, locked in a sort of perpetual truce. Should one of them be snubbed in favour of the other on one drunken Friday night, they care not. For they know that the battle runs long. A single weekend matters not in the struggle eternal. In the past, humankind has naively tried to merge the bloodlines. The results, unsuccessful. As with their attempts to fuse other apex predators, the offspring proved sterile, or just outright comical. When will we learn?
Last night was a big one. You drank things. You know this. Partly because your brain is thumping profusely with every millilitre of poisoned blood being forcibly pumped through its complex labyrinth of capillaries. Partly because your tongue is firmly cemented to the roof of your mouth. Or maybe it’s because your wallet is empty…and happens to be sitting on the kebab-stained back seat of a taxi somewhere in the city. Either way, your state of opprobrium is deserved.
It’s now 3pm on a Saturday. Your abused stomach tentatively gurgles. Surely the punishment will not continue?! It hasn’t heard a rumble from old mate liver all morning. He was up working all night after all, poor dude. He didn’t ask for this. There’s only one thing that can get all your organs back on your side. In search of a peace offering, your mind scrambles. Pizza? Burger? No. You’ve gone too far this time. You really need to pull something out of the proverbial hat. “I’m going to make pizza burgers!” you exclaim as the pitiful sack of skin you’re confined within awkwardly rises from the foetal-shaped trench you’ve habitually carved in your lounge. Is this really the best idea to attempt in your current state? You know when your wife, currently deep into the third trimester of pregnancy, says upon your proposal “Ok…but you are an idiot”, that you have problems are on the path to glory.
Half-way to the supermarket you realise the haphazard nature of your trial. Only accounting for one section of the punnett square of possible phenotypes would be an insult to the divine deities of both food groups, your kitchen, and Mendel himself. No, this simply would not suffice. To appease both your curiosity and the gods themselves, both the pizza burger and burger pizza must be attempted.
Knowing full well that there was a high probability of either, or both, of these hybrids becoming a total monstrosity, you decide to keep things restricted to a fairly basic standard. After all, it wouldn’t really be anything even close to an equitable experiment if an excess of fancy toppings skewed the salivation toward one of the final products over the other. But which to try first? The decision making process was hastened by the desire to eat everything that is not already located in your digestive tract. Which would be quicker? You guessed it, first up, the pizza burger!
Pizza Burger Trial
Toppings –
- Tomato base sauce (w/ fresh Garlic, Thyme, Oregano & Marjoram)
- Red capsicum
- Spanish salami
- Some leaves (Spinach and Rocket)
- Pesto
- Cheese
Above: Pizza Burger (Mk.I) – Yes, I made two, for…uhhh…scientific reasons. Replication is everything. [Click pics to expand]
Observations –
This was easier to create than a standard burger. The longest part of the process was reducing the tomato base sauce. The lazy among us could further hasten this part by skipping this step completely and just using some sort of tomato sauce, although it should be known that you are casu(a)l scum and are about to dine on a bourgeois burger.
Burger Pizza Trial
Toppings –
- Tomato base sauce
- Smokey Worcestershire Beef Burger Mix (Lizard ™)
- Bacon
- Tomato
- Pineapple
- More leaves
- Red Onion
- Cheese
Above: Burger Pizzas (Mk.I & Mk.II). [Click pics to expand]
Observations –
In contrast to the pizza burger, the burger pizza took a considerably longer time to make, actually longer than what it normally takes for my regular pizzas. This was due to having to prepare and cook the burger meat (and bacon) prior to topping the bases. As you can see from the picture, I ended up making two (again, for science). One of which was meant to represent a sort of standard cheese and bacon burger. The other ended up sitting somewhere between a BLT and an Aussie burger “with the lot” (sans beetroot and egg, lettuce subbed for other greens). Although, I must admit, the final product was pretty damn similar to a supreme-style pizza, which isn’t really a bad thing I suppose.
Conclusion
While both were fucking awesome, and even though they share the same parents, they are two surprisingly different beasts. The pizza burger is surely a winner in the short-term, with its less labour intensive creation process putting you closer to that hedonistic gratification you unashamedly desire. However, like a good grind album, the proviso of the quick-fix is that it comes at the cost of a deeper, more resounding sense of satisfaction that can only be achieved through submitting to something more demanding. This is exactly where the burger pizza excels. The extra prep-work pays for itself many times over in terms of “THIS. I MUST BE EATING THIS AT ALL TIMES. FROM THIS DAY FORTH I WILL ONLY EAT THIS” and such.
So there you have it. In the clash of the hybrids, the only clear winner was clogged arteries. Has anyone else tried either one of these combinations before? I know some fast-food chains periodically spawn vile versions of a similar theme. Maybe you splice the genes of other foods? Tell us about your mutant foods, or ideas for what you’d like to see happen through artificial selection, go nuts, open swim etc.
