How is it that I’ve spent 53 years in this country, most of which have been in the South, and I’ve never heard of a slugburger before this week? In my defense, it’s a matter of geography, but still.

Before I even get to that, however, I feel the need to discuss its name. I was immediately horrified when I read it the first time. Slugburger? Slugs? No, it couldn’t be. But the French eat snails. Maybe it could be. Maybe someone was looking to conquer the South from the inside by feeding us ground and pattied gastropods.

How absolutely gross. Who would eat the critters I’m forever flicking off of my dog food tubs on the porch? Sometimes, I misjudge the distance and manage to hit one of them with my skin instead of a fingernail. Nothing I feel in that instant, not the squish or the slime, would ever entice me to taste one. Ick.

Then, whew! I found out there’s a whole different reason for calling the burgers by this name. Slugburgers came about in the Great Depression, when many folks couldn’t afford meat. Cooks extended their ground pork or beef with starch products like potatoes, soybeans or cornmeal.

By doing this, eateries were able to only charge a nickel, or a slug, as the legend of the name goes. I couldn’t actually find anything to confirm that a nickel was ever called a slug, though most of us have heard of “slug nickels.” They’re “fake” nickels that people use to trick automated coin machines into working. I can see the logic in this fake meat being called a slugburger, which is also sometimes quoted as the origin of the name.

The slugburgers’ popularity is confined to one localized area, stretching out from Corinth, Mississippi, where they were created by John Weeks and originally called Weeksburgers. This range includes northeastern Mississippi, northwestern Alabama and southwestern Tennessee. Unless you travel through there, you wouldn’t generally have a reason to know about them. You guys read my column, though, so now you know. Just follow your nose to a little bit north of here.

Today, slugburgers are usually pattied thin, deep or pan fried, and served with mustard, pickles and maybe onions. They’re said to be crunchy on the outside but softer on the inside. It really doesn’t sound half bad. I’ll grab one the next time I travel up that way.

Slugburgers now run about a dollar, and I could probably find that much money between my car cushions. As long as I don’t find any slugs there, too, I’m golden. Golden fried, that is.

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