Everyone loves to bite into a juicy burger and with this recipe for The Best Hamburger, you will get a deliciously juicy burger, as well as, the best burger sauce recipe made with simple ingredients.
It is hard to define the perfect burger, but this recipe will bring you close to an amazing burger when paired with a homemade hamburger sauce similar to the McDonald’s Big Mac sauce without eating fast food.
Then, add your favorite burger toppings and pick your favorite cheese and then you will have a great burger for an easy dinner recipe that you can serve with some crispy fries for the best way to enjoy a flavorful burger.
Recipe Ingredients:
- Meat: ground beef or ground chuck(I used 80/20 – fattier meat means a juicier burger!)
- Cheese: use some shredded Monterey Jack cheese or your favorite cheese
- Sauce: pick up your favorite BBQ Sauce from the grocery store
- Seasoning: you will need to have seasoned salt, black pepper, and onion powder
Secret Sauce
- Mayo: use the mayonnaise you have on hand
- Ketchup: ketchup will add a good amount of flavor to the sauce
- Relish: use a dill pickle relish for the best results but you can use sweet pickle relish if you prefer
- Sauce: Worcestershire sauce gives a good flavor boost as well
- Buns: pick up your favorite Hamburger Buns (we like sesame seed buns)
How To Make The Best Hamburgers:
- In a large bowl, combine the ground beef, shredded cheese, bbq sauce, and seasonings. Don’t add too much bbq sauce or the patties will have a hard time taking shape. Shape patties that are about 1 inch thick (about 5 patties). (You can also freeze the patties after shaping them for about 1 hour to help them hold their shape.)
- Turn grill up to high and let it get hot.
- Reduce heat to medium-high and place the burgers on the grill. Allow this side of the patty to cook for about 4-6 minutes per side, but make sure it does not burn. Then flip the beef burgers over and cook until done.
- For the sauce, combine all sauce ingredients and whisk until well mixed. Taste and adjust ingredients to your liking.
- Assemble the burgers and serve with the homemade burger sauce and other hamburger toppings of choice.
Expert tips for making this rice krispies treats recipe:
What To Serve With This Recipe:
- Restaurant Style Onion Rings
- Baked Tater Wedges
- Seasoned Steak Fries
- Zucchini Fries
- Baked Red Potato Wedges
Toppings to serve with the best burger:
- red onion
- lettuce
- cheese (Swiss, pepper jack, American . . . anything goes!)
- tomatoes
- dill pickles
- avocado
- jalapeno peppers
- banana peppers
- fried onion
- mushrooms
- dijon mustard
How to keep your homemade hamburger patties from falling apart:
Here are some tips to keep them held together:
1. Keep your meat cold – the colder your meat is, the more likely that it will stay together. Shape the hamburger into patties and stick them back in the fridge until you are ready to cook. When you shape your patty, your hands actually transfer a lot of heat into the meat and they need to cool down. They will stay together much better after this.
2. Handle your patties as little as possible – if you over-handle your hamburger patties, they are much more likely to fall apart. Add your seasonings, give it a quick stir, then let it be.
3. Do not over-flip your patties – when cooking your hamburger patties, you are only going to want to flip your burgers one time – NO MORE. When your patties are still a little cold, they will hold together well. When they are finished cooking, they are solid and firm. However, when they are in-between these stages, they are flimsy and will fall apart. Flip them as little as possible – once is enough! By only flipping them once, you are allowing them to completely cook on one side, giving you a good base to flip from and keep them from falling apart.
4. Add an egg – if you have tried all these things and still struggle with a hamburger that falls apart, add an egg! It will work as a binding agent to hold the ground beef together. You won’t be able to taste it in the meat and hey – it’s some added protein!
5. Don’t add liquid – a lot of people will add Worcestershire sauce or BBQ sauce to their beef, but this will only make the beef fall apart while cooking. If you want the flavors of the sauce, brush it on the hamburger while it’s grilling instead of mixing it in. You can also freeze the patties for about 1 hour after you make them. Then place on grill.
