Every Way to Cook a Hamburger (42 Methods)

[Amiel] Hi everyone, I'm Amiel Stanek,

editor at large at Bon Appetit

and this is Almost Every Way To Cook A Burger.

You can make a burger patty out of just about anything.

Turkey, chicken, fish, even plants.

But when most people think about a burger,

they think about beef.

And the character of a burger

is very much determined by the cut of beef you use.

Some people swear by lean sirloin,

others by rich, fatty short rib and some people love

the full flavor that cuts like skirt steak offer.

But for my money, it's all about good old fashioned chuck.

Chuck comes from the shoulder of the cow,

is super beefy and affordable, and naturally clocks in

at about 80% meat and 20% fat.

Exactly what you want for a burger with tons of flavor

and plenty of juiciness.

Once the meat is ground, it gets gently formed into

a nice, tidy six ounce patty with a little divet

in the center to keep it from shrinking up when it cooks.

The biggest challenge when cooking a burger

is getting as much caramelized crust as possible

on the outside while nailing the perfect, juicy

medium-rare to medium inside and we're gonna try to do

exactly that every way we can think of.

Cast iron burger.

All right, we've got our burger patty.

We've got a pre-heated cast iron pan

and we're gonna get a little bit of oil in there.

We're gonna season our burger generously on both sides

with kosher salt, the more fat the meat has,

the more salt it needs, lay it down, press it gently,

and cook it for about four minutes on each side.

Beautiful.

We've got nice caramelization on the outside,

some crispy bits around here,

cutting into it we got a nice wall of medium-rare,

very little gray and the texture looks really nice

and loose, very juicy.

Mm, amazing.

The meat is succulent and tender,

the exterior is salty and complex.

This method may be straight forward,

but it delivers.

Grill pan burger.

So, now we're gonna use a grill pan,

which is just a cast iron pan with ridges

that mimic those of a grill.

We're gonna brush it with oil to prevent sticking,

season our patty, and cook it for

about four minutes on each side.

There you go.

So you'll notice that the browning is concentrated

along these lines where the meat was in contact

with the ridges, but the rest is kind of gray.

Not enough browning for my taste.

The inside looks pretty perfect.

Mm, I mean, it's tasty, but I'm not sure I see the point

in the grill pan when the standard

cast iron delivered such better browning.

Pre-seasoned burger.

You've probably noticed that we've been seasoning

the outside of the patty, but not the inside.

This time we're gonna try to mix some salt into

the ground meat itself.

Salt our beef, knead it well to distribute,

form our patty and cook it for four minutes a side

in this hot cast iron.

Let's check it out.

Time to try our salt inside burger experiment.

It's plenty crispy looking, cutting it open,

okay so this is interesting.

It definitely cooked less evenly and you can see

how that outer layer is gray and kind of dense looking,

that's because the salt actually breaks down proteins

in the meat causing it to stick to itself

instead of being loose and tender.

Mm, yeah, the texture is much more like a sausage.

It's bouncier and less tender.

You know, I'm gonna stick to salting the outside

of the burgers from now on.

Frozen burger.

Same patty, but this one's been frozen solid.

We're gonna oil the pan, season our burger,

and this is gonna cook for more like seven minutes per side.

[light music]

All right, let's check it out.

Because this guy's spent a bit more time in the pan,

we got slightly more color, but nothing too significant.

The inside is blushing and beautiful,

but a bit more gray than our fresh patty.

Mm, I mean, it's not bad, but it's not an improvement

on our fresh patty, but it can be done.

Okay, let's go to the backyard

so I can air my clothes out a bit.

Gas grilled burger, three ways.

We got three patties that have all been salted

and oiled, we got our gas grill.

This first one is our standard beef patty.

This one is frozen, so it's completely hard.

And then this is another fresh patty that we're gonna

put an ice cube on top of, allegedly to keep it moist

and apparently we're not supposed to flip it until it melts.

We'll just take these off when they're done.

[light music]

Gas grilled burger,

revenge of the grill marks.

You know, unless you've got a killer gas grill,

it's hard to produce even as much heat as a cast iron pan

so we're looking at way less browning.

The interior, good color but it does look a tad dry.

Mm, yeah, I want a lot more browning

and because the heat was a bit lower,

lost some juice as it cooked,

it's fine but nothing to write home about.

Gas grilled frozen burger.

