Doesn’t everybody make their hamburgers exactly the same way we do?

Obviously the one and only right way to make a hamburger is to grill a quarter-pound (~110 gram) ground beef patty (flipping it once), and then serve it on a 4” (100 mm) diameter bun. But that’s a dangerous fallacy.

Even right here in Boise Big Juds is well-known for serving one-pound beef burgers on double-sized buns. Over at Carl’s Jr. you can find a plant-based Beyond Burger and turkey burgers.

When you look in the frozen-foods section of a supermarket, you also will find the little 2-1/2” square White Castle ‘sliders’ with five holes, as shown above. They were steam-grilled on a bed of chopped onions and never ever flipped.

In New Mexico the default is a green chile cheeseburger. In Salt Lake City, the cheeseburgers also include pastrami. See the Serious Eats article titled Salt Lake City: Tracking Utah’s Pastrami Burger at Crown Burger which says “Greek immigrants in a Mormon town take an all-American food and top it with Jewish luncheon meat.” Near Oklahoma City they mash ribbons of onion right into the meat patty, as is described in a Parade magazine article titled Try Oklahoma’s famous fried onion burger.

There is no one right way. The hamburger image came from Len Rizzi at the National Cancer Institute.