Okay, maybe you disagree about the toppings or the choice of bun or even what condiments to use? Maybe you dislike contaminating your beef with crispy pork belly? Maybe you like mayo instead of ketchup? Maybe you think mustard is reserved only for hot dogs? Maybe you’d rather wrestle an angry wombat than drape a slice of processed cheese on your burger?
Such disagreements are to be expected. Arguing over how to top your patty is practically a spectator sport in this country, where everyone has an opinion on what constitutes the ideal backyard burger, these often ungainly, always delicious summertime meals.
But have you put much thought into where you place your favorite toppings and condiments within the framework of those toasted buns? You might be surprised by how much the stacking order can affect the flavor, structural integrity and visual appeal of a burger. The ingredients closest to your palate can influence taste, while those higher in the stack can, as you chew, release aromas that are picked up by the nasal cavities and also affect your sense of taste.
To prove the point, we gathered a group of tasters — including two professionals known for their hamburger acumen — to rate and comment on a handful of burgers in which the same seven toppings and condiments were stacked in a variety of arrangements. With seven options at our disposal — American cheese, raw onions, tomato, lettuce, pickles, mustard and ketchup — we could have created 5,040 different burger stacks.
Our team sampled six — and the tasters were groaning after the fifth. Or was it the fourth?
Our tasters included four Washington Post Food staffers and two burger experts. One of the specialists was Mark Bucher, founder of BGR The Burger Joint (which he sold in 2014). Bucher has taken home multiple awards from the World Burger Championship, so many that he can’t always remember what categories he’s won. (He sent me a photo of four trophies from his shelves, including one for the No. 6 burger in the world, earned during the 2014 competition.) The other expert was Denise Lee, chef and owner behind Social Burger in Vienna, Va. Last year, one of Lee’s creations earned a spot on The Post’s 10 best burgers in the D.C. area.
At Social Burger, Lee has a standard stacking order: bottom bun, patty, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and Social sauce slathered on the top bun. Whole green-leaf lettuce “serves kind of like a bowl” for the other toppings (and any extra garnishes), preventing them from sliding around, Lee says. Bucher, on the other hand, is a minimalist: bottom bun, “some type of burger sauce,” patty, cheese (“always American”), ketchup and top bun. Sometimes he adds grilled onions, but never vegetables.
“That’s a salad in my book,” deadpans Bucher, who is also co-founder of the Medium Rare steak frites chain.
Both burger mavens would encounter surprises during the tasting, which asked judges to award points from 1 to 5, taking into account the stack’s flavor, structural integrity and overall appeal. Four of the stacks might have been familiar to the tasters: They were riffs — sometimes very liberal riffs — on well-known burgers. Ultimately, there was a winner, though its margin of victory was just two points. But there was a clear loser. I’m still not convinced our competition was fair to this lowly stack.
6. The Toppings-on-Bottom Stack
The stack: Bottom bun, ketchup, mustard, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, onions, patty, cheese, ketchup/mustard again, top bun.
The background: Any number of burger joints place the garnishes between the bottom bun and the patty, including the Burger Shop in Brentwood, Md. Chef and owner Ismael Montero prefers to put his toppings on the base bun because, he says, it helps hold everything together. Perhaps the most prominent example of this approach is the Famous Star burger at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.
The comments: Despite its promise of structural integrity, this stack couldn’t hold its form — literally, in the case of Bucher’s burger, whose fillings escaped the bun and hit the floor with a dull thud. Other judges had similar problems. Their comments were brutal: “Fail,” wrote Joe Yonan, food and dining editor at The Post, who sampled his burgers with plant-based patties. He gave it 1 star, which was one more than Bucher. “A mess,” Bucher wrote. “Too hard to eat.” (Incidentally, a day later, I assembled this stack at home, and it worked beautifully. But I ate a whole burger, rather than the half-burgers served during the tasting, and sliced the toppings much thinner.)
5. The Split-Toppings Stack
The stack: Bottom bun, ketchup, lettuce, onion, patty, cheese, tomato, pickle, mustard, top bun.
The background: After biting into five burgers, the judges were verging on meat sweats. They had no appetite for another stack, but then they began discussing the variations already sampled. Someone — I believe it was Yonan — suggested we had not yet tried to split up the cold ingredients: half on top, half on the bottom. So we pan-fried more burgers for a sixth stack.
