Our Ultimate Guide To Burgers

At Lifehacker, we consider every day of the year to be International Burger Day. But May 28 is the official day of celebration for burger connoisseurs. To make the occasion, we’ve assembled some of our tastiest burger posts for you to snack on. Whether you want to know how to make your own McDonald’s special sauce or revisit the colon-throttling horror of the “Colonel’s McWhopper”, you’ll find it all here.

Happy Burger Day, everybody! Below you’ll find some of our most popular burger posts divided into five categories: How To, Taste Test, Burger Factoids, Takeaway Truth and Burger Hacks. Click on the headlines to read the original articles. (Now I’m off to Grill’d to demonstrate my patty patriotism with a Crispy Bacon & Cheese. See you in about three hours.)

How To

Make The Perfect Burger Joint ‘Special Sauce’ At Home

Some folks will tell you that “special sauce” is just mayonnaise and tomato sauce, but there’s a little more to it than that. The right mix of basic ingredients and a few surprising spices will make your homemade burgers more mouthwatering than ever.

How To Make Your Own Big Mac

The Big Mac remains the most iconic of McDonald’s products, but you can reproduce the experience in your own kitchen with an amazingly accurate replica of the “special sauce” that helps define the Big Mac. The secret ingredient? Vegemite.

How To Scam A McOz-Style Burger From Hungry Jack’s For Just $2

‘The Aussie’ is a somewhat pricey McOz competitor from Hungry Jack’s that comes with bacon, egg, beetroot, cheese, onion, tomato, lettuce, mayo and BBQ sauce. Here’s a sneaky hack that will land you a similar burger for less than a third of the price.

How To Make Veggie Burgers That Taste Great And Won’t Fall Apart


Most store-bought veggie burgers are flavourless, rubbery disks. With the right ingredients and a little time, you can make your own delicious veggie burgers that all your party guests (not just the vegetarians) will love.

How To ‘Smash’ Your Burger For Maximum Flavour


There’s something aesthetically pleasing about a perfectly formed hamburger patty; especially when it has those little symmetrical grill marks. However, it turns out that smashing your patty during the cooking process actually imparts more flavour. Check out the video to see how it’s done.

Make Your Own In-N-Out Burger At Home


Iconic US burger chain In-N-Out Burger has opened a temporary pop-up restaurant in Sydney, but that’s not much help to the rest of the country. Get the same experience by making your own Double-Double burger at home.

McDonald’s Head Chef Explains How To Make A Big Mac At Home


There are no shortage of DIY Big Mac recipes on the internet: we’ve even published a few of our own. However, most of these guides contain a fair amount of guesswork and/or hearsay. To make your Big Mac as close to the real thing as possible, you need this video from Macca’s executive chef Dan Coudreaut: it explains the entire process, from making your own “special sauce” to final assembly.

How To Make Steamed Hamburgers


I know — it sounds like a Simpsons line, what with the Steamed Hams and all, but it turns out that Steamed Hamburgers do actually exist. If you’re feeling brave, here’s how to prepare them.

Mince Meat For Burgers Without A Mincer


Mincing your own meat is the best way to control what goes into your burgers, and it results in meat patties that are tastier and juicier. The folks at America’s Test Kitchen show us how to produce our own meat patties with nothing more than a freezer and a food processor.

Burger Hacks

Make The Most Bacon-Laden Burger Ever With The Bacon Weave


If you’re going to indulge in a bacon cheeseburger, you might as well go whole hog (sorry for the pun) and get the most bacon flavour out of it. Serious Eats shows us how to do that.

Flip Your Burgers As Often As You’d Like For Better Cooking

There are many customs, lores and matters of principle in grilling, including the sanctity of a burger on the grill. You’ll be told by many to only flip it once, halfway through cooking, but it doesn’t measure out in taste or consistency

Make A Thumb Imprint In Your Burgers For Better Shaping

Any time can be BBQ time. So mince some meat, fire up the BBQ, and make a serious impression in your burgers with your thumb. It keeps them from bulging in the middle, and keeps your worst spatula instincts in check.

The Best Way To Shape Your Burgers For Even Cooking


The Kitchn tested four different ways to shape a burger to see which method produced a beautifully shaped, evenly grilled burger. These shaping methods are meant to avoid the sad bulging-in-the-middle effect that can happen if you don’t do anything to the patty.

Taste Test

Taste Test: McDonald’s Black & White Burgers


McDonald’s serves up some pretty weird menu items in overseas markets. During a recent jaunt to Hong Kong, we tried out the company’s black-and-white heibai liangdao tongchi burgers. Read on for our taste test. (Plus tips on how to make your own!)

