Berliner Burgers Recipe

ground beef
minced fresh garlic
paprika
salt
pepper
ketchup
German mustard
Butterkäse
brown bread

Step 1: Spend all day working on schoolwork and editing videos. Realize at 20:00 that you are starving and haven’t bathed or gotten dressed all day.

Step 2: Scrounge around your Playskool kitchen set for something to eat. Find ground beef. Sigh with resignation.

Step 3: Mix ground beef and the only spices you have in a bowl. Hope that you have translated the names of the spices correctly, because that whole “Kümmel” (caraway seed) and “cumin” mix up was pretty gross.

Step 4: Form meat into oblong patties to conform to the shape of the bread you have. It’s that seedy, dense, brown bread, but you are hoping it will work.

Step 5: Fry in the only frying pan you have on the tiny front burner because the large back burner makes it impossible to reach into the pan. Be sure to use a little butter — because Deutschland, that’s why. See your super hot German neighbor wave at you through your curtainless front window while you are standing, middle-aged and braless, with a greasy spatula in your hand.

Step 6: Serve on brown bread with Butterkäse (butter cheese), ketchup, and German mustard — not that nasty yellow American stuff. Watch your roommate spread his mustard with a spoon while making bird noises to himself and wonder if there is a god.

Step 7: Take a bite and realize you have invented the culinary equivalent to the brown dwarf star. However, it does taste good.

Step 8: See your hot neighbor wave at you again as he leaves to go do whatever super beautiful people do with their time. Realize that you are chewing on an oversize bite of grease-bomb and have ketchup on your shirt. Die a little inside.