{"id":9312,"date":"2013-06-27T10:20:28","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T17:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/?p=9312"},"modified":"2013-06-27T10:20:28","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T17:20:28","slug":"home-cookin-fatburger-frozen-hamburger-patties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/?p=9312","title":{"rendered":"Home Cookin&#8217; &#8211; Fatburger Frozen Hamburger Patties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fatburger is a fast casual hamburger chain, which was launched and is headquartered in Southern California.\u00a0\u00a0 The original restaurant was opened by Lovie Yancey in 1948, and was called \u201cMr. Fatburger\u201d for the first several years.<\/p>\n<p>Until recently, the chain has been mostly California-centric, but a limited amount of growth has come from international franchises.\u00a0\u00a0 There have been a number of celebrity investors who at one time or another opened franchised outlets, most of which did not survive.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve never understood why this chain didn\u2019t explode with growth.\u00a0 It\u2019s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fatburger.com\/Menu\/\">good product, limited menu<\/a>.\u00a0 Burgers, fries, rings, shakes.\u00a0\u00a0 The burgers can be customized by adding additional patties and toppings like chili, cheese, guac, peppers.\u00a0 The fresh, not frozen, \u00a0burger patties are cooked on a flat top until a crusty surface occurs, which is very appealing to me personally.\u00a0 The shakes are hand-scooped real ice cream.\u00a0 What\u2019s not to like?<\/p>\n<p>Like most franchise operations, the company is not so much in the business of operating actual restaurants, but rather, selling franchises, supplying them, and making sure they comply with corporate mandates.\u00a0\u00a0 As such, a company like that has a single asset, the proprietary value of its name and image, and tries to find different ways to exploit that property to create additional revenue.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t say for sure which restaurant chain was the first one to place product in grocery stores, bearing their name, but it\u2019s hard not to bump into that kind of thing today.\u00a0 Off the top of my head, I\u2019ve seen Marie Callenders, TGI Fridays, \u00a0Burger King, Taco Bell, Chili\u2019s\u00a0 Bob Evans, Cracker Barrel, Starbucks, Dunkin\u2019 Donuts, and at one time, Stouffer\u2019s was a restaurant.\u00a0 There are many more.<\/p>\n<p>Lo and behold, Fatburger licenses its name, image for frozen burger patties.\u00a0 This kind of surprised me, because the product is a six pack of 1\/3 pound patties, and \u2018thick\u2019 burgers are really not a Fatburger thing.\u00a0 The deal seems exclusive to Wal Mart, and at $7.99, comes out to four bucks a pound, steep for ground beef.\u00a0 (I have <a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/2012\/10\/home-cookin-ball-park-brand-flame-grilled-beef-patties\/\">previously reviewed<\/a> a number of different brands of frozen burgers). The product is apparently distributed (manufactured?)\u00a0 by a separate Los Angeles company and I wasn\u2019t able to find very much info on that concern.\u00a0 The USDA \u2018sticker\u2019 did not have an establishment number on it; that number identifies the plant where the product was made.<\/p>\n<p>The stove top grilling instructions call for 14 minutes at medium heat, turning frequently.\u00a0 That\u2019s distinctively different than most frozen patties that I have tested.\u00a0 The most common set of instructions call for throwing the frozen patty in a pan, cooking on one side til \u2018blood runs through\u2019, and flipping it for another short period.\u00a0\u00a0 The exception of course would be pre-cooked patties, like Ball Park.<\/p>\n<p>The packaging inside the box is a single cello pack, non-resealable;\u00a0 I would prefer patties are individually wrapped if the package isn\u2019t resealable.\u00a0 The burgers are separated by \u201cpatty paper\u201d but the flash-freeze process can still make the patties stick together.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/20130627_114700.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-9315\" alt=\"Fatburger Frozen Patty\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/20130627_114700-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>The raw patty in the pan is pictured at left.\u00a0 It is manufactured to look like it is hand-formed, but there have been patty making machines in plants that have accomplished that for quite some time.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve never seen a frozen patty that wasn\u2019t \u2018dimpled\u2019, and this one is no exception.<\/p>\n<p>The ingredients listed on the box are:\u00a0 beef, and seasoning salt.\u00a0 It seems from the way the ingredients are printed, that the seasoning salt is made up of salt, spices, sugar, cornstarch, garlic, onion, and canola oil.\u00a0\u00a0 So they are saying what\u2019s in your patty is beef and salt.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 That\u2019s a departure from most similar products.\u00a0 Which is a good thing.<\/p>\n<p>I went with the entire suggested 14 minutes, to witness the outcome as directed on the packaging.\u00a0 It has an pleasant enough look, and the flavor is good, there\u2019s no hint of artificial smoke here, some companies use that to emulate grill flavor.\u00a0 The grind is of average size, and is appealing. \u00a0I&#8217;d say the Fat frozen is in the top three of all the ones I&#8217;ve tested. \u00a0 Of course, it&#8217;s no substitute for hitting my favorite locations when I am in L.A. \u00a0 I like the <a href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?q=11275+Venice+Blvd.+,+Los+Angeles,+CA+90066&amp;hl=en&amp;hnear=11275+Venice+Blvd,+Los+Angeles,+California+90066&amp;t=m&amp;z=16\">Venice <\/a>and <a href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?q=6162+1%2F8+Sepulveda+Blvd.+,+Van+Nuys,+CA+91411&amp;hl=en&amp;hnear=6162+Sepulveda+Blvd,+Van+Nuys,+Los+Angeles,+California+91411&amp;t=m&amp;z=16\">Van Nuys<\/a> locations, personally.<\/p>\n<p>The only time I purchase frozen burgers is to test them out, but I\u2019d be ok with having these in my freezer regularly.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9313\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9313\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/20130627_115734.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9313 \" title=\"Cooked Fatburger Frozen Patty\" alt=\"Fatburger Frozen Hamburger\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/20130627_115734.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"135\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9313\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cooked Fatburger Frozen Patty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fatburger is a fast casual hamburger chain, which was launched and is headquartered in Southern California.\u00a0\u00a0 The original restaurant was opened by Lovie Yancey in 1948, and was called \u201cMr. Fatburger\u201d for the first several years. Until recently, the chain has been mostly California-centric, but a limited amount of growth has come from international franchises.\u00a0\u00a0&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/?p=9312\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Home Cookin&#8217; &#8211; Fatburger Frozen Hamburger Patties<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,16],"tags":[1351,1489,1724,1757],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9312"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}