The Special Sauce
In addition to the seasoning in the burger itself, this sauce puts our hamburger recipe over the top. The sauce is a mixture of ketchup, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and relish. Sometimes in Utah we also call this “Fry Sauce” and we love it for dipping our Sweet Potato Fries.
Storage Instructions:
Fridge: Store any leftover cooked burger patties in a large airtight container and place them in the fridge for up to 5 days.
Freezer: Before cooking the burger patties, store them in a freezer-safe ziplock bag and separate the individual patties with parchment paper between each thin patty. Then store them in the freezer for up to 3 months.
More burger recipes:
- Baked Cheeseburger Sliders Recipe
- Cheeseburger Wraps
- Portobello Mushroom Burgers Recipe
- Big Mac Sliders Recipe
- Baked Bun-less Burgers Recipe
Best Hamburger Recipe With Famous Secret Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef, (I used 80/20 – fattier meat means a juicier burger!)
- ½ cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
- ¼ cup BBQ Sauce
- ¼ teaspoon seasoned salt
- pepper, to taste
- ¼ teaspoon onion powder
Secret Sauce
- ¾ cup mayonnaise
- ¼ cup ketchup
- ¼ cup pickle relish
- 2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 5 Hamburger Buns, (we like sesame seed buns)
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine the ground beef, shredded cheese, bbq sauce, and seasonings. Don't add too much bbq sauce or the patties will have a hard time taking shape. Shape patties that are about 1 inch thick (about 5 patties). (You can also freeze the patties after shaping them for about 1 hour to help them hold their shape.)
- Turn grill up to high and let it get hot.
- Reduce heat to medium-high and place the burgers on the grill. Allow this side of the patty to cook for about 4-6 minutes, but make sure it does not burn. Then flip the burger over and cook until done.
- For the sauce, combine all sauce ingredients and whisk until well mixed. Taste and adjust ingredients to your liking.
- Assemble the burgers and serve with the special sauce and other hamburger toppings of choice.
Notes
Nutrition
Did You Make This Recipe?We’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a review or a question in the comment section below the post.
Yummy .. I wrote it all down to try 🙂 Now please tell me you made the fries too and are sharing that recipe 🙂 hehe
This sauce is very similar to the Survival Sauce I make (to help us deal with not having In-N-Out Burger in Georgia) — I’ll have to try the Worcestershire sauce! And we’ve learned from Five Guys Burgers & Fries to shake some McCormick Cajun seasoning on our fries!
I love this sauce .. I have been making it for years. My secret salad dressing is this sauce mixed with natural rice vinegar. I have caught my friends licking the salad bowl .. True!
P.s. I love you guys! I have bookmarked so many recipes and ideas from your site!
Can’t wait to try the burger! This sauce is awesome. here in Utah we call it fry sauce. its everywhere. but I have never put Worcestershire in it. ill have to try it. thanks
Can’t wait to try the burger! This sauce is awesome. here in Utah we call it fry sauce. its everywhere. but I have never put Worcestershire in it. ill have to try it. thanks
This looks just like the burgers from this place called Nessy Burger near where I live. Those burgers are FANTASTIC!
That secret sauce looks delicious for a burger! I’m tailgating this weekend, I think I need to try it!
We had these for the first time on Friday night, along with the sauce! Oh my goodness, this will be my new burger recipe! That sauce is sooooo good! Thanks for all your awesome recipes!
Thanks for sharing out this content it are really fastidious.
cookingrecipetips
Trying this recipe right now…burgers are about to go on the grill! Can’t wait to try them!! Just wondering, though, do you have a favorite brand of seasoning salt you use? Thanks so much for the recipe!
Does leaving out the cheese make a huge difference?
I really like Lawry’s, but right now I just have a random store-brand in my cupboard. 🙂 I am not picky.
I think that they would still be fine without the cheese! It shouldn’t make that big of a difference at all.
