One evening early in November of 2014, my kids had some guests at the house, so my wife sent me to get a 24 steamer pack of Krystal burgers. Krystal is a restaurant that sells small hamburgers with thin patties that are sometimes called sliders. If you are familiar with White Castle burgers, Krystal burgers are almost identical with a thin patty and small bun dressed with pickles, onions and mustard. You can also get them with cheese and on this night, our order was half and half.
While we were eating the burgers, I noticed a recipe on the side of the steamer pack box for Krystal’s Secret Stuffing. I showed this to my family and pointed out some of my favorite lines on the package. It encouraged you to “Wow your friends & family this holiday season with this delicious Krystal dish. It’s sure to become a holiday tradition.” Sure. The recipe included Krystal burgers and spices you would find in a traditional dressing recipe.
I also liked step 1 in the directions which said “Get a Steamer Pack (24 Krystals). Eat 4 and put the remaining in the fridge for 12-24 hours.” I like any recipe where you get to eat something in the first step.
On the package the recipe had an outline around it like a recipe card. Below the outline, the text encouraged you to “Cut-out recipe card and save fore years to come.” Right. I doubted if anyone would ever make this stuff. But my wife decided to make it and challenge our kid’s friends to eat it with us.
A few days later, my wife asked me to go and buy a steamer pack of Krystals for the dressing. I got to eat the extra burgers and the rest went into the refrigerator. The next day while I was at work, my wife started preparing the dressing. She would tell us later that step 2 of this process is the worst. It says to “Tear burgers into small pieces”. This doesn’t sound so bad but remember these started out as greasy little burgers. Ripping the chilled burger meat and coagulated grease was no treat.
We gathered when it was time to eat the dressing. It smelled a lot like you would expect normal dressing to smell but there was also a hint hamburger in the air as well. We had enough people eating that night that everyone was only able to get a small portion. That was a good thing. It was our experience that Krystal dressing retains all the bad qualities of Thanksgiving dressing and Krystal burgers and loses any good qualities. What you are left with is a sage/onion aftertaste of dress and the diarrhea of Krystal burgers.
We did cut out the card and saved it until we made the recipe once. It was quickly thrown away. But I took a picture of it the night we found the recipe.
