Sliders? Or Just Tiny Burgers?

Sliders

I don’t recall when I first became aware of the term “sliders” as a reference to White Castle burgers. Certainly it was before the TV show of the same name debuted, as I recall the hilarity surrounding the name then. While White Castle was unknown in my hometown of Quincy, it was and is a fixture in the Chicago area, where I was born and to which I eventually returned.

Sliders seemed like an apt, if slightly derogatory in intent, nickname for the White Castle burger. (Later I learned that White Castle had in fact trademarked the word “Slyders” in an attempt to make the name sound cooler. I am unaware of anyone ever having actually spelled it this way.) The name felt right, not because the burgers were tiny, but because they were so soft, having been steam-heated over a bed of cooked onions.

Why are they so small? Why are they cooked that way? Speed. White Castle is the oldest fast food chain in the US, having first opened nearly a century ago. It was 30 years or so before they introduced this cooking method though. Originally, White Castle burgers were the same type of smashed griddled patty that I wrote about a few years ago. Then a White Castle cook who felt like he wasn’t able to cook burgers fast enough to keep up with customers’ demands, came up with their current system, in which the extremely small (less than one ounce) patties are square and have an evenly spaced grid of 5 holes in them. They are square so they can fill up every inch of space on the griddle, and they have holes so that steam from a bed of onions can penetrate the burgers and cook them from top and bottom simultaneously.

They don’t actually touch the griddle. They’re never even flipped. A rectangular griddle is filled with dried onions, reconstituted in water. A grid of 30 square, raw, frozen burgers is laid across the griddle, filling it entirely. The buns are set on top of the raw burgers, soaking up the steam and burger juices as the patties cook. There is no caramelization occurring. The only browning that happens is the natural brown color of beef when it is cooked. A White Castle burger–a slider–is essentially a handheld meat-and-onion pudding with a pickle chip in it.

I like White Castle. I may only have an urge to eat there once every 5 years or so, but I enjoy it when I do. The White Castle menu these days is a far cry from the 5¢ Hamburger of the original back in 1921. I went to my local White Castle recently and asked for every slider they sold. I’m not sure the guy at the counter remembered them all, but I did end up with 12 different sandwiches.

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There was the original hamburger slider and the cheeseburger slider. Classics. The hamburger slider tastes like cooked onion. The cheeseburger slider tastes like cooked onion and American cheese. Both are very small, very soft, and, as the name “Sliders” suggests, slide down ones throat with ease. Note the sogginess of the bottom buns, which have absorbed what juices there are from the steamed patties as well as the moisture and steam from the onions they’re cooked on.

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In addition to American cheese, White Castle also offers sliders with Jalapeno cheese and smoked cheddar. The jalapeno cheese does have a bit of a kick, but the smoked cheddar is quite mild, with a slight smokiness but not much cheddar flavor to speak of.

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White Castle also offers a bacon cheeseburger and a double cheeseburger. The bacon cheeseburger has the advantage of offering a texture other than mush, as the bacon I’ve had at White Castle has generally been quite crisp and brittle. The double cheeseburger, on the other hand, could be said to feature extra mush. Like the Big Mac, it has a center bun section between the two patties. This center bun section soaks up so much moisture from the patties and the onions that it is a layer of oniony slick sodden bread. It’s not unpleasant–this is the signature flavor of White Castle, and if you’re here this is what you’re after–but it’s more of it than these burgers generally offer.

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Not to be outdone by other fast food joints, White Castle has for some time been offering alternate proteins as well, which I have only now gotten around to trying. There are a number of chicken options, including these, the crispy chicken with cheese and the chicken ring sliders. Crispy chicken with cheese is a small piece of fried chicken with cheese on a steamed bun. The chicken ring slider consists of two of the ring-shaped chicken nuggets offered by White Castle, also on a steamed bun. Neither of these could be said to particularly slide down the throat the way a slider should, but they were not unpleasant.

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There are also seafood options–a tiny fish sandwich much like a miniature Filet-o-Fish, with a square breaded fish patty and some cheese, and an out-of-left-field crab cake, also on the tiny steamed White Castle bun.

