Culver's CurderBurger May Be Gone, But With This Tip It's Not Forgotten

Culver's, the beloved Wisconsin-born chain restaurant, is known for three things: ButterBurgers, fried cheese curds, and frozen custard. In the spring of 2021, when the company announced it was combining two of those ingredients into one magnificent curd-topped ButterBurger — a cheeseburger beyond anybody's wildest dreams — the idea seemed too good to be true. And, well, it was. This was April 1, 2021. The announcement had been an April Fools' Day joke.

But the response to the prank was so enthusiastic that Culver's, which today has locations across the country, decided to go ahead and make this dream a reality: The people had spoken, and they demanded the CurderBurger. Since debuting it for real in October 2021, Culver's has brought the artery-clogging invention back on special occasions — and even let The Takeout in on the process behind the CurderBurger's creation. Still, it's not available year-round. In the meantime, Culver's still serves its Deluxe ButterBurgers and cheese curds — you can order each separately, pile some cheese curds on top of a burger patty, and make a CurderBurger of your own. With the ingredients at your fingertips, in other words, you can make the magic happen yourself.

Anybody writing a cookbook of quintessential Wisconsin cuisine would want to include both butter burgers and fried cheese curds — two prime examples of what happens when you take a good thing and, unnecessarily but deliciously, make it even better. The butter burger is just what it sounds like: a burger dripping in butter. This is the Dairy State, after all. Various legends exist about its creation, but one story puts the burger's origins in Milwaukee in the 1930s, when a restaurateur named Kenneth "Solly" Salmon served his patties on toasted buns topped with cooked onions and a generous helping of butter. A half-century later in 1984, the first Culver's opened in Sauk City, serving its own spin on the classic that was somewhat less greasy, with only the bun buttered.

Cheese curds are available in gas stations, groceries, and other fine establishments all over Wisconsin. The highlight of a good fresh cheese curd, it's widely known, is the squeak it makes when you bite down on it. The highlight of a good fried cheese curd is, well — does it even need saying? It's the fact that the cheese is battered and deep-fried. Time was, you'd have to head to a state fair in the Midwest to encounter this treasure. But Culver's has introduced it, as well as the ButterBurger, to a nationwide audience. Increasingly, cheese curds are joining mozzarella sticks on chain restaurant menus — and might start giving them a run for their money. 

As sold by Culver's, the CurderBurger consists of the chain's Deluxe burger (a Culver's ButterBurger with all the fixings) topped with one single, enormous deep-fried cheese curd. In October 2021, on the first day it was available for real, Culver's sold a ton of CurderBurgers — more than 130,000, with one-fifth of the restaurant's outlets hitting single-day sales records. It's continued to come back since then. But if you're not around for the next CurderBurger sighting, fear not — here's what you do.

Order the Deluxe — one, two, or three patties, your choice. Then get an order of cheese curds, which are always on the menu; they're Wisconsin-sourced, from LaGrander's Hillside Dairy in Stanley. An order of regular-sized curds doesn't have the cohesion of the single gargantuan curd, but layered atop your butter burger, they'll do the trick just fine. And of course — if you're able to eat anything at all after this experience — don't forget to finish the meal with that third Dairy State delicacy: frozen custard.