The only thing I normally put inside my burger is chopped onions and dry seasoning.

I do have a 'Juicy Lucy' stuffed burger maker that I use a couple times a year that allows for putting fillings inside a burger. I usually put bacon, cheese, mushrooms, and onions the the cavity. The burgers end up being about 3/4 lb. and we don't even attempt to use a bun.

Cheese, salt, pepper and grape jelly (I know it sounds awful, but I love it).

Cheese and mustard. Sometimes grilled onions if I'm feeling wild!

Your home made burger buns will make all the difference.

At home and most take-out places I usually stick with a normal cheeseburger sort of thing. Onions, mayo, mustard, nothing fancier than that. When we're eating/taking out from a local burger joint, DH goes for the potato chip, mac & cheese, fried egg sort of toppings. I go for the cream cheese & jalapeno jelly.

Cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mustard, ketchup. Homemade buns are wonderful--I made some last week for pizza burgers. I sauteed onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms for the toppings, and used mozzarella cheese and pizza sauce.

Awhile back I purchased a "stuffed" burger press. See link Carb free eating. Or....I use the same toppings you use Lucille.

Love hamburger, but limit myself to one at least 2 - 3 months apart. Love my burgers with bread spread with yellow mustard ( sometimes spread one side with mayo), lettuce, sliced dill pickles, sliced tomatoes, the hamburger - sometimes will add some type of cheese though not a big fan of cheeseburgers. Have to have some French fries and a Coke with the hamburger and savor every single bite. Editing to add the mandatory thin slice of raw onion.

Mustard, red onion, tomato, relish , no cheese. Minced white onion in hamburgers before cooking. Never tried homemade buns, sounds delish.

Mayo, ketchup, red onion, tomato, dill pickles and lettuce. No cheese. Extra pickles, please.

At home, it must be stacked exactly this way: bottom bun with a small bit of French’s yellow mustard, 2 or 3 thin rings of raw onions, dill pickles sufficient to cover the bun, cheese, meat, tomato, lettuce, top bun with a light coating of mayo.

When eating out, whatever the specialty of the house is, however they want to stack it. I am particularly fond the burgers at a place close to DD. Meat, bacon, blue cheese, fried onion straws, Heinz 57 sauce on a bun.

There is a place near DSS’s office that also has a burger I love. It is only meat, blue cheese, and caramelized onions on a bun. Nothing else, no sauce, no condiments, nothing. But it is spectacular!

Let us know how your buns turn out....would even love a picture. I've never taken the extra steps to make them, but my sister made buns for her family whether hamburger or hot dog. That stopped when her children were grown. And, she divorced. And too....moved to a more metropolitan area where specialty breads and baked goods more readily available. In other words, it was fun for her when younger, not so much now....;0)

I like tomato, dill pickle, just a touch of mayo, red onion, crisp lettuce on my burger. Bacon, or not, and I'm indifferent to cheese being included. For a different taste, I like pico de gallo on a burger. But get a hamburger too loaded and its more filling fare than I want from one meal. I'd almost rather take one loaded with the 'works' on a plate and eat it sans bun, with a knife and fork.

Brioche bun toasted in butter. Lotsa cheese. Mustard,onion and dill pickles. Sometimes mayo.

Nickles Bakery sesame seed bun.

Burger, grilled onions, tomato slice, bourbon barbeque sauce, bacon. If no bacon, then pepper jack cheese.

Side dish: onion rings with horseradish dip.

Mustard, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles.

On my homemade burger I top with Lettuce, tomatoes (homegrown preferred) sometimes cheese, sometimes sautéed mushrooms, yellow mustard and a tiny bit of kraft Mayo. Occasionally if I have very good Vidalia onions Sliced very thin.

I like my burgers on the bottom of the bun. If I'm served a burger with stuff under it, I deconstruct the sandwich and put it back together. I'm not crazy about cheeseburgers. These are some of my favorite combos:

Lettuce, tomato, onion, hamburger dills and mayo

Mustard, hamburger dills and onion

Boursin and sautéd mushrooms

Sautéd sliced onions mixed with BBQ sauce

What time is dinner, Lucille? Those buns look delish!