So this was on there for quite some time,

it had to defrost and then cook through all the way,

cutting in, yeah, definitely less even

and you're seeing some kind of weird gradient.

Hmm, huh, you know?

It's a bit juicier than the last one,

maybe because the fat was colder and rendered differently.

But not a method I'd repeat unless I had to.

Ice cube burger.

I don't think that ice cube did anything at all.

It certainly didn't help the exterior

and yeah, the inside is cooked pretty unevenly,

probably because one side was colder.

Mm, yeah I mean it's fine,

but certainly not juicier or better in any way.

Water does not make food moist people, fat does.

Charcoal grilled burger.

Alright, we got a burger that's been salted and oiled,

we've got a hot charcoal grill,

we're just gonna lay this down right here.

Okay, it's been about four minutes,

let's give it a flip.

Looks done to me.

Here we have our charcoal grilled burger.

Got a nice sear on the outside, definitely getting

some of that charcoal, smoky sort of smell.

Wow, look at that, that's really beautifully cooked.

Perfect medium-rare and it's still nice and juicy,

you can tell, mm, that is just--

the taste of summer, juicy beef, beautiful crust,

and that charcoal smoke flavor, mm.

This is so backyard iconic.

This is a really great way to cook a burger.

You know, it's getting kind of cold out here,

I'm ready to head back into the kitchen.

Hibachi grilled burger.

So, here we have a hibachi style grill.

We're gonna salt our patty and let her rip.

It's burning binchotan charcoal which is special

because it burns really really hot and really cleanly.

So we can do this inside, under the hood,

without smoking up the place.

Viola, hibachi burger.

Wow, this smells great, decent color.

I'm pretty impressed with that grill.

And then interior, love to see it, looks pretty perfect.

Mm, wow, the flavor is amazing,

could've gotten a little bit more of a crust,

but the grill flavor is awesome.

As the fat and the juices drip onto the charcoal,

it kind of vaporizes and perfume the meat

in a really delicious way, yum.

Butter seared burger.

Back to cast iron except this time,

we're gonna grease our pan with a bit of butter.

Season the patty, four minutes on each side,

should be good to go.

Well, it smells buttery and delicious.

But we're not seeing great caramelization,

probably because of the water content of the butter.

The inside, temp looks great, nothing to complain about.

Mm, you know, I feel like I'm barely tasting the butter

at all and I'm missing that crust.

It's not bad, but this didn't add

all that much in my opinion.

Steamed burger.

I swear this is actually a thing.

We've got our burger patty,

we've got a steamer set in this pot of boiling water,

we're just gonna lay it down right here,

close the lid and come back in about eight minutes.

Oh boy, that looks done all right.

Definitely not all that appealing looking.

Gray town USA.

No direct heat, no browning.

And it really shrunk up a bit.

Mm, the inside looks juicy but we've got a fat gray ring

all around it, probably because it was cooking

from all sides at once.

You know, texture isn't awful,

it's weird to eat this much beef with no browning at all.

Could be good with a slider patty,

but this is pretty unpleasant to me.

Toaster burger,

why not right?

Season this guy up, slide it into the toaster,

and we'll see what comes out on the other side.

Okay, well it popped, and to get it out of there, ahhh.

Oh God, okay.

See if the chopsticks--

Take it out, just turn it upside down.

Toaster burger.

Wow, well--

We kinda scratched it up a little bit getting it

out of the toaster, I'm not enamored of this exterior.

I just don't think the heat was quite high enough.

That's it, it looks a lot better than some of the burgers

we've seen today, this inside actually looks pretty good,

I'm not gonna lie.

It got to the right temperature, I'll be it a little rare.

Fun fact, the place that claims to invent to hamburger

sandwich, Louie's Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut,

uses weird vertical broilers that are not

that different from a home toaster.

Mm, missing the browning, certainly juicy.

Could've been a lot worse, for sure.

Ironed burger.

No room service burger is ever gonna be hot and fresh

enough for me so if I'm staying in a hotel,

I'm just gonna fire up the iron, salt my burger generously

on both sides with salt, spray it with the pam

that I snuck through airport security,

and go to town.

I'm gonna flip it, finish the other side.

Wow, okay.

Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with what's going on here.

The browning is even, almost smash burger level.

Although I'm a bit concerned about the squishing

and moisture loss, the inside, nice.

This might be a sleeper hit.

