My father grew up in Waurika, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression. I remember him telling me once that, in order to make a pot of Choctaw stew last, they’d add macaroni, wild onions, corn and even sawdust to it, feeding the family on it for at least another week.
That’s pretty much how the onion burger was invented around the same time in El Reno, Oklahoma. Legend has it that Ross Davis, owner of the Hamburger Inn on Route 66, started adding cheap shredded onions onto and into the expensive meat to make the burger look bigger. It was that type of desperate inventiveness – the need to stretch whatever remaining food was left to survive – that led to the creation of the holy Oklahoman culinary delight known as the onion burger.