I don't care for tilapia and I like salmon better than mackerel, although I've eaten both. I've eaten every burger on that list except soft shelled turtle, which is not readily available here. My favorite is still my own grassfed beef, although my husband likes local lamb and we just had elk burgers a couple of months ago, they were similar to bison, which several local farmers grow here, it's become much more common. I'm not crazy for venison burger, but I've eaten it, so there are a couple extra "meats" to add to the list.

Which reminds me, I'm processing chickens on Friday and there was a chicken burger posted here that was delicious, I think it was a Thai recipe. I also make my own breakfast sausage with chicken.

Annie

Soft shelled turtles are endangered....
Goat burger??
Tuna burger?
tilapia burger??
I don't think so!

Why not goat? Not sure I see the objection to tuna burger either, and this has me wondering why I can't offhand remember ever having seen one. (Or have I? Now I'm not sure.) I'm guessing the tilapia is going to have a longer list of binders and flavors that will work with other cheap mild white fish, I'm interested in that one. I've never eaten makerel. Years ago I had a couple in the freezer but then Eileen made a comment that to this day I can't get past, so I'll pass on that one. I'd imagine that the soft-shell turtles of the eating variety are farmed? Just watched a video of the butchering. Not the greatest thing to watch at 4am. Shoulda known when I had to sign in and verify age on YouTube. I'll pass.

Anyway, I'll watch this thread for recipes.

I don't eat farmed fish (tilapia or any other), but I can buy local pork from heritage pigs on pasture and fed corn grown by the farmer. That ground pork makes fabulous burgers.

I make these quite a bit. We love them.

Salmon Burgers

1 (14.75 oz) can of salmon
1 egg
1/4 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs (Panko)

Drain salmon and reserve liquid. Mix egg, onion, bread crumbs and salmon together. Make into patties. If mixture is too dry, add some of the reserved liquid.

Place patties in hot frying pan in just a little oil. Let brown good on one side before trying to turn gently.

* I add some Old Bay Seasoning and about 6 inches of leftover smoked salmon. Really good!

Like Angelaid, I think a fish burger is just a salmon patty, or mackerel patty, or whatever. Mackerel is in a can right next to the salmon in my store, and the "burger" gets made just like a salmon patty does. It's just cheaper than salmon, and so that's what Grandma always bought unless we had homecanned salmon to use. Tuna, I think, would be along the same lines, I remember Ann T's tuna pate, which I liked a lot. Probably all that butter, LOL...

Goat makes a perfectly acceptable burger, although it reminds me a lot of venison. I just checked the sales flier for Fresh Thyme, a new chain here in the Midwest. The Grand Rapids store has ground goat or goat patties on sale, $7.99 a pound, organic and non GMO.

Oh, and I've had horse burger too. I'm relatively adventurous. (grin)

Annie

Here if you ordered a fish burger you would expect to get a fish fillet (either battered and deep fried, or just pan fried without coating) in the bun along with salad and tartare sauce. I'm partial to lamb burgers on Turkish bread with hoummous and feta.

Eww....canned mackerel is cat food....but mackerel caught by a line in the surf is wonderful! Even if some think it's bait!
My memories of my uncle was always standing up to mid calf, with a pipe in his mouth hat on his head ( he was bald) and a line in the water...oh and a bucket of bait up the beach, with a lid to keep the gulls out!....mackerel, flounder, snapper ( which are young blue fish) striper, and then to the bay where it was eels and crabs.
I'll take the lamb burgers any way you give me....the sheep barn has a stand to serve lamb burgers at the Iowa State Fair.

Those are meat sandwiches, not burgers.

dcarch :-)

a burger is ground meat made into a patty then grilled, fried or broil and placed between two pieces of bread, a roll and any type of bread like product will do as long as it is sandwich and not wrap, or single piece bread. condiment for burgers vary.

Hmmm. I consider hamburgers to be sandwiches too, they are meat between two pieces of bread (a bun). Sloppy joes or pulled pork are also sandwiches, but not burgers.

And I've also had salmon "burgers" from ground/chopped fresh salmon mixed with some spinach and feta and it was pretty good, but is fish meat? So anything with flesh is "meat", including poultry and seafood?

As for burgers, do veggie burgers (like black bean burgers) count, or only animal based products?

Annie

The word hamburger for a chopped meat patty predates the sandwich, and when you boil it down to its basics, it still refers to the meat. People differentiate it with modifying nouns, as in "hamburger patty" (just the meat) and "hamburger bun" (just the roll for the sandwich), "hamburger sandwich" (which I used to hear a lot but is no longer used as much), and "hamburger plate" (the meat in a composed dish without the bread). Similarly, falafel served in a dish with salads and accompaniments is called a "falafel plate" here, and one often hears "falafel pita" for the sandwich version. And falafel alone are often called "falafel balls" to clarify, in the same way that one speaks of a "hamburger patty". For both, when one is talking about the sandwich, one often just refers to the star, "hamburger" or "falafel".