Mm, that's a damn good burger.

It's a bit dryer than our standard smash burger

but honestly it's better than a solid 70% of our methods.

This is pretty great.

Deep fried burger.

We got a burger, we got a deer fryer,

we're gonna season this bad boy on both sides,

and drop it into our fryer set to 350 degrees

for about 12 minutes.

Ta-da.

I'm not impressed by the way this looks.

We might've needed higher heat,

cutting into it, the temp isn't awful,

but it has that same kind of gray ring all around,

the way that our steamed burger did

and I think that's because it was totally surrounded by heat

Mm, I mean, it's not horrible,

but definitely not better than our cast iron burger.

Not sure I would pull out the deep fryer for this one.

Waffle burger.

We had to do it, friends.

Burger, salt, hit our waffle iron with some cooking spray

and do the damn thing.

There's nothing I wanna say,

it's just depressing at this point.

Oh wow, yep.

There it is.

I mean it looks kinda cool to be honest.

Decent color at those points of contact

but otherwise pretty pale.

Yeah, that's seriously over cooked,

we definitely squished the hell out of it so it lost

a lot of moisture.

Blech, it tastes like a cafeteria burger.

It's so gross, bad.

Rotisserie burger.

Okay, we're gonna take this apparatus,

we're gonna strap our patty in,

try not to squish it too much.

All right, get it in there, close the door

and get it spinning.

And there's our rotisserie burger.

So, this is a situation.

Looks like we lost quite a bit of juice

but the exterior isn't the worst we've seen today.

Getting in there, definitely on the rarer side,

really uneven.

Mm, definitely way less juicy than our other burgers,

it lost a lot of fat while it was spinning.

And the outside doesn't have the depth of flavor I'm after.

I'll save the rotisserie for chicken thank you very much.

Smash burger.

Now for something a little different.

We've got a slightly smaller wad of ground beef,

we've got our nicely seasoned diner griddle

and instead of making a patty,

we're just gonna drop it on there

and use a spatula to smash it flat.

Hit it with salt, flip and season again,

and there is our smash burger.

The beautiful thing here is just how much caramelization

we got on the outside.

Beautiful even layer of crispiness.

Check that inside, still nice and pink,

good looking texture but certainly more cooked

than some of the others.

Mm, yum, this is definitely a favorite of mine.

That exterior flavor is out of control,

and it's still plenty juicy and tender.

I honestly think this is one of the most fool proof ways

to make a delicious burger there is.

It' like the plutonic ideal of the roadside diner burger.

Frozen smash burger.

Okay, same thing, but this time we froze our wad of beef

for about 15 minutes to get it good and cold

which some people say produces a better smash burger.

Squish it good, flip, let's check it out.

Good color here, but not quite as goo as our first

smash burger, maybe because the meat took longer

to heat up, the inside a bit more rare,

not bad looking, mm, honestly, it's hard to tell

the difference I had heard that chilling the meat

would prevent fat from rendering out,

but I'm not buying it.

Onion smash burger.

Okay, spoiler alert,

this is one of my favorite burgers of all time.

An homage to a place called white mana

in Hackensack, New Jersey.

We're gonna put out beef down, shower it with thinly sliced

onions smash it, season with salt, flip it, more salt,

and there it is, beautiful, even crust, love to see it.

What's really interesting is what's going on on the other

side though it kind of steamed in the onion juices.

God it smells amazing, the inside, looks nice,

just like our other smash burgers.

Mm, so so good.

It's like a smash burger wearing onion perfume.

So much flavor.

Heaven, okay, let's head back outside, shall we?

Grilled smash burger.

Can we make a smash burger on a grill?

We're gonna try.

We're gonna smash our ball of beef onto this griddle heated

griddle and let it do its thing.

Looks good to me.

So, here we have our alfresco smash burger,

great cripsy caramelization on this side,

just like our stovetop versions,

the inside looks great.

Mm, yum.

Pretty much exactly what we got indoors,

but with better scenery.

If I'm cooking burgers on a gas grill,

this is definitely my preferred way to do it.

Smoked burger.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

We got our burger, we got our smoker.

Let's do this thing.

[coughs] Okay then.

Not a whole lot of browning going on,

it's definitely darkened somewhat

but the temp was too low to get any real browning.

Smells smoky though, the inside,

well it looks pretty even but also maybe very rare.

Mm, hmm, yeah it's smokey all right.