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Most interesting of the bunch are these last two. First is the chicken-and-waffle slider, eschewing the normal steamed-limp tiny bun for a pair of tiny limp waffles, with a tiny piece of breaded chicken and schmear of white gravy complete with bacon bits. My 12yo went nuts for this. Finally, there’s the much-lauded Impossible burger slider, which, I must admit, is quite good. Texturally and flavor-wise, it is the sandwich on this menu that is the most like a “real” burger that you’d order in a “real” restaurant.

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Again, I’m not sure we managed to get to everything on the menu, as I am pretty sure I threw the poor guy at the counter for a loop when I asked for one of every sandwich they sell. I think I saw something about a grilled chicken slider, and someone recently told me there’s a sloppy joe slider available these days. That’s not even getting into the combination sliders that are possible–my usual order, on the rare occasions when I go to White Castle, is a couple of bacon jalapeno sliders, which are simply bacon cheese sliders with the jalapeno cheese instead of the normal American cheese they serve with bacon cheeseburgers. (They’re good–for a given value of good).

Nobody is ever going to accuse White Castle of being fancy, even if it makes a heck of a spot for a solo Valentine’s Day dinner. But it’s hard to argue that the word “sliders” doesn’t accurately describe their product.

Tiny Burgers

It was probably around 10-12 years ago that I first encountered a tiny burger that was not from White Castle being called a slider. It was some sort of catered work function I think, where a few dozen of us crowded into one corner of a busy downtown pub and vied for the attention of the sole cocktail waitress without straying too far from a table loaded with trays of bite-sized snacks–tiny crab cakes with a dot of remoulade, perhaps, or slivers of prosciutto-topped flatbreads. Among these lofty bites were “sliders”–roughly spherical balls of tightly-worked ground beef, inserted with a pickle or maybe a tomato into a comically small brioche bun, the whole held together by some manner of bamboo cocktail skewer.

These did not seem like sliders at all to me. The burger patty was too thick, and still a little pink in the middle, like a real burger. The brioche bun was a little on the cool side, stiff, and dry, not steam-heated to near-disintegration over a bed of simmering reconstituted onions. And what was a tomato doing on a slider!?!?!

I am apparently not the only person who has noted and dislikes this conflation of sliders with other types of tiny burgers. Adam Kuban, noted foodie curmudgeon, wrote a screed about it back in 2008. Bon Appetit’s Erik S. Peterson was angry about the trend back in 2013. The website Burger Days has a rant about it, including a picture of exactly the kind of tiny ball-shaped burger I’m describing.

Yet for most of the food internet, the word “slider” simply refers to a tiny sandwich–not even necessarily a hamburger. From the “Barefoot Contessa’s” itty bitty burger orbs to Emeril Lagasse’s tiny turkeyburgers, through the innumerable ham and cheese sliders and barbecue sliders, there’s an entire industry out there telling you how to make your sandwiches smaller (hint–use smaller bread) and call them sliders.

I went out and tried a few non-White Castle “sliders” in an effort to feed my rage. I ran into a problem though–almost without exception, the misnamed “Sliders” I tried were pretty damn good. Gone were the bad brioches and the patties with the size, shape, and texture of golf balls. What I found were thoughtfully miniaturized hamburgers, or at least well-executed small sandwiches. Still gimmicky, to be sure, and still unworthy of the title “Slider” by my standards, but good.

Five dollars gets you this cute miniburger from The Marq in Chicago’s Loop. Now, $5 is a pretty good price for a full-size burger but it’s a little precious for such a tiny specimen. Still, it’s put together nicely, with good beef, not packed too tightly or so thick that the top bun needs that bamboo skewer to hold it on. The reddish ingredient you see is not a tomato slice but rather pickled red onion, which along with the house-made pickle chips and aioli rounded out the sandwich nicely. It was much better than expected.

