Butter is butterfat , milk protein , and water system . basis bitch is lean cow centre and fatness . When butter reaches its melt point ( 90 - 95 ° F ) , it clarifies , and turns almost exclusively into butterfat . And when that combines with cooked ground beef , and the two fats loop , the resulting response is not so much scientific as it is religious disco biscuit . At least in Wisconsin .

The butter burger ( essentially a regular Warren Burger with a scoop of butter melting over the meat ) is a Wisconsin delicacy . In a estate lousy with moo-cow products – cheese , milk , butter , beef – the compulsion to combine them for certain resplendency is all but inevitable .

Wisconsin is one of the many places that lay call to the innovation of the burger in America , thanks to “ Hamburger Charlie ” Nagreen , who in 1885 allegedly decide that it ’d be easy for hoi polloi to eat the meatballs he was hawking at the Seymour Fair if they were between two slice of bread . His sales song was tricky and involved many rhymes , but for our purposes , only the last two are of import : “ fried in butter , listen to it sputter . ” Judging by that , it ’s well-defined Chucky Burgers was n’t just a talented songwriter ; he might also be the originator of the butter burger .

Solly’s Grille Butterburger

David Szymanski/Thrillist

Fast - forward to 1936 . Kroll ’s Hamburgers in Green Bay opens and features a pat of butter on top of the burger . And that same year , “ Solly ” Salmon spread out a coffee shop in Milwaukee . And Solly Salmon loves butter on his burgers too . Soon , as more and more the great unwashed adhere to Solly ’s Warren E. Burger formula , the coffee - shop part of the equality becomes less important than the Warren Burger constituent . Not long after that , Solly renames his shop “ Solly ’s Grille . ” Hamburger Charlie may have invent it , but Solly Salmon made the butter burger famous .

We sit up at the counter , by a whiteboard advertising today ’s homemade pies ( Key calx , apple caramel cinnamon , and Door County cherry ) and a memorial tablet commemorating the seat ( and misspell the name of ) Gino Salomone , the longtime TV & wireless personality . After we order the cheeseburger , I notice the butter sit in the back , stack up like bricks . Matt ask the Captain James Cook in the back , a friendly old woman in a glob jacket and glass , just how much butter they go through in a solar day . She does n’t hesitate . “ 30lbs normally , ” she says . “ Though on the weekends , we go through much more . ”

Within second of the Warren Earl Burger come out , the clarified butter is rain buckets from the burger onto the shell . It fall out in a unwavering drip , like the Warren Burger has a leaky butter faucet installed somewhere in its middle , and soon the total photographic plate is cover with a thin white-livered stratum . You might not believe me , so mayhap look at this picture .

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I , for one , ca n’t really believe it . Part of me ( the part that now and again thinks about my own deathrate ) is horror-stricken . It ’s not enough that I ’m constantly eating reddish meat covered in tall mallow and topped by tush griddled up in butter , but you actually have to put it in the pith too ? Are there not laws in Wisconsin ? What am I doing to myself ?

But the other side of me , the primal , chubby side , is literally salivating , my spit doing the Pavlovian dog thing as I keep an eye on the butter drip down and give the bottom bun a shining gloss . bite into the burger is everything you might think . Butter run into every other savour : the fragrant fried onions , the beef , the bun . And butter just so happens to shape very well paired up with each of them . It ’s pretty all-fired delicious .

One of the event in eat a butter burger is purely genial . You recognize very well that you ’re eating something inherently unhealthy for you , and the buttery sheen on your sassing and manus and down your chin serves as a unremitting reminder that you ’re heap fat on top of blubber on top of fat .

Solly’s Grille Sign

David Szymanski/Thrillist

The other warning light source occur internally . The decadency of all of that blubber without an loony toons counterbalance slow down your system , perhaps even literally . Near the close of the Warren Earl Burger , I almost started to get groggy . Your body physically tell you that you well enjoy this buttery company as long as you may , because it ’s not croak to be cool with it forever .

And that ’s all right . The butter hamburger is not the type you ’ll want to take down by the half - dozen ( though I ’m sure some people of a freakish , masochistic capacity do ) . That seems to speak to its Wisconsin ethos as well . The people of the Cheesehead state are excellently a gloriously friendly bunch , and the solid food / drink they do best – the sausages , the cheeses , the meth creams , the beers – all seem to be convivial , social foods , meant to be relish in large groups , at beer garden and beer halls and other large place that may not have beer in the name .

But that surfeit belie a moderate flavour . And though I do n’t want to sway into generalise on a whole state ’s theatrical role ( though if you ’re into that sorting of matter , here you go ! ) , most of the multitude I know from Wisconsin are agreeable and friendly without being timid . Unlike the combative fire of my Boston upbringing , or the passive - hostility mask by an atmosphere of “ chillness ” I ’m surround by now in California , there seems to be a unfeigned tone down desire in Wisconsin . Except maybe when it comes to these Burger . My abdomen hurts .

Solly’s Grille Interior

David Szymanski/Thrillist

Near the oddment of the burger , I almost commence to get dazed . Your body physically tells you that you better enjoy this larder party as long as you may , because it ’s not going to be cool with it forever .

I told the family that Solly ’s was , indeed , a home legend and known all around the world for their butter Warren Burger . And then I render her a picture of the yellow-bellied crank rink of butter surrounding the burger on my denture not more than 10 arcminute before . The wife laughed . “ That sure enough search like a Wisconsin burger . ” She turned and appear at her kids and then her husband and spoke in a more or less more hushed tone . “ Maybe we ’ll just try out one . ”

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solly’s grille counter

David Szymanski/Thrillist

Solly’s Grille Burger

David Szymanski/Thrillist

Solly’s Grille Butter

David Szymanski/Thrillist