A smidge dried out and really missing that crust.

It probably would've been better if we seared it

afterwards or smoked it at a higher temp

or something like that.

Searzall burger.

Okay, we're gonna cook this here patty with a searzall

which is basically just a fancied up blow torch.

I'm gonna sit down for this one.

Get the other side.

All right, let's check this out.

So the browning is kind of concentrated in a few areas,

we've got some charred, burned bits.

You know, the searzall is really for finishing

already cooked things than cooking them through.

The inside is pretty raw.

Yikes.

You know, it's too rare for me, it's cold in the middle.

No thanks, eh, this seems like a good time

to head back into the kitchen.

Sous vide burger.

Now we're gonna get fancy and sciency in sous vide burger.

We're gonna slide our patty into this bag,

then suck all the air out and seal it.

Now, we're gonna place it in this pot

that's fitted with an emersion circlator

which will keep it at a consistent 120 degrees.

We're gonna check on this in about 45 minutes.

Phase one, complete.

Now, we'll cut open our bag, get a little oil

into our pre heated pan, dry our burger off,

and sear it hard on both sides.

All right, looks good to go.

Here we have our sous vide and seared burger.

I'm a little disappointed by how little color we got here

but I was afraid to take it further because the inside

was already up to temp.

Cutting in, yeah, not loving that.

Sous vide cooking is way better for a bigger cut of meat,

not a quick cooking one like this.

Mm, yeah, totally fine, a little over cooked.

You know, the pay off just isn't there.

Microwaved burger.

They're making me do this in case you hadn't guessed.

We got a microwave,

we got a burger patty, we're gonna season it,

transfer it to a plate, pop it in, and cook it for

two and a half minutes.

Oh Lord, that's gotta be done.

So, here is our burger cooked with low level radiation.

It looks really gnarly and clearly lost a lot of its juice.

No browning to speak of and it's a little pink

in the middle but it cooked really unevenly.

Let's get this over with.

Oh well, it tastes like beef.

It's definitely worse than our steamed burger,

uch, no reason to cook a burger this way, period.

Dehydrated burger.

Why do people climb Mount Everest?

Because it's there.

Season it with salt, open this dehydrator up,

get our burger in there, shut it

and we're gonna let it go at 158 degrees

for four and a half hours.

Let's check it out.

That is something all right.

This looks pretty disturbing, it's very dark,

almost like a black bean burger or something like that.

Let's take a look at the inside.

Wow, I mean, it looks kinda good.

I'm honestly kinda scared to eat this because it's been

in the danger zone for so long,

I really hope I don't get sick.

No, the exterior is like leather, so weirdly tough.

Gah, bad, do not do this.

Tartare burger.

Okay, we've cooked a lot of burgers at this point,

so now we're gonna try not cooking one at all.

Here we've got some ground chuck,

we're gonna add an egg yolk,

some diced onion, some salt,

little olive oil, we're making a very minimal tartare here.

Formed into a patty and there's our tartare burger.

Obviously this is raw, just beef with mixins.

Gonna cut it in half which is pretty unnecessary,

yep still raw beef.

You know, I love steak tartare but for some reason

it's kind of daunting on a bun.

Mm, it's totally delicious,

it would be a lot better if this bun was toasted

to create some texture and temperature contrast.

I don't think I could eat this whole thing,

it's a really cool way to eat beef.

Hand-chopped burger.

Now we're gonna do something a little different.

Here, we have six ounces of chuck

that we've frozen a bit to firm up.

Then we're gonna cut it by hand into a nice, even,

quarter inch dice.

Now we're gonna form it into a nice, loose patty.

Get some oil into our pan, season the hell out of it,

and cook it for about four minutes per side.

Beautiful.

That exterior is really gorgeous.

The roughness of the chopped meat created a lot of surface

area so you'll have lots of browning and these nice, crispy

raggy bits, the inside is not as evenly cooked as some

of our ground patties but it looks really juicy

and I love how loosely textured it is.

Mm, that tastes amazing.

So beefy and moist, the texture is so different

and fantastic, it kind of falls apart in your mouth,

definitely labor-intensive but a really cool take

on a burger for-sure.

Mix-in burger, three ways.

So, we've already established that we do not

like to mix salt into our burgers

but there are a whole lot of things people add to burgers

that they swear make them better.

In this one, we're gonna add some cold cubes of butter.