I just tried this last night and it was great! Thanks for all the great recipes!
sorry I don’t know what relish is, can some1 explain? thank u!Arianna
Relish as in Pickle Relish. 🙂
Awesome recipe but can you suggest an alternative to Monterrey grated cheese that you mixed in the beef for the cholesterol conscious ones. Thanks a lot
how do you make your salad dressing with rice vinegar. Thank you.
I noticed a follower of your’s on my blog so I followed her here to your site. Not too sure I am happy I did (smile)I am making a grocery list as I go down the recipe list. Thank you.
God Bless,
Cassie
We have only made this recipe as directed.
Do you use sweet relish or dill relish in the original sauce recipe? My husband and I both prefer dill – does that work with this recipe, too?
Either relish will work. We used dill, but some family members use sweet.
Dill or sweet pickle relish?
I made the secret sauce to go with burgers tonight. AMAZING! Also good as a fry sauce for dipping. 🙂
I am making these right now. I tasted a small piece of the cooked beef, and it is delicious! However, the patties seem to be falling apart on my grill. Did anybody else have this problem? Any suggested remedies? Thanks so much!
To hold your burgers together better, make the patties and freeze them on your plate, just until semi frozen, 20-30 minutes!
I had the same problem … they totally fell apart and 1/2 of them went down into the coals. 🙁 I finished what was left up in a frying pan, but it was more like a sloppy joe than a burger. I froze what was left of the meat mixture, but when I make them again, I think I will need to break some saltines up in it to bind it.
Followed the recipe to the t and it was an epic failure
I just made the sauce…..it is brown, nothing like what the photo shows. I had to add more of the other ingredients because the Worcestershire totally overpowers.
I have tried to make these twice but I cannot get them to stay together on the grill. They always crumble as I start cooking them. I eat them in crumbles because the flavor is so yummy. But I’m wondering if you have any tips to helping me keep them from crumbling.
I’ve made these twice and they fall apart on the grill. Why are they falling apart when other recipes don’t? Thanks
For those of you having problems with the ground beef falling apart: First, use ground beef with a HIGHER fat content when grilling burgers. AT MOST 80% lean. Second, after forming your burgers, put them on a plate or separate with wax paper and put them in the FREEZER for at least an hour.
Keep in mind your cheese and sauces have a lot of salt in them, so go easy when seasoning the meat.
And this “secret sauce” is essentially Thousand Island dressing (ketchup, mayo and relish) with Worcestershire sauce in it.
Sometimes we add bbq sauce to add a little kick to the secret sauce. It’s just whatever you prefer. In Utah we serve this secret sauce at Arctic Circle and Crown Burger and we call it “Fry Sauce” here in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. It’s amazing with fries too! Happy National Utah day!
Also, LEAVE ANY LIQUIDS OUT UNTIL AFTER COOKING. If you put liquids such as BBQ sauce into your meat before forming, it will disintegrate the beef on the grill. At most, maybe a few drops of liquid smoke or toasted sesame oil, but those can also be added AFTER cooking. Others will use binders such as eggs or panko bread crumbs, with varying results.
These burgers were delicious! I substituted the meat with pancake batter and I used apple sauce instead of mayo but they were still delicious! I used fried lotus root instead of fried onions and it tasted the same! I couldn’t find ketchup at the grocery store so I mixed fish sauce and bolognese and it tasted delicious! These are the best burgers I have had in my whole life! I’m allergic to cheese so I used butter instead. (both dairy right?) and I mixed up bananas and banana peppers but they tasted identical!
The hamburger looks so sweet
Burgers fell apart. Next time will add a egg. Taste was good.
Thank you for your review. Also, do check our Canadian based restaurant for some delicious food. http://steakshop.ca/
That is hilarious.
I am always puzzled when I read “I loved the recipe and then the writer goes on to mention all the tweets they made.
Your reply is Epic!
Tweeks. (Spell check, grrrr).
Just made the secret sauce as directed and it is awesome but you notes said to use BBQue Sauce as an ingredient.
The recipes states, Mayo instead. Was it incorrect?
It’s mayo. Thanks for catching that.