Feature article
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Slugburger is worth its salt and more
By Fred Sauceman
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| This week Fred Sauceman writes about the legendary slugburger |
CORINTH, MISS. — In the pantheon of Southern food, nothing is more misunderstood or maligned than the slugburger. Despite its name, this specialty of Northern Mississippi diners, drug stores, and cafés has a distinguished past, steeped in Southern history.
Folks in Booneville, Corinth, and Iuka, Mississippi, and up around Selmer, Tennessee, think nothing of ordering up a plateful of slugburgers, even for breakfast.
“The thing that’s appealing about slugburgers is the fact that they have a crunchy exterior, they’re best if they’re cooked thin, the way I like them, and they’re soft on the inside,” says Mike Hopkins of Corinth, a regular customer at the White Trolley Café. “The best way to eat them is with mustard, pickle and onion, and it’s kind of a tradition of this area. I’m 48 years old, and they’ve been around here as long as I can remember.
“I can remember eating them as a child, thinking that was one of the greatest things there were. Nowadays, all the kids want to go get a McDonald’s hamburger, but when I was a kid it was, ‘Let’s go get a slugburger.’”
Although some mystery and mythology surround slugburgers, none of them contain even a trace of crawling gastropod. They are a legacy of the Great Depression, when ground beef was a precious commodity and families were forced to stretch it as far as it would go, by adding bread, cornmeal, or cheaper meats. Today, soybean meal is a common extender. The patties are then deep-fried.
At the White Trolley, on Highway 72 in Corinth, I overheard a waitress ask a customer, “Regular or well-done?” Some prefer their slugburgers crunchy, I learned, and some soft.
“It’s got a taste of its own,” says Regina Smith, manager of the White Trolley. “You have to taste it with an open mind. It’s different from anything else you’ve ever eaten, and I think they’re better crunchy.”
The origin of the name is clouded with debate, but the most commonly accepted story is that the burgers sold for a nickel during the Depression, and the word “slug” was slang for a five-cent piece. Today, slugburgers go for 75 cents at the White Trolley, and for a dollar downtown at Borroum’s Drug Store during festival time.
“A lot of people ask if it’s a snail crawling on the ground,” Smith says. And even though Corinthians try to debunk the garden critter notion, the logo for the annual Slugburger Festival, held each July, features a smiling green snail, further humanized by the addition of teeth and tongue.
Designer Greg Hastings, a native of Corinth who now lives in Memphis, says the snail mascot has endured “because he allows us to inject some fun personality into the overall image—more than you could do with just a burger. I’m told by festival officials that this character, which we update annually, is well received by the public, and sales of T-shirts each year keep reinforcing that fact,” Hastings says.
Main Street Corinth organizes the festival and has even signed on a corporate sponsor, Cellular South, catapulting the lowly slugburger to tourist attraction status on the Alcorn County courthouse square. The Gourmand’s Guide to Dining in and Around Corinth labels the slugburger a “local delicacy” and describes the obligatory squeeze of yellow, ballpark mustard as a “standard garnish.” The color of the patty resembles the more universal and recognizable chuckwagon steak.
Although it’s a novelty for tourists and a subject for local jokesters, the slugburger is a lasting reminder of Southern resourcefulness during hard times.
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Food writer Fred Sauceman, the author of “Home and Away: A University Brings Food to the Table,” is the executive assistant to the president for university relations at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@xtn.net.
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