There are many stories about the origin of the word "hamburger", many of which are demonstrably untrue, and many others of which probably are at least partly true. Some say that it comes from a dish popular in Hamburg, Germany, whether it's something like the hamburger patty we eat today or something more like steak tartare, or something in between. Another version of the same story is that Hamburg was known for its beef, so calling chopped beef "Hamburg" was a declaration of quality. There's one story, which has some clues that it's apocryphal, that says it was named after an immigrant ship, or line of ships, called Hamburg. Still another says it's named after Hamburg cows. What all of the stories have in common is a whole lot of 19th C. German immigrants coming to the USA calling some version of ground meat, usually made into a patty, a "hamburg steak" or "hamburger". It was also a time when chopped meats were in style in the US.

The hamburger sandwich was probably "invented" by many people in many locations. It's kind of obvious. There were sausages served in rolls probably since the beginning of culinary development--if you have a sausage and a roll, you put the sausage in the roll to keep in the drippings. Whatever it is, it certainly predates the hot dog, whether you're talking about a frankfurter or Coney Island Red Hot. The Earl of Sandwich certainly isn't the first person to put meat on bread, he's just famous for doing it at the gaming table so he wouldn't have to get up. Putting a hamburger patty in a roll for convenience is pretty obvious. Most historians point to the St. Louis World's Fair as the place where the hamburger sandwich was popularized as its own thing. There were many small vendors selling food to many many hungry people. A sandwich could be held and carried easily to a spot to picnic or just eaten standing or walking, and doesn't require a dish or utensils.

After that, the German name "hamburg" went out of style because of WWI (German was the second language in the US before then, the way Spanish is now). Many people changed their German names, and place names, and stopped speaking and teaching German, and the use of the word "hamburger" declined, though the meaning wasn't lost. There were also the stockyard scandals after which people were suspicious of any kinds of chopped or ground meats, so the food product decline in popularity along with the word. White Castle brought the hamburger back into popularity by promoting their stores' cleanliness and are really the origin of the popularity hamburger sandwiches, along with the word, which is now world wide. Many well known names in the hamburger sandwich biz started by selling hot dogs...

Of course, "burger" is just a shortening of hamburger which is really a synonym for "patty", especially as used in a sandwich.

Gefilte fish is a fish burger, if you're looking at the preparation, but rarely a sandwich. :)

German was never "the second language", Any more than Italian was or Dutch or Irish. All were a second language of many but ther never was a second language but for certain locals....as China town in New York and Norwegean in the upper midwest, Polish in parts of Chicago....but there was never a second language.
People didn't change their German names....but certain foods were jokingly spoken of differently...liberty cabbage for example instead of saurkraut>
Ground meats didn't originate at the stockyards, they were ground at the butcher shop.
A meal of cooked chopped beef, not served in a bun is called salsbury steak.
In the Northeast, a hamburger is made from chopped beef. The sandwich is called a hamburger, the filling is chopped beef.
When I first came to the midwest and heard people say they were going to buy some "hamburger meat", or give me a recipe saying "brown half a pound of hamburger meat. That has devolved over the years into simply "hamburger".
And "burger" is not a synonym for "patty". Burger has come to be slang for a sandwich with a patty of something inside. Where did you get your information?

I didn't mean second language like French is in Canada. Not an official language. German was commonly spoken, probably as a holdover from the Austro-Hungarian empire, because so many immigrants at that time (late 19th/early 20th C.) spoke at least some German. I don't remember for sure, but I think it was the number one foreign language taught in schools, as well. I get my information from history books, mostly. People did indeed change their Germanic names to ones that sounded more English. Look it up. Place names were changed too. Not every one. Probably not even a large percentage. It was done enough, however, for it to be recorded in the newspapers and books and for people to still be telling the stories.

Salisbury steak is named after an 18 C. doctor who thought that chopped meat was good for the digestion. It was part of that fashion for chopped meats that I mentioned. I didn't know about the connection between hamburger going out of style and the meat scandals before I read about it recently. Perhaps the source material was wrong. The distrust people had for meat, however, following publication of The Jungle, was real. I misspoke above. That was meat packing, not stockyards, but I didn't catch it when I posted.

I have never heard of any kind of chopped meat called Salisbury steak except a very particular kind of recipe. It must be a regional thing. They're called "hamburger" or "hamburger" steak here if they're the same kind of thing you'd put in a bun. Salisbury steak, here, is braised and served with the sauce and vegetables, or sometimes with mushroom gravy.

I believe you that "burger" is only used for sandwiches where you live. Here it is often used interchangeably with "patty". It is in other parts, as well, but I haven't done a formal study of it. We don't say "hamburger meat" here, though, of course, if it were printed in a recipe, it would be intelligible. It's "ground beef" here, or ground whatever the meat is. "Chopped beef" refers to hand chopped with a knife.

