If you ask me to choose between pasta and burger, I genuinely don't know what to say. By all means, burger loses because pasta wins. 😄
Today is about burgers.
And honestly, burgers have been one of the longest-running food love stories of my life.
Now the funny thing is that I have made burgers in two completely different ways over the years. One is the lazy version, and the other is the version where you suddenly decide that you are a MasterChef contestant and have all the time in the world.
The lazy version was simple. Buy frozen patties, shallow fry them, put them inside burger buns, add onions, tomatoes and sauces, and proudly call it homemade. The complicated version, however, was a full-fledged project. Potatoes had to be boiled, peas had to be cooked, carrots and beans had to be chopped, everything had to be mashed together, shaped into patties, coated, breadcrumbed and then shallow fried.
By the time the patties were ready, I would already be hungry enough to eat three burgers.
But somehow, both versions always made me equally happy.
Because at the end of the day, a burger is a burger.
And I love burgers.
What usually shocks people is when I tell them that I didn't eat my first burger until engineering. Yes, engineering.
Some people grow up eating burgers. Some people have birthday parties where burgers are normal. And then there was me, a girl who somehow survived almost eighteen years without ever tasting one.
Thinking about it now, I genuinely don't know how that happened.
The first burger I ever had was from McDonald's. A simple Veggie Burger. Nothing fancy. Nothing extraordinary. But trust me, one bite was enough. I don't know whether it was because it was my first burger ever or because it was genuinely that good, but I was sold.
Till date, if I walk into a McDonald's and somebody asks me what I want, my brain automatically says, "Veggie Burger meal, please."
The burger. The fries. And back then, the Coke too.
These days I'm trying to avoid too much sugar, so the Coke has mostly disappeared from the order. But that combination still feels like happiness to me.
And please don't ask me to switch it with an aloo tikki burger.
I won't.
Don't ask me to switch it with a paneer burger either. As much as I love paneer, when it comes to McDonald's, my loyalty belongs to the Veggie Burger. Some relationships are simply meant to last forever. 😌
Now my second favourite burger came from Karachi Bakery.
And if you've had that burger, you'll probably understand what I'm talking about.
Unlike the McDonald's one, this wasn't a neat, firm patty sitting perfectly inside a bun. It felt more like somebody had lovingly mixed potatoes and vegetables together and stuffed them generously inside. The first challenge wasn't eating it. The first challenge was figuring out how to fit it into your mouth.
One bite and half the burger would try to escape from the other side.
Gracefully eating it was almost impossible.
But my God, the taste.
The taste made everything worth it.
That burger also came into my life because of a friend. Now that friend has already appeared in a few of my posts, and trust me, there are enough stories left for another hundred posts. So we'll save those memories for another day.
Now comes my third favourite burger.
The homemade one.
Not because it was the best burger in the world.
But because of who I made it with.
My sister.
Whenever my sister came home after marriage, it felt like a festival. I don't know how else to explain it. Suddenly there was another person in the house who wanted to eat all the things I wanted to eat.
My parents were never huge fans of ordering food. My father could occasionally be convinced. My mother, however, belongs to a completely different league. Once she says no, it is no. She has rules. She has regulations. She has opinions. And somehow most of those opinions were against the things I wanted to order. 😭
So whenever my sister came home, it felt like I finally had a partner in crime.
One evening, both of us sat scrolling through food delivery apps. Swiggy. Zomato. Back to Swiggy. Back to Zomato. We must have spent half an hour rejecting every possible option that existed.
Nothing felt right.
Finally, we reached a brilliant conclusion.
Instead of spending money on burgers, we would spend even more money making burgers at home.
The logic made absolutely no sense.
But both of us were completely convinced.
So we ordered burger buns, frozen patties, cheese slices and vegetables. And then somehow we ended up ordering every mayonnaise known to mankind. Regular mayonnaise, mint mayonnaise, tandoori mayonnaise... I think there were one or two more as well.
At some point we stopped making burgers and started conducting mayonnaise research.
The funniest part is that we kept convincing ourselves that these burgers were healthier because we were making them at home. Looking back, I genuinely don't know what logic we were applying there. 😭
We toasted the buns, shallow fried the patties, layered onions, tomatoes, cheese slices and more sauces than any normal burger requires. Then we stood there looking at our creation as if we had invented burgers.
And trust me, those burgers tasted amazing.
Maybe because they were actually good.
Or maybe because food always tastes better when you're making it with somebody you love.
Probably both.
Now talking about my sister reminds me of one thing.
People often talk about sibling love. Very few people talk about sibling violence. 😂
Because honestly, if you have siblings, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Hair pulling.
Shouting.
Complaining to Amma.
Threatening each other.
The whole package.
My sister and I were no different.
One day we were fighting about something completely unimportant, as usual. My mother had gone upstairs to meet a neighbour for a few minutes. My sister was doing some geometry work and had left a compass on the bed.
You know the geometry box compass.
The dangerous one.
The one with the sharp needle.
Somehow, during our argument, she accidentally pressed it right above my eyebrow.
Now before she kills me for writing this, let me clarify once again.
It was absolutely an accident.
At least that's what she claims. 😌
All I remember is suddenly seeing blood dripping down my face. The funny part is that I didn't even feel pain. I genuinely didn't. I was just standing there looking at the blood as if it belonged to somebody else.
Right then, Amma came downstairs.
Saw me.
Saw the blood.
And immediately started scolding my sister.
Poor thing cried more than I did.
To this day, I think she believes I owe her an apology because she got scolded due to me.
She's still waiting.
She's not getting one.
Sorry, cutie!! 😌
But that's the thing about siblings.
You fight. You annoy each other. You steal each other's things. You occasionally injure each other. And then years later, they become one of the first people you call when life gets difficult.
Today, whenever I am upset, she talks sense into me. Not the kind of advice where somebody simply tells you what to do, but the kind where she patiently explains things until they actually make sense.
And I try to do the same for her.
We still argue.
We still irritate each other.
We still disagree on a lot of things.
But we also show up for each other.
Every single time.
Maybe that's why those homemade burgers mean so much to me.
Because when I think of them, I don't just remember the patties or the cheese slices or the ridiculous amount of mayonnaise. I remember laughter. I remember conversations. I remember standing in the kitchen with my sister and turning an ordinary evening into a memory.
And honestly, that's what food does best.
Years later, you don't always remember the exact recipe.
You remember who was standing beside you.
Even today, when I don't know what to eat, burgers remain my comfort choice. If I want something familiar, it's McDonald's. If I don't mind making a complete mess while eating, it's Karachi Bakery. And if I want memories served alongside my meal, it's always the homemade version.
Because some burgers fill your stomach.
The best ones fill your heart too. 💛🍔
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