Then we're gonna add some mayo to this one,

and this last one is gonna get a few tablespoons

of smooth peanut butter.

Gosh that looks gross.

Form these into patties.

Season each one with salt, get these guys on the heat.

All right, let's take a look.

Butter burger.

I mean, it looks like a nicely caramelized burger,

and I think that has to do with the milk solids

in the butter rendering out and browning

which is interesting.

The interior, nicely cooked but seems like there's

some pockets where butter used to be.

Mm, it's good, juicy, but not juicier than a regular burger

and I think most of the butter just kind of rendered out

into the pan, I'd rather put some butter on the bun

honestly I'm not sure if this was a win. Mayo burger.

I'm actually kid of psyched on this

because I love mayonnaise on a burger

so maybe I'll like it in it,

the texture seems a little bit on the loose side

and we got good color because of the egg

and the sugar into the mayo.

Cutting in, hmm.

Oddly, it looks more well done even though it cooked

for the same amount of time.

Mm, oh, I don't think it's better than our standard patty,

I'm not sure the mayo added anything,

I'd much rather have mayo on the bun.

Peanut butter burger.

This got really crusty and again,

I think that's because there are naturally occurring sugars

in the peanut butter than encourage caramelization.

Nice kind of crispy, craggy bits here

and it smells kind of nutty I guess?

The inside looks pretty nice although a little less even.

Mm, oof, that is weird.

It tastes like eating a burger and smelling someone's

PB and J at the same time.

I do not like that.

Moral of the story, no mix-ins people.

Juicy Lucy.

I know I just said that I don't want things in my burger,

but we're gonna try out a Minnesota specialty

know as a Juicy Lucy.

We're gonna form two patties out of this beef.

Put some American cheese in there,

and press it gently to seal.

Season, cook it in our hot cast iron for about

four minutes on each side,

and that my friends is a Juicy Lucy.

Liking the color here, but the shape is funky.

We couldn't make our little dimple in the middle

so it shrunk up a bit.

The interior is supposed to be the really exciting part.

And there it is, melty, oozy cheese.

The temp is still pretty nice.

Mm, tastes great, I love American cheese on a burger,

so why not in it?

At the same time, I wouldn't say it tastes better

than a regular cheeseburger,

but it's a cool party trick for sure.

Baked burger.

Oven time.

This burger is salted and oiled and we're gonna pop it into

a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

And that my friends is baked burger.

Pretty uninspiring looking.

It's gray and it feels a little bit leathery.

The inside, really uneven,

you can see that this side got more heat from the sheet pan

and this side not so much.

Uch, eh, honestly, tastes really similar to our steamed

burger and I hate how the top is almost raw

and the bottom is well-done.

Yuck.

Roasted burger.

So baked was a bust, now we're gonna increase the heat

and decrease the time.

475 degrees for about seven minutes.

That should do it.

Somehow this looks almost less cooked

than our baked burger.

Again, it's super uneven, way more cooked down here

than it is up here, the metal is just such a better

conductor of heat than the air is,

I'm not excited about this.

Mm, yeah, a whole lot of textures goin' on here

and none of them are good.

It's a more exaggerated version of our baked burger,

no bueno.

Broiled burger.

Broiler time.

We're gonna put our patty in there for about six minutes

and see what comes out the other side.

Okay, that looks about done.

So, a lot of restaurants broil their burgers

but they have much more powerful units.

Our home broiler, not so much.

Hardly any browning on top

and the bottom aint much to look at either.

The inside, actually looks better than our other oven method

but it definitely shrunk up in a funky way.

It's kind of loosey goosey.

Yeah, I'm not into how gray this tastes.

Juicy but seriously lacking in browned burger flavor.

You know, this oven doesn't seen to be working too well

for us but why don't we try the--

Easy-Bake oven burger.

All right folks, we got a mini burger patty,

we got our easy bake oven.

It actually feels kind warm.

We're gonna salt it, get it onto this special little tray

and slide it in.

And now we're gonna use this ridiculous tool here to

ew, I mean, ew but also, kinda cute?

Obviously this burger is a little too small for this bun,

it's definitely cooked looking

but it's just a little puck of beef and that underside

is very unappealing looking.

I mean, it was cooked with a light bulb.

The inside, actually still has some pink to it

which is a little disturbing.

