Tom Douglas

Will This Palace Burger Decompose? / by ET and Shelley

The other day, we were chatting in the office about all the blogging and tweeting over that famous McDonald’s hamburger which seems to be lasting forever without decomposing.  Haven’t heard about this? Then read what Karen Harahan wrote about her 12 year old McDonald’s burger here on Mother Earth Blog.  Harahan’s assumption is that a burger which looks pretty much the same after 12 years, except that it smells a little funny, can’t be real food and can’t have any nutritional value.

Tom Douglas, overhearing the conversation, tossed off the opinion that he didn’t think a Palace burger would look any different sitting around for years as long as it was dry and didn’t have condiments on it.  Tom thought it would just keep drying out.

Always ready for a challenge, we asked Palace Chef, Brian W, to make us a well done burger with fries, but no lettuce, tomato, or condiments touching the burger. The burger was cooked well done so it would be dry and therefore more similar to a McDonald’s burger. Which is why it doesn’t look all that tasty even in the day one photo, which is above.

Below is the Palace burger on day two:

It does still look pretty much the same though the fries are starting to look sad.

Interestingly, shortly after we started our experiment, I noticed that Burger Lab, on Serious Eats, was also challenging the myth of “The 12 Year Old Burger.”  Kenji Lopez-Alt has started an experiment aging burgers while trying to establish some scientific control factors. (Lopez-Alt started his experiment about the same time we did. I guess great minds think alike.)  So we’ll keep an eye on his experiment too as the weeks go by.  We, however, do not claim to be setting any scientific standards for our experiment.  We’re just going to keep this burger on ET’s desk for as long as he can stand it and take a photo each day.  Keep checking this blog to see how our Palace burger is doing.

October 16th, 2010