Spicy brown mustard, sliced red onion, jalapeño slices, pepper jack cheese. :)

Tonight I made hamburger steaks with some

WAGYU/AKAUSHI ground beef. I made a topping of sautéed mushrooms and onions and stuffed the meat with a little bit of cheese. And I sautéed some asparagus to go with it.

Oh my goodness it was so good. That beef is so good.

Not burgers but close.

onion cooked with the burger plus chopped raw onion, cheese and ketchup. if I added anything it'd only be lettuce and tomato, but I don't usually do that. It's been decades since I've done that.

Hubby detests those six inch tall artisan burgers! They have too much stuff on them and are impossible to eat without a fork and knife.

I like my grass fed (if available) burger with a toasted bun, yellow mustard, sweet pickle relish and shredded lettuce. If I'm really splurging, I'll add a slice of pepper jack cheese and crispy bacon. Hold the raw onion, dill pickles and the gloppy sauce.

I also like hot, crispy, salty fries (preferably with skin on) on the side.

ETA - The buns look terrific, Lucille!

I like them a lot of ways. But something I have recently discovered about myself is that bacon on a burger without cheese tastes better to me than with. The cheese sort of neutralized the bacon I guess. I like cheese on most other burgers.

At home I sometimes will make a plain butter burger. Good ground beef on a toasted roll with lots of butter. Nothing else needed. Sometimes I use an English muffin. I also like a good steakburger on a crusty French roll garlic bread style.

I love teriyaki burgers with pineapple and sweet red relish.

I'm pretty picky :-) No bacon, no raw onions, no pickles or pickle relish of any kind, no lettuce and French's yellow mustard is an abomination!!

Cheese always but what type depends on the burger. Often just American but cheddar works and gruyere is perfect with grilled mushrooms. And blue cheese is a favorite as well.

Saucing also varies. Sometimes just a good Dijon but at home I like secret sauce :-) Or my bro's homemade BBQ.

Other additions could be the aforementioned grilled mushrooms, grilled onions or fried onion straws, maybe tomato, maybe avocado.

With both burgers and pizza I prefer the KISS principle :-)

I don’t eat a burger very often anymore. When I do it’s a homemade ’smash burger’. I pretty much flatten the meat and don’t use a lot for my burger patty. I will make one for DH that is larger. I also only use a half bun so yes I eat it with a knife and fork. I put spicy brown mustard on the bun, then on top I have a fresh tomato and sliced kosher dill pickles. Maybe some pimento cheese if I have it on the bun too or some other cheese.

If you can use a nice grass fed ground beef, all you need is just the meat with salt and pepper. Or, if you have access to a better quality meat than you normally find at the groceries, buy it.

I don't even use garlic with a nice cut of beef. I love garlic and it is fine to add to a good quality meat, but I find it a refreshing change to just have meat that stands on it's own merit.

Beware of ground beef that you have to add flavor to in order for it to have any presence. If you add soup mix, and spices, and sauces to the burger, you are just using the meat as a protein platform for those flavors.

That is a bit different from dressing your burger with what you like. But, the meat is the central player and it should have it's own domain on the pallette and be the star in that bun. All else should be the supporting cast around it and should not be in the meat just to make the meat taste like something.

I would rather have one good burger that actually has a good beef flavor than have any number that have to be flavored up.

I have actually gotten rid of some grocery store ground beef that just tasted like nothing at all. Here looking at you Wegmanns grocery!!!

Those burger buns look good! As a suggestion, look up a recipe for a white buttermilk bread. Buttermilk adds a nice soft texture to a bun like that.