I've always felt that the popularity of chopped or ground meat might be based on the fact that it can be cooked quickly and still be tender unlike tougher meat which requires long, slow cooking. I imagine that meat in former times tended to be more muscular than today's cattle.

Looks like the OP has stirred the pot once again, getting us all riled up over definitions!

There's hamburger steak and there is Salisbury Steak. The former is just plain hamburger and Salisbury Steak (at Mom's house, anyway) was always ground beef with chopped onion mixed into the meat before cooking. I don't recall if she added other seasoning--maybe a dash of Worcestershire?--but, IIRC, she added a beaten egg to the meat. She never added any fillers like bread crumbs or oats.

Salisbury Steak was something between plain hamburger and meat loaf at our house.

I actually prefer lamb burgers to ground beef, although I wouldn't say no to those either :-)

My ex was a red meat vegetarian so I did do a lot of turkey burgers at one point in time. Even with plenty of seasoning, they are dry and rather tasteless compared to red meat :-) I do like salmon burgers and they are plentiful around here. Also veggie burgers made with all sorts of strange, non-meat ingredients (tofu, beans, mushrooms, etc.) are very popular but I guess they don't qualify as a beef/meat alternative :-)

Ham can be cheaper than fresh pork ham.

Add some to other meat burgers for added flavor.

A real Ham burger.

dcarch

Although there is some dispute regarding the issue, hamburgers are believed to have originated in Hamburg, Germany in the 19th century - hence the name "hamburger" :-))

"During the 19th century, Hamburg became
famous for their beef, from cows raised in the regional countryside.
Hamburg beef was commonly chopped, seasoned and molded into patties.
Since refrigeration was not yet available, fresh beef like this had to
be cooked immediately. Hamburg beef came with a hefty price tag outside
of its native land, and was often substituted with less expensive
varieties of beef."

But it wasn't until the 'Hamburg steak' made it to the US that the chopped beef patties got placed between bread or rolls and became a hamburger similar to what we know of now.

Ham apparently has nothing to do with it :-))

"Ham apparently has nothing to do with it"

Some Australians and Brits insist on calling "hamburgers" "beef burgers" and it drives me crazy:-)

When I was at The Fresh Market earlier this week, I noticed "spicy shrimp and bacon burgers" in the uncooked but prepared seafood section. They looked similar to the crab cakes. Sounded good to me, but I was a little skittish about "spicy," so I passed.

Here we also have ground beef or ground goat or whatever, I've never heard it called "hamburger meat", although I think I'd know what that was if I were asked for it.

A fresh ham is still ham, it doesn't have to be smoked to become ham, so a true HAM burger would just be a ground pork patty.

And, although not really a burger, there is the "patty melt", which is pretty close.

Annie

My Mom and grandpa (not Mom's Dad) called ground beef "hamburger" and "hamburger meat" and I've seen home recipes which refer to it as either.

In Oz a fresh leg of pork is "a pork leg" and never a ham. Ham is always the brined/smoked kind of pork leg.

Maybe it's a regional thing? Growing up, we always called ground beef 'hamburger' but never called it 'hamburger meat'. And we never referred to it as 'ground beef'. Now, I use both terms but probably call it 'hamburger' more often than not unless I consciously think about it.

UK they call it mince then name of meat

True. Sometimes they just say "mince", as well. But then there's mincemeat, which originally contained meat, but is often just fruit, booze and spices, sometimes with meat fat, nowadays (according to Wikipedia, because it's something I've only heard of and marvelled at--but now that I know it used to have meat in it I understand better why it's called "meat" :) ).

Ci_lantro, I'm sure you're right about it being regional. Calling it "hamburger" made me think of old movies where they say the boxer's face looked like "hamburger". I always knew they meant raw ground beef, not sandwiches. :) But they inevitably had some kind of New York or maybe Boston or Rhode Island, accent. Distinctively Northeast, anyway. The kind of guys who called clueless people "mugs". OH!!! "Mugs"! Like 'Muggles"!!! Oh!! Found a cognate! How fun!

In the U.K. mincemeat is the sweet stuff we eat at xmas and the tradtional stuff has suet in it. Minced meat is the meat, be it beef, pork, chicken.

In France, a steak haché is a burger patty. Boeuf haché is the loose stuff that they mince before you and you can make patties, ragu whatever with it.

Now I'm hungry for a patty melt!

Have to say, goat burger is fabulous. I like any meat in a burger if it can be served medium rare, which rules out pork or poultry. And this encourages local/pastured sources.

For me, a burger is a solid preparation of ground meat - or veggies such as black beans - can be made with seasonings and even finely diced onions incorporated, too. The bun or bread is optional. I usually do without. Lettuce wrap is a nice alternative.

Salisbury steak was weird school cafeteria trash. It was always really tough and inedible.