📚 Burger Guides & Blog

Deep, original guides on everything from how much beef to buy to nailing a crispy smash crust. No filler — just what actually helps you cook better burgers.

Technique & reference guides

The Complete Smash Burger Guide

Smash burgers are the best burger most people can make at home, because the technique does the work. This guide covers everything: the science of the smash, the gear, the beef, and the exact steps to a lacy, crispy-edged crust every time.

The Complete Grill Burger Guide

Grilling adds smoke and char that no skillet can match — but it's also where burgers most often go wrong: dry, flare-up-charred, or falling through the grates. Here's how to grill a juicy, flavorful burger every time.

Burger Sauces

The right sauce ties a burger together. Here are seven sauces you can make in five minutes from things you already have — from the classic burger sauce to garlic aioli and spicy sriracha mayo.

Burger Toppings

Great toppings balance the rich beef with crunch, acid, freshness and melt. Here are the categories that matter and the combinations that actually work together — instead of a soggy pile that slides off the bun.

Burger Equipment Guide

You don't need a kitchen full of gadgets to make great burgers — you need a few good tools that do the heavy lifting. This is the honest, no-fluff list of what actually makes a difference, organized by how you cook.

Specialty Diet Burger Guide

Here's the good news if you eat gluten-free, keto, dairy-free, paleo, or Whole30: a burger is one of the most diet-friendly meals there is. The patty itself — quality beef and seasoning — fits almost every plan. It's only the bun, the cheese, and a couple of sugary sauces that need swapping. This guide shows exactly what to change for each diet.

How-to & buying guides

How Much Ground Beef Per Person for Burgers

The short answer: plan on about 1/3 pound (150g) of ground beef per adult for burgers. But appetite, patty size, kids, and whether you're serving sides all change the math. Here's the full breakdown — and a calculator that does it for you.

Best Meat Ratio for Burgers

The number on the ground beef package — 80/20, 85/15, 90/10 — is the ratio of lean meat to fat, and it matters more than almost anything else for how your burger turns out. For most burgers, 80/20 is the answer. Here's why, and when to choose something else.

Smash Burger Mistakes to Avoid

Smash burgers are simple, but a few small mistakes are the difference between a crispy, lacy-edged masterpiece and a gray, dry hockey puck. Here are the seven errors people make most — and how to fix each one.

Best Burger Toppings

There are endless burger toppings, but only a handful of combinations are genuinely great. These are the best, ranked by how reliably they deliver — from the unbeatable classic to a few that are worth breaking out for guests.

Best Burger Sauces

A burger's sauce does a lot of quiet work: it adds moisture, tang, and richness, and ties the toppings to the beef. These are the best burger sauces, what makes each one great, and which burgers to put them on.

Burger Party Checklist

A burger party is one of the easiest parties to throw — and one of the easiest to fumble by forgetting one dumb thing (it's always the buns or the propane). This is the complete checklist: what to buy, what to prep, what to have ready, and when to do each piece, so the host actually gets to enjoy the party too.

Griddle vs Grill for Burgers

Griddle or grill isn't really a question of which is "better" — they make genuinely different burgers, and the right one depends on the style you're after and how many people you're feeding. Here's the real tradeoff, so you can pick with intention instead of just using whatever's in the yard.

How to Keep Burgers Juicy

A dry burger is almost never bad luck — it's one of a handful of specific, fixable mistakes. Juiciness is decided before the beef ever hits the heat (the fat ratio, how much you handle it) and protected while it cooks (no pressing, the right pull temperature). Here are the seven rules, in the order they matter.

Best Burger Buns

The bun matters as much as most people give it credit for — it has to hold together under juice and sauce, complement the patty instead of overpowering it, and it should always be toasted. Here's how the main bun types actually differ, and which to reach for.

Burger Seasoning Guide

Burger seasoning has one rule that matters more than every spice blend combined: <strong>where and when the salt goes</strong>. Get that right and plain salt and pepper beats most 12-ingredient "burger blends." Here's the timing rule, why surface-vs-mixed-in changes the texture of the meat itself, and what to reach for when you do want more than salt and pepper.

Memorial Day Burger Cookout

Memorial Day is the unofficial kickoff to grilling season — which also means it's often the first time all year the grill gets real use. A little extra prep goes a long way for the season's first big cookout.

4th of July Burger Cookout

The 4th of July is peak cookout season — bigger crowds, longer parties, and food that often has to hold from late afternoon all the way through fireworks. Here's how to plan around that.

