The movie theater butterburger pt. 2: Home theater edition

my arteries, they harden

Hi, clowns!

You know, I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to send anything out today, considering it’s Thanksgiving week. But you know what? I figured you guys could probably pocket this edition and sneak away to read it for when you need a little break from the family members who are driving you up the wall. But before I begin, a few fun things.

First, since everybody’s buying shit for each other this weekend, I figured I’d offer you guys a Brown Friday discount. Honestly, this is more for you than anyone else, because you deserve something nice for dealing with all of that holiday stress.

I’m calling it a Brown Friday discount in honor of all the toilets doing extra work on the morning after Thanksgiving. Peepee poopoo. It’ll be good through Sunday, so you’ll need to move quick.

Substack also lets you pre-purchase gift subscriptions for people as well, in case you want to get some extra shopping out of the way. The problem is, there’s no way for me to apply the Brown Friday coupon to gift subscriptions, which is frustrating. (If I can figure this out, I’ll offer discounted gift subscriptions in the future — so please feel free to hold off.)

Second of all, something fun is about to happen here in Chicago: I’ll be the featured guest at the Sandwiches of History live show on December 4.

Since a lot of you guys like both food and internet stuff, you probably already know about

Barry W. Enderwick

, aka Sandwiches of History, and his various social media accounts on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. If not, you’re missing out — he recreates old sandwich recipes, some good, some awful (like this yeast sandwich), and he asked me to come join him during his show here in Chicago.

Some pretty big names were guests on his previous stops, like my good friend Bill Oakley (former showrunner for The Simpsons), H. Jon Benjamin (the voice of Bob from Bob’s Burgers), Rob Huebel (who’s been in a shit-ton of stuff), along with the musician Steel Beans. Oh man, I hope I’m not in over my head.

The Chicago show will be at The Den Theatre, so get your tickets here if you want to be in on the fun!

This week’s edition of the newsletter has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, thank God, though there’ll always be that one time Snopes cited my newsletter about that really ridiculous stuffing recipe. Today’s is a continuation from my last piece, in which I snuck a cheeseburger into a movie theater to create an on-the-spot popcorn butter burger with it.

That one was behind the paywall, but you don’t need to read it for this one to make sense. The gist is that I did my best to try and create a Wisconsin butter burger using the movie theater’s buttery popcorn topping, but I ended up running into some pretty funny challenges along the way.

After that piece dropped, I got a flurry of comments suggesting I make my own version of this movie theater butter burger at home, using one of a movie theater’s secret weapons when it comes to popcorn: a seasoning salt called Flavacol.

So you know what? Since I love you, I did.

I gathered all the ingredients for a simple cheeseburger, from the buns to the meat, and brought the gang out to play.

So about this Flavacol.

It’s this really interesting seasoning salt that tastes lightly like artificial butter. As soon as you try some, you’ll recognize that subtle movie theater taste. Combine a few shakes of that with some butter-flavored coconut oil, and you’ve got the combo for movie theater popcorn at home.

Fortunately, I already had some Flavacol laying around from the time I tried making popcorn shrimp in our Aldi popcorn maker. It comes in a 35 ounce carton, and you can get it on Amazon. Truth be told, I hardly touch it, so will probably have it in the cupboard until the end of time.

This stuff is super fine (so am I, *sizzle*) and hard to sprinkle by hand, so I finally decided to pony up for a seasoning shaker with small holes on top.

Part of me just wanted to not wash the inside of it and use it right away because I was feeling like a “nasty boy,” but I discovered that it came with plastic and what appeared to be hair in it. That was pretty cool. A few fingernails would have been nice, too.

Flavacol, in case you were wondering, looks exactly like Kraft Mac and Cheese powder.

This is partially why some of your popcorn kernels at the movie theater are more yellow than others. You can impress your next date or scare a stranger with this bit of information. Then you can tell them you learned this from some dude on the internet who tried to see if frozen pizza could double as a frisbee.

I took a little pinch of Flavacol and ate it, just to feel some something that wasn’t just existential dread.