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Burger 21 in Orland Park offers several “sliders” on its menu as well, and if you want to try all of them, Monday is a good day to visit, as they’re $2 each. There’s a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a bacon cheeseburger, and a “black and bleu” burger with bleu cheese and bacon. The sliders are served on Hawaiian rolls, making the bread a bit sweeter than I’d like normally, but it works on the bacon cheeseburger and the black & bleu–the stronger, saltier flavors render the sweetness of the bun a background note. These “sliders” do come with lettuce and tomato and are in no way a slider by my definition but I did enjoy them.

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The Happy Hour menu at About Last Knife, a “Steakhouse Meets Gastropub” located in the Hotel Julian on Michigan Avenue, boasts these “Steak Sliders.” Mindy and I stopped in after work recently and tried them. Cooked medium rare, served with bearnaise and a single pickle chip on a brioche bun, they are not what I would call sliders, but between these sandwiches and the cocktails we had, Mindy and I are already planning our next post-work happy hour.

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Finally, our youngest, Ian, has been on Spring Break all week, and I worked from home recently to keep him company. Searching for some place local to us for a quick lunch, I noticed that the Blarney Stone Pub in Oak Forest had several “sliders” on their menu. I think of Blarney Stone as a place to go watch a football game and drink a couple craft beers, not necessarily a lunchtime stop for me and a 12 year old, but they were very welcoming. Not much of a crowd there at noon on a Thursday, just a couple older guys drinking Miller Lites and playing the gambling machines, but they opened a dining area away from the main bar for us, and Ian and I had the place pretty much to ourselves.

There are essentially four “slider” varieties at Blarney Stone–bacon cheeseburger, buffalo chicken, pulled pork, and smoked brisket–but the pulled pork slider comes as either spicy or mild, making an unofficial fifth variant. We ordered two of each (with one spicy and one mild pulled pork “slider”), and since each pair of “sliders” came with a side as a meal, we got to try two of their soups (good versions of both French Onion and a Greek-style Lemon Chicken and Rice) as well as their seasoned fries and tater tots. The tots especially were sensational, fried so shatteringly crisp that I had to push them away from me, across the table toward my son, so that I would stop eating them.

The bacon cheeseburger “slider” consisted of a small patty with cheddar cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and fried onions. The roll was more like a dinner roll than a brioche, but light, and the cut side had been nicely caramelized to a crisp texture. This was a good tiny burger, not fancy, but well executed and tasty.

The Buffalo chicken slider at Blarney Stone consisted of the same crisp light roll, topped with a small piece of fried chicken breast coated in hot sauce and covered in melted mozzarella cheese, again with lettuce and tomato. I did not think the melted mozzarella would appeal to me–I don’t much care for cheese on chicken sandwiches–but here it worked, possibly because it had been browned nicely under a broiler. This was Ian’s favorite of the sandwiches.

I ate the spicy pulled pork slider, while Ian chose not to try the milder barbecue pork slider. Again, the bun had an excellent crisp texture, but with the soft strands of pulled pork stuffed into it and the caramelized onions served with it, the filling’s texture almost brought to mind the softness of an actual slider. The jalapeno aioli and actual cooked jalapenos in the sandwich were a real eye-opener, giving it a decent heat level.

My favorite of the sandwiches may have been this beef brisket slider. Again, the soft texture of the low-and-slow cooked beef brisket contrasted nicely with the crisply-toasted bun, and the combination of the sauteed onions and peppers with the melted Guinness cheese gave the whole a mildly malty and pungent flavor. I would go back and order this–though since they have it in a full-sized sandwich, I would probably order that instead.

That’s the thing about tiny burgers, or “sliders” if you must call them that. They are entirely a gimmick, even these delicious and beautiful examples that I’ve eaten this month. When done well, they do present a tasty and convenient package for some happy hour snacking. But for the most part, “Sliders” is a buzzword, a repurposed neologism. The descriptivist in me ought to be OK with that, but the pedant in me is annoyed by it, this dysphemism-become-euphemism. I wanted to hate these tiny burgers.

I’ll be damned if I could find a bad one though.