Best Keto Burger Sauces

Most bottled burger sauces are quietly loaded with sugar — ketchup especially. None of that is necessary for a great sauce; these are all keto-friendly with zero added sugar.

Best Bun for Smash Burgers

A smash burger puts more demands on a bun than almost any other burger: thin, crispy-edged patties, plenty of rendered fat, melty cheese, and usually a griddled onion or sauce. The bun has to be soft enough to compress with that thin patty but sturdy enough not to dissolve. For most people, the answer is a potato bun — here's why, and what else works.

Brioche vs Potato Buns

Brioche and potato are the two most popular "upgrade" burger buns, and they're more different than they look. Brioche is rich, buttery and a little fancy; potato is soft, sturdy and gently sweet. Neither is universally better — the right one depends on the burger. Here's the honest breakdown.

How to Toast Burger Buns

Toasting the bun is the highest-return, lowest-effort upgrade in all of burger cooking. It takes 30 seconds and does two jobs: it adds toasty, buttery flavor, and it builds a barrier that keeps juice and sauce from turning the bun to mush. Here are the four ways to do it, ranked, plus the one thing that matters most.

How to Prevent Soggy Burger Buns

A soggy bun that falls apart in your hands is one of the most common ways a genuinely good burger gets ruined. The good news: sogginess is caused by a short list of specific, fixable things — hot juice, watery toppings, and sauce with nowhere to go. Fix these seven and your bun stays intact to the last bite.

Best Gluten-Free Burger Buns

Gluten-free burger buns have gotten genuinely good, but they behave differently from wheat buns — often denser, drier, and more crumbly — so a few technique tweaks make the difference between "great" and "falls apart." Here are the styles worth knowing, how to handle them, and the simple lettuce-wrap fallback that never lets you down.

Best Cheese for Burgers

Cheese is the most important burger topping, and the "best" one comes down to a trade-off between two things: how well it melts and how much flavor it brings. American wins on melt; sharp cheddar wins on flavor; several others own specific burgers. Here's how to pick, and how to get any of them to melt properly.

Best Onions for Burgers

Onion is on more burgers than almost any topping except cheese — and "onion" covers everything from a sharp raw white ring to a jammy pile of caramelized sweet onions. Each type does a completely different job. Here's which onion to use, and how to prep it, for the burger you're making.

Raw vs Grilled Onions

Raw or grilled onion is one of those small burger decisions that completely changes the eating experience. Raw brings crunch, freshness, and bite; grilled brings sweetness, softness, and depth. Neither is better in the abstract — they suit different burgers. Here's how to choose, with a clear side-by-side.

Best Pickles for Burgers

Pickles do a specific and important job on a burger: they cut through the richness with a hit of acid, salt, and crunch. Get the pickle right and every bite tastes brighter and more balanced. Here's which pickle to use, how to cut it, and the trick to keeping it from making your bun soggy.

Best Bacon for Burgers

Bacon on a burger only works if it's cooked and cut right — floppy, chewy bacon slides out the side and undoes the whole point, which is a crisp, smoky, salty crunch in every bite. Here's the best bacon to buy, the best way to cook it, and how to lay it so it stays put.

Fried Egg on a Burger

A fried egg turns a burger into something richer and a little decadent — the runny yolk becomes a sauce that coats everything. It's a brunch-burger classic for good reason. The key is a runny yolk and a set white, plus a build that doesn't collapse into a mess. Here's how to do it right.

Best Cheese for Smash Burgers

Ask any smash burger devotee and the answer comes back fast: American cheese. It's not nostalgia — the way American melts is uniquely suited to a thin, crispy smash patty. Here's why it wins, when to reach for something else, and the exact timing that gets you a perfect drape of melt.

Smash Burger Ball Weight

How much beef you roll into each smash ball decides everything downstream — how wide it smashes, how much crust you get, and whether you build singles, doubles, or triples. The classic answer is a 2 oz (about 55–60g) ball, and here's why that size is the smash sweet spot, plus when to go bigger or smaller.

Best Griddle Temperature for Smash Burgers

Heat is the number-one variable in a smash burger — get it right and you get lacy, deep-brown crust; get it wrong and you get gray, steamed meat. The target is a genuinely screaming-hot surface, roughly 425–475°F (220–245°C). Here's how to hit it, how to check it, and why "hot enough" matters more than any other step.