Then I laughed because it looked as if our cat Scorpion had dipped his balls in the salt, which is something he’d totally do while I wasn’t looking. Don’t worry, he’s neutered. We wouldn’t want to wish his brand of orange tabby bullshit on anyone.

Since I wasn’t about to buy another movie ticket just to sneak some buttery topping home, I got a massive tub of it off Amazon.

When Davida first saw it on the counter, she got visibly concerned. “I don’t like this,” she said. “The label’s all offset, and it’s one solid block. I don’t know. It’s suspicious.”

Then I opened it.

Okay, yeah, I’ll admit, the movie theater butter (coconut oil) was kind of scary. It looked like someone had melted a yellow-orange crayon into this giant container. But it smelled exactly like the movie theater, which warmed the hardened arteries inside my heart.

I scooped some of the solid orangey fat out into the pan I had preheating on the stove.

I felt like it had melted even before it hit the pan, that’s how fast it liquified.

Saturated refined fats are a beautiful thing.

I toasted the bun halves in the pan, and did an impressively uneven job of it.

What’s even better is that I later discovered that I’d somehow fused one of my own hairs onto the surface of the bread while it was toasting. See, this is how you know that I am a food writer for the people. I am not afraid to talk about how disgusting I accidentally am sometimes. Also, I just farted.

I didn’t feel like potentially fucking up a smashed patty (I’m terrible at making smashburgers), so I just hand-formed a burger and tossed it in the skillet.

A normal burger is perfectly fine, by the way. The food police won’t come over and waggle their fingers at you for not smashing your beef. Then I seasoned the patty with some Flavacol.

Once it was done cooking on one side, I flipped it over and rained some more Flavacol on it.

Then came the good ol’ American cheese, which is the finest burger cheese in the world, because it melts into a wonderful salty dairy gel on your meat.

That last sentence sounds filthy. Ravishing.

I put an uneven scoop of buttery popcorn oil on top of the finished burger patty, and watched as it melted and stained the American cheese an even darker shade of yellow.

I continued by topping the burger with the basics, like yellow mustard, raw slivered onions, pickles, and ketchup.

The result is probably one of the most normal-looking things I’ve ever made for this newsletter.

It even looked better than the Quarter Pounder I’d snuck into McDonald’s the other week, though I suppose that’s not saying too much. And though it didn’t quite smell like a movie theater in the kitchen, the buttery scent from the popcorn oil was weirdly pleasant co-mingling with that of the seared beef.

I leaned in and took a big fat bite.

This burger tasted even more like movie theater popcorn than my original experiment did, thanks to the generous dusting of Flavacol. I hate that I loved this shit so much, especially knowing that this wasn’t real butter. It was somehow more buttery than actual butter, which makes me wonder just how conditioned I’ve become to accept these artificially-flavored foods into my holes.

I wanted to eat the entire thing so badly, but having the whole tub of solid popcorn oil in front of me was sort of skeeving me out. I pictured it solidifying inside my body, all orange and coating my blood vessels, so I grudgingly forced myself to stop. But damn. Maybe a tiny swipe of popcorn butter on my next burger, along with Flavacol and some other seasonings, that might be the secret set of ingredients that I could use to win a burger battle on Chopped.

Or I could just give cardiologists a big boom in new patients. Who’s to say both can’t happen?

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! If you guys enjoyed today’s newsletter — don’t forget to share it where you can. Or just pass your gravy-smeared phone around the dinner table while you’re all eating, that works too:

And don’t forget your Brown Friday discount (yeah, sorry, I know everyone’s shoving commerce in your faces right now):

This year’s Thanksgiving will be our first without my dad, so I’m hoping we’ll still be able to enjoy it with some smiles. We’ll try to remember the good things — last year my family ate the turkey with every single sauce flavor from Wingstop. We couldn’t figure out which was which, and it was as funny as you’d imagine. At least we’ll have that.

As always, I love you all, and have a happy holiday and a fun long weekend. Happy Thanksgiving, clowns!!!