Mm, oh, it tastes like the burgers

they served in my middle school cafeteria

with a hint of burning plastic, nasty.

Pan to oven burger.

This ones a two-fer.

We got a hot pan, we're gonna get a little oil in it,

season our burger and then sear it on both sides

just to get a crust on it.

Then, we're gonna transfer to this rack.

And finish it in the oven.

Voila, so it didn't get any new color in the oven

and since we were trying not to over cook the burger

on the stove we pulled it before we got the kind of crust

we wanted, the inside looks pretty nicely cooked,

little bit of gray around the edges.

Hmm, it's not bad by any means,

but I'm missing that crust and this wasn't better

than if we would have just given it

another few minutes in the pan.

Reverse seared burger.

Okay, let's try to do the exact opposite.

This burger, we've oiled and salted

and we're gonna put it into this 350 degree oven

for about 20 minutes, just until the inside is rare.

Then we're gonna take it out and now that it's fully cooked

we're gonna sear it in a hot pan for a minute or so

on each side, just to get some color.

Reverse seared burger.

The exterior here is quite appealing.

Browning is a lot easier to achieve when the outside

has been given a head start in the oven.

That interior, very pretty.

Nice and even, hardly any gray at all and very juicy looking

Mm, that's really nice, much better than our sous vide

or our pan to oven, that said, it's not markedly better

than our pan seared burger and took longer

so I'm not sure I see the point in any of

these two step methods honestly.

You know, I think I'm ready for a little fresh air.

Fire pit burger, three ways.

All right, we've got three burgers here.

This first one we're gonna put on this preheated lava stone

this one we're gonna put onto this rack

directly on top of the coals

and this foil wrapped burger is gonna go right here.

We're gonna come back, flip these halfway through

and take them off if they're ready.

Lava stone burger.

You can tell that lava stone was super heated.

Look at that gorgeous browning.

That stone provided really direct heat

and protection from flare ups

at the same time which we love.

And the inside looks great,

a hair overcooked but that's really my fault.

Mm, that crust is amazing, so flavorful

and just the famous whisper of wood smoke,

I really like this method.

Yum.

Wood grilled burger.

So, this one was cooked directly over the coals

and it shows, very aggressive caramelization,

a little charring even, really nice.

The inside is really pretty, a smidge over cooked again

but that's my bad.

Mm, really tasty, big wood smoke energy.

Yum, a bit less juicy than our lava stone burger

but still excellent.

The fire pit is definitely over performing.

Foil packet burger.

Well, first things first, now to get it open.

Damn this wrapped up tight.

Oh, yeah, that's not nice.

Kinda raw over here.

I mean, it just kind of steamed in that packet

because there was nowhere for the moisture to go.

Let's cut into it.

Oh yeah, ugly interior.

Very rare over here, more cooked over here.

Uch yeah no, not a good method,

no need to waste good foil to make a bad burger.

Yuck.

George Foreman burger.

The lean, mean, fat reducing, grilling machine.

We're gonna season our burg,

spray our George Foreman with a little cooking spray,

get our patty in and close it up.

All right, let's give it a try.

So we're got some grill marks, reminiscent of our

grill pan burger, I'm concerned about how squished it looks

though the inside, yeah that's over cooked.

Definitely in medium-well territory.

Mm, yeah that's pretty dry and grainy.

I mean the promise of the George Foreman grill

is that it squishes the fat and juice out of the meat

and let's it run off which does not a good burger make

in my opinion, missed me with this one.

Air-fried burger.

We got our burger patty, we got our droid thing.

Salt both sides, brush it with a little bit of oil,

open up our weirdo box and flop our burger in.

That's gonna cook at 350 degrees for

I don't know, some time.

Give it a flip and there's our air fried burger.

This looks truly awful.

The outside just looks desecrated.

Cutting it open, well it's cooked to temperature

but there's definitely some graying around the edges.

A product of that ambient, indirect heat.

Mm, that's not a good burger, I hate that thing.

Uck, okay.

Today we cooked a whole lot of burgers,

a whole lot of ways.

What did we learn.

Well, at the end of the day,

a good burger is one of life's simple pleasures

and as such our more straight forward methods

ended up yielding the best results.

No need to make things too complicated,

all you need is quality beef, high heat,

and maybe a little smoke and you've got the kind of burger

that dreams are made of.

Have a favorite way to cook a burger

that you didn't see here today,

leave it in the comments.