The comments: The palate — and mental — fatigue were real by this point. The comments had devolved into short, incomplete sentences. “Kind of a mess,” wrote Aaron Hutcherson, The Post’s Dinner in Minutes columnist. He gave it a 2. Lee gave it the same score and noted how slippery the construction was. “Not a good hand-held,” she wrote. Bucher gave it a 3 but said it was “all mustard to me.”
4. The Condiments-on-Bottom Stack
The stack: Bottom bun, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, patty, cheese, pickles, onion, tomato, top bun.
The background: When putting together the list of potential stacks, I brainstormed this variation with Yonan. The idea was to have the ketchup and mustard on the bottom, closer to your palate, with the lettuce serving as a crisp, clean buffer between the patty and the condiments. There would be no condiments on top, only garnishes.
The comments: Lee was a fan. She gave it a 4 and described the stack as a “classic backyard burger” with the “most meat flavor.” Bucher agreed; he said it had a beefier taste. “This is a solid go-to,” he wrote in awarding the stack a 4. Matt Brooks, deputy food editor, disagreed with the experts. He said the stack held together better than others, but still gave it only a 2. I found the condiments had begun to soak through the bun, turning it into mush. It was too ketchup-and-mustard forward to me. I gave it a 3. I had only myself to blame.
The stack: Bottom bun, cheese, patty, cheese again, pickles, tomato, lettuce, onions, ketchup, mustard, top bun.
The background: Six years ago, McDonald’s announced that it would switch to fresh beef for Quarter Pounders across the nation. Almost overnight, many of us turned into Quarter Pounder stans — with no apologies. I always order the burger with cheese, not just because I love a cheeseburger, but because of the way Mickey D’s applies the dairy product: The crew surrounds the patty with American cheese, one slice on top and another on the bottom.
The comments: People loved this stack or hated it. Bucher was all-in. He gave it a 5 and said that, even with two layers of cheese, he “liked the balance” and the “burger taste.” Hutcherson gave it a 4 and said “everything kind of blended together well.” I gave it a 4, too, and found the stack cheese forward in a way that did remind me of a Quarter Pounder. Yonan was not a fan, awarding the stack a 2. He said, simply, “I taste less of everything I want.” Lee agreed with the 2 score. She said the “taste of cheese is lost, even with two” slices.
2. The Everything-on-Top Stack
Score: 21
The stack: Bottom bun, patty, cheese, ketchup, pickles, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, mustard, top bun.
The background: Six years ago, I ranked the signature fast-food burgers from Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Burger King. The Whopper (with cheese) was the clear winner, if mostly because its toppings were the freshest among a group of world-famous burgers, all of which, you might be surprised to learn, have little to do with beef. BK is old-school in its approach to stacking: everything atop of the patty. We adhered to the spirit of BK’s stack if not the precise ingredients (for consistency across stacks).
The comments: Brooks gave this one a 4 and noted the burger delivered maximum beefiness, with the rendered fat “seeping into the bun — which is nice.” Lee agreed, saying the burger “finished with the taste of the meat and ketchup.” A couple of tasters complained the toppings refused to stay in place, perhaps due to the thickness of the onion slice. Bucher thought it was “messy to eat and handle,” but called the burger “very summery.” He gave it a 3.
1. The Cheese-under-the-Patty Stack
The stack: Bottom bun, cheese, patty, mustard, pickles, onion, tomato, lettuce, ketchup, top bun.
The background: Fatburger doesn’t have the same name recognition as its Southern California rival, In-N-Out Burger, but the former has hardcore fans, including the Los Angeles Times. In the paper’s “official” fast-food burger power rankings, food columnist Lucas Kwan Peterson named Fatburger No. 1. It is “currently the best burger out there,” he wrote. The original Fatburger includes some ingredients, like relish and mayo, that we didn’t include, but its true innovation is placing the melted cheese on the bottom of the patty, nearest your palate.
The comment: Bucher thought the stack smacked more of pickles and lettuce, though he found it “easy to eat” and gave it a 4. Yonan agreed: “I taste everything more.” Hutcherson was also a member of team 4; “I taste more of the mustard and veg somehow.” The biggest supporter was Lee, who gave it a 5 and noted how well the onion, lettuce and tomato blended. She was so struck by the stack that she has been tinkering with her own version to debut for Social Burger’s 10th anniversary in October. She’s looking to incorporate influences from her native Philippines, perhaps a white cheese popular there. She’s toying with a name for the new stack, too, a riff on a famous burger slogan: Have It My Way.