After years of burgers burned to a dry blackened crisp on the gas grill, I have come to the conclusion that the very best burgers are cooked in a cast iron skillet for a griddle, by far. The only burgers that cook well over a flame, in my opinion, are those that are made of good quality meat and are actually big and thick enough to cook as you would a solid piece of steak. If you can't achieve an interior that can be left a bit rare, then your burger is too thin and too small to cook well on a grill. Even if you like it well done, the burger should still be of a size and a quality that would allow for it to be also cooked to a doneness of rare. Even then, I vote for the cast iron skillet burger.

More quality and less quantity---that is way I roll now days!!

Flavor comes from fat and I don't think they use the right fat in ground beef. It's not the hard white fat that renders into a liquid with heat. I think most of it is the connective tissue. As long as it's white, they must count it as fat to meet the requirements.

A rib eye steak is one of the most flavorful and it has the hard white fat. I used to pan-fry steaks in oil but now I trim that fat off and render the fat from it as I preheat the pan. With my last rib eye that went on the grill, I cut the fat off and froze it, thinking I would grind it up in my Cuisinart and add it to a leaner ground beef to make burgers.

I'm surprised that few say they put ketchup on their burgers. I use a lot of ketchup, a squirt of mustard, red onions, and a slice of tomato and Swiss cheese on my burger. Sometimes I make burger sauce with mayo, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and sweet relish. If I get a burger at a restaurant, I get a mushroom Swiss burger.

Dallasannie, so true about the beef. I only use fresh ground chuck from our butcher. If you look up smash burgers, they are cooked on a grill in a hot iron skillet. That is how you achieve the ’smash’ successfully. The less handling of the meat the better. And the only seasoning I use is Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. I’m very picky about my burger.

I was inspired to make homemade buns again last evening. I broiled burgers, topped with a slice of mozzarella and sauteed onions and mushrooms. I made a sauce/gravy with pan drippings and potato starch, to try to replicate Rally's mushroom & Swiss burger (we were out of Swiss cheese). They were drippy and messy and delightful. :)

Sounds delicious!!

Those homemade burger buns look great. I put yellow mustard, sweet onion, old chedder cheese that I let melt on the burger and pickles, usually sliced dills but I bought some spicy bread and butter pickles that taste wonderful on a burger and a big tomato slice. Once in a while I might have bacon on the burger. I also have to have butter on the bun.

When I was around 16 years old the comedian Charlie Callas was in Windsor appearing at the Elmwood Casino. My friends and I used to like to get a burger at a downtown hotel restaurant. At the time it was the only restaurant we knew that put all the condiments and tomatoes and onions in a serving dish on the table for you to dress your own burger. Anytime I had a burger I would take a bite and everything on it would fall out and onto my blouse. We were laughing about this one day when we were at the restaurant. I put everything on my burger and when I went to take a bite I heard this funny voice beside my head and I turned around and it was Charlie Callas. He must have overheard us talking. He said this is the way to eat a burger without it making a mess on your clothes. He took my burger, removed the tomato and threw it on my plate. Haha all the while making those funny noises he used to make. It worked, the burger didn't make a mess on my clothes. Ever since then if I eat a burger out I don't put a tomato slice on it.

I agree with you, Cherry, about the tomato making the burger wet and messy. I prefer to have tomato separately, if at all. There is such a thing as making a sandwich so big or so wet that it all falls apart and you end up picking up the pieces with a fork anyway. I would rather have my carefully composed burger to remain intact and as it was meant it to be rather than fall into a wet mess.

Sometimes we persist with doing things that we have always done without thinking about whether or not they really make any sense.

Actually, there are other vegetables that can be used to dress a burger and the ice berg lettuce and cardboard tomato that is most often with it is really not that much of an asset.

The same with a BBQ sandwich. I never understood why put the Cole slaw on the bun. It just makes the bun all wet and it falls apart. And, with the poor quality bun that most are served on, it doesn't take much to make that thing fall completely into a wet and squishy mess. It seems better to just have your BBQ on a plate rather than to have to wrestle a wet sandwich, especially since the bun is probably some version of Wonder Bread.