It’s summer. Hamburgers abound.

According to the Serious Eats website, a form of hamburger may have actually begun with Mongols who stashed raw beef under their saddles. After much riding and jostling about, the meat became tenderized. Interesting, but gross.

Originally called hamburg steak, the name, over time, evolved into hamburger.

There are a few different theories as to how hamburgers, as we know them today, came to be.

One cites Louis’ Lunch, in New Haven, Connecticut, as the originator. It states that in 1900 the owner threw a broiled beef patty between a couple slices of bread for a man who was in a rush to eat and run.

Another claim cites a guy named Charlie Nagreen as the inventor of the hamburger. Supposedly Charlie was selling meatballs at a fair in Seymour, Wisconsin, and came up with the brilliant idea of smashing them between a couple slices of bread. He called it a hamburger.

A third theory is that a couple of guys, Charles and Frank Menches, invented the hamburger at a fair in Hamburg, New York in 1885.

But according to most authorities the word hamburger came to us from Hamburg, Germany. That has never, ever even occurred to me. Margaret Salt Mclellan probably knew, but I didn’t.

Lisa Kristoff’s third husband, Joe, told her that when he was in the Air Force in the late 60s, bars in Germany would serve raw hamburg as a snack, instead of peanuts. I guess if you were hungry and had had a few beers ...

Wherever they hail from, hamburgers are now one of the most popular items on restaurant and diner menus, at least in the U.S. I’d start researching hamburgers’ popularity throughout the globe, but that stuff is fascinating and can take hours, which I don’t have today. If you’re that interested, Google it yourself.

Hamburgers, or burgers, as everyone but me calls them, are simply a slab of cooked ground beef thrown into a bun. You can adorn them with cheese and call them cheeseburgers, and add whatever condiments you like — mustard, relish, onions, ketchup, mayonnaise, tomato slices, lettuce — or more obscure things like the capers and caviar upscale restaurants are throwing on them now and transforming them into a gourmet $23 meal.

I like mine simple. Just a good crusty bun or roll and a ground beef patty with mustard, relish and onions. And pink salt, and lots of fresh ground pepper.

But that’s not to say any ground beef patty will do. I rarely order a hamburger in a restaurant because I insist on 90 percent ground beef. I don’t want any of those grisly chunks or a lot of fat in my hamburger. And the patty has to be no more than a half-inch thick.

Some people say the fatter the better. I disagree. Big in circumference is good, but a half -inch thick, and cooked to perfection — just slightly pink inside. And the burger has to fit the bun perfectly. That’s probably the artist in me. If I use a crusty oval-shaped roll I shape the burger in an oval, slightly larger than the roll, to allow for shrinkage.

Sorry. Who cares?

If I do get a hamburger in a restaurant I want it to be five or six bucks, not $18 or $20 unless it’s big enough that I can cut it in half and save half for the next day’s lunch.

I’m not really a snob about the quality of the meat though. Remember the greasy hamburger Faye Dunaway bit into in Bonnie and Clyde? It screamed grease. Even the bun was greasy. Every time I watch that movie I crave a greasy hamburger.

I’ve always liked McDonald’s hamburgers too. I remember going to a McDonald’s for the first time with my mother, after shopping in Portland for back-to-school clothes. A hamburger and the best french fries I’d ever had.

This may surprise you but I would still prefer a McDonald’s hamburger and an order of fries over the same in a restaurant. It’s a lot cheaper and you know what you’re going to get. There are no surprises at McDonald’s. Unfortunately they don’t serve beer or wine.

When I was a kid we skied at Bauneg Beg mountain outside Sanford. There were two rope tows. There was a billy goat that would come out of a barn to butt us when we skied by on the back trail. And there was Dirty Pete.

Dirty Pete worked the grill in the small lodge, or hut, at the base of the mountain. In the center of the hut was a woodstove that was usually covered with sizzling canvas mittens, drying after getting ringing wet on the rope tows.

We’d take off our ski boots and set them near the woodstove to warm up, and order hot chocolate and a hot dog or hamburger from Dirty Pete. His fingernails were always dirty, and there was always a Playboy-style calendar on the wall. Pete was dirty in more ways than one.

We didn’t care. The hamburgers were good, if greasy.

Those winters learning to ski with my mother and father and sister and two brothers and cousins and friends from Sanford make for good memories. I can still smell the woodstove, the cooking canvas mittens and the greasy hamburgers. And staring wide-eyed at Dirty Pete while the boys stared wide-eyed at his calendars.

In a memoir on a website about the now long-gone Bauneg Beg, my father, who also skied Tuckerman’s Ravine at Mt. Washington, was mentioned: “The club … took top honors … Sanford’s Wendell Thayer earned the title of ski meister.” And “Wendell Thayer dethroned Al Peel and had a downhill-slalom combined time of 80.5 seconds.”

Great skier and the kindest man I ever knew. And he loved a good hamburger.

It’s a rare occasion for me to have a hamburger for dinner. But when I do I usually have some Alexia sweet potato fries with it. If you haven’t had them you need to. They’re at Hannaford in the frozen foods section.

I don’t think I need to tell you I have a glass of wine, too. And if I’m lucky there’ll be a piece of chocolate cream pie for dessert.

You know what I’d really like to do? I’d like to open a hamburger joint. Just a fantastic hamburger and fries. $6.50. And if anyone had the audacity to ask for a hot dog I’d be like Bet when someone asks for a lobster roll. I’d put up a sign that said, “Don’t even ask for a blankety-blank-blank hot dog!” A hamburger or nothing.

Oh! But I would offer milkshakes — chocolate, strawberry, vanilla or coffee. And maybe some mini chocolate cream pies for dessert. That’s all.

OK I’m starving. See you next week.

Meanwhile always feel free to post positive comments online.

I’m not a chef. I lay no claim to being an authority on food or cooking. I’m a good cook, and a lover of good food. And I know how to spell and put a sentence together. This column is simply meant to be fun, and hopefully inspiring. So to anyone reading this whose hackles are raised because you know more about the subject of food than I, relax. I believe you.