I have to admit that I love my hamburgers. I would guess that I eat more hamburgers than any other food out there. I guess fries would be in second place, since I normally eat my burgers with fries. I do order onion rings some of the time and rarely eat fries without a burger, so I think its pretty safe to see hamburgers is my main diet. I never said I had a healthy diet, but a hamburger stays with you and a lot of foods don’t. A burger is quick and most restaurants serve hamburgers, so they are easy to find. I think a good way to judge a restaurant that might specialize in pizza, buffalo wings, seafood, subs, or chicken; is just to order their burger and see how it stacks up with other burgers. If the hamburger is good; then the rest of the food here must be good too!

I think we all want a fresh made bun that is warm and served with a good portion of beef that is 100% pure beef. So after you have a good bun in place with a quarter to half pound of beef on it, what else does your perfect burger have on it? I have seen many different things as toppings over the years and if you think pizza offers a lot of toppings just check out the burgers sometime. Instead of choosing a restaurant that has picked your burger toppings for you, just go ahead and create the perfect hamburger. What would your toppings be on the perfect hamburger?

You often find a sauce or special ingredient that some restaurants offer on their hamburgers, so to keep this simple, let’s just choose things we can pick up at the supermarket. Here is a list of things you can generally find on a hamburger and you can just create your perfect burger from the list below:

Cheese (American, cheddar, Swiss, etc…), Tomatoes Ketchup or catsup, Mustard, Mayonnaise, Pickles, Lettuce, Onions, Mushrooms, Bacon, Slaw, Salad dressings (thousand island, French, ranch, etc…), Chili, Jalapenos, Sour cream, Horseradish, Sauerkraut

Do those sound like the typical things you get on your burger? Feel free to offer other suggestions on burger toppings too! I can pretty much eat all of these toppings, but no mayo or sour cream for me. I think if you go easy and just want a simple burger with a great taste; then a burger with mustard, onions, and pickles is a tasty combination. I believe my perfect burger would consist of the following toppings: spicy mustard, sautéed mushrooms, bacon that is not crispy, onions (white or red), lettuce, tomato, and pickle. I think that would be a great tasting burger with pretty much the works. Jalapenos are great on burgers, but they steal a lot of taste away from other things and I wouldn’t include them on my perfect burger. I love a good chili burger too (if the chili is good) and this tends to dominate the taste of a burger, so I would probably leave chili off. I think a few raw spinach leaves and cucumbers are two other things I would consider adding to my perfect hamburger. I think raw spinach leaves have very little taste, so you get the health benefits of spinach without compromising the taste of the burger.

So what would be on your burger? Do you keep it simple and go with a cheese and chili combination? Or do you like a burger that offers a little bit of everything? Mushroom and Swiss burgers are popular and I like Swiss cheese and mushrooms, but I don’t think the combination of the two work very well, but a lot of others do. Just going with the garden items (pickles, lettuce, onions, and tomatoes) makes a great hamburger too and you don’t always have to add the ketchup and mustard.