The Internet Says This Bacon Burger Hack Is A 'Solution For A Non-Existent Problem'

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For every cooking hack that genuinely helps, like adding a teaspoon of brown sugar to give caramelized onions a sweeter flavor, there are five others that are more trouble than they're worth. Social media algorithms don't generally reward content that offers sensible, low-key advice; it doesn't matter if you can't really cook a steak in a toaster because you're going to watch that misleading TikTok to see if you can. But sometimes a piece of advice is just too egregious for viewers to buy at all. Take, for instance, the person who made a patty out of chopped bacon to go on a bacon cheeseburger, only to get roasted on YouTube.

TriggTube, a cooking creator on YouTube, made a short video claiming he had the solution to the problem of bacon on cheeseburgers. Every way of arranging bacon on a burger, according to him, has its drawbacks. "With the [bacon arranged in an] X, you've got four whole bites with no bacon," he said. "In strips, you can sometimes end up with a big, stringy bacon worm." His answer? Boil bacon in water for five minutes, chop it up, then press the chopped-up pieces down on a griddle with a grill press until a patty is formed.

The comments had plenty of fun with his thesis. "I love that we could all collectively agree that this is a solution to an issue that never existed," said one. Another took issue with the cooking process. "Oh yes, rendering out the fat and the salt from bacon by boiling it. The strategy sounds promising for an optimal trip to flavortown." Who knew bacon could be so complicated?

As fun as it is to engage in some good-natured ribbing of YouTube personalities, TriggTube (Mr. Tube?) does have a point. No one way of arranging bacon on a burger is perfect. The "X", as he pointed out, does leave a few mouthfuls of burger without bacon. Theoretically you could fix this by arranging more slices of bacon to crisscross the "X" like an asterisk, but that would create one ultra-thick layer of bacon at the center of the burger.

Laying a few strips of bacon parallel to each other on the patty is easy enough, but as Mr. Tube said it does have a bit of a stability issue that lets you pull it out with just one bite, leaving the rest bacon-less. Another possibility is creating a sort of latticed quilt of bacon and resting it atop the patty, but this is finicky and takes a bit too long. Maybe it's worth accepting a bit of imperfection in your meal, especially one that's as unpretentious as a bacon cheeseburger, and focus on making it as balanced and tasty as you reasonably can. You can follow Bobby Flay's instructions for how to perfectly melt cheese or you can avoid soggy, oven-baked bacon with Martha Stewart's help; so long as you're doing your best, that counts for something, right?