What is a slider?
I have been driving around a bit these last few days and noticed a couple of ads for a KFC flatbread slider (see above). Which got me to thinking about sliders. I have noticed of late the term being used more and more by, dare I say it, urban hipsters. Often associated with pop-up cafés (another time) and trendy foodies. And here it was featuring in a KFC ad which is hardly trendy. So what is a slider?
Well as usual I did my tiny bit of web surfing and found, as always, a range of opinion. There does seem to be consensus on the origin of the term though - although this does not really include the meaning. First used by a chain of hamburger joints in America (White Castle), it was a mini beef hamburger. The chain began in 1921 and I'm guessing the little hamburgers were for people who couldn't afford a full-size one in the Depression. But I could be guessing here. Nobody really knows why they were called sliders, though one theory was that it originated in the US Navy and referred to the ease with which the greasy burger slid down one's throat. White Castle copyrighted the term by spelling it slyder. Which is why we find it spelt the 'correct' way now.
In spite of this very definite consensus on the origins there appears to be fierce debate about what a slider is. E.g.:
"People, a slider is something very specific. It is not just a mini hamburger. It's a thin, thin slip of beef, cooked on a griddle with onions and pickles piled atop patty. The steam from the onions does as much cooking as the griddle. The buns are placed atop the onions, absorbing the pungent aroma and flavour."
And I have to say this does not look very tempting.
Otherwise the general opinion is that it is just a small hamburger and this, in turn, has been widened to be a small sandwich of some kind - generally containing warm food. Hence the KFC flatbread version. Mind you I am willing to bet that sliders as sold at KFC, and elsewhere are most probably not small. And they are also very definitely a 'foodie' thing, so the KFC version is KFC being 'foodie' - like MacDonald's and MacCafé. An attempt by fast food chains to seem healthy. If you take a closer look at the KFC version, it doesn't really look that healthy. The 'foodie' versions tend to have fillings of things like 'pulled pork', chicken or even seafood. And here is a two of them. One from Coles Magazine and one from delicious.
People are endlessly inventive about what is essentially a sandwich. And in Australia there is often the interesting fusion of western and Asian cuisines - hence the 'pulled pork' and the Vietnamese buns.
Jamie Oliver has a good picture of a slider and a hamburger - essentially the same but it seems size matters. Bet it doesn't at KFC.