I Took My Wife To McDonald’s For Our Wedding Anniversary… And It Was Surprisingly Fancy


In its latest attempt at gentrified reinvention, McDonald’s has opened a deluxe “Burger Bar” in Thornleigh, NSW. The launch of this fancy new restaurant happened to coincide with my wedding anniversary — so I did the unthinkable and took my wife on a Macca’s run to celebrate. No really.

Takeaway Truth + Taste Test: KFC Zinger Black Burger


Sometimes, you need to throw caution to the wind, unfasten your belt and treat yourself to a decadent orgy of fast food. This is where McDonald’s “Noah’s Ark” Burger comes in: arguably the finest creation by God or man.

Faking It: We Taste-Test Lord Of The Fries’ Imitation Meat Products


Last week, we got the crowdsourcing website Airtasker to deliver Lord Of The Fries to our office. For most of us, it marked the first time we had sampled the company’s famous meat-free burgers which are billed as having the look, taste and texture of beef or poultry. But can an animal substitute really compare to the real thing? Here are our verdicts.

Taste Test: The McDonald’s Bunless Beef Double


McDonald’s new “Create Your Taste” menu allows customers to build some pretty unique burgers — including an all-beef take on the KFC Double. Intrigued? Here’s how to order one (and what it tastes like.)

Taste Test: The Colonel’s McWhopper Burger


“This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang, but with a burger.” – T.S. Eliot.

Ramen Burger Australian Review: The Burger Revolution Is Here


Sydney: don’t you deserve a better class of burger? Meet the Ramen Burger: a delicious beef pattie (or tofu if you are so inclined), complete with iceberg lettuce, Spanish onion, chilli sauce, tangy mayo, all sandwiched between two crunchy slabs of fried ramen.

Taste Test: The KFC ‘Double Double’ Challenge


Watch us taste-test the KFC “Double Double”: two KFC Double burgers stacked on top of each other. (“Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies…”)

Burger Factoids

Burgers In NSW Will Soon Suck: Here’s Why


The NSW Food Authority has announced a crackdown on hamburgers, with restaurants threatened with stiff fines for failing to cook patties the entire way through. If you live in NSW and enjoy juicy burgers, this is a pretty depressing state of affairs. In short, our famed burgers are about to get a lot drier and less tasty. Mary’s, we hardly knew ye.

40 Mouth-Watering American Burger Recipes For Your BBQ


The Cheese And Burger Society is a Wisconsin-based gourmet collective dedicated to US-style cheese burgers. Over the years, the society has hand-crafted 40 burgers that it considers the tastiest ever created: from the “Casanova” (Swiss cheese, beef patty, ham, sautéed mushrooms, Dijon mustard and mayonnaise on a potato roll) to the “Waldorf” (blue cheese, beef patty, toasted walnuts, dried tart cherries, curly endive, sliced red onions and mustard on a rustic Italian roll.) Be warned — if you currently have an empty stomach, the accompanying photos will make you homicidally “hangry”.

Everything That Happens To Your Gut After Eating An Australian Big Mac [Infographic]


Are you planning to head to McDonald’s for a cheeky Big Mac at lunch? You might want to run your eyes over this infographic first — it explains all the ways an Aussie Big Mac affects your body one hour after scoffing it down. (Surprise, surprise: It turns out they aren’t particularly good for you.)

Ask LH: Do Angus Beef Burgers Really Taste Better?


Dear Lifehacker, McDonald’s and Hungry Jack’s both claim that their premium burgers are made from Angus beef. From my understanding, this is a breed of cow rather than a cut of meat. Do different types of cow really have unique tastes or is this just a marketing gimmick used to bump up the price of burgers? Thanks, Crazy Cow

The Ten Tastiest Burger Joints In Australia


There’s no room in life for sub par burgers. If your local takeout shop isn’t cutting the mustard, you need to upgrade to a tastier establishment immediately. According to TripAdvisor’s customer review data, these are the best ten burger places in Australia. (Note: The following descriptions and photos may cause extreme taste-bud torture. You have been warned!)

McDonald’s new “Create Your Taste” menu allows customers to build some pretty unique burgers — including an all-beef take on the KFC Double. Intrigued? Here’s how to order one (and what it tastes like.)

Burger King Launches ‘Hands-Free’ Feedbag For Humans


Burger King patrons in the US can now enjoy their Whopper hands-free with an official nose bag contraption that allows them to gorge on their burger like a horse. We weep for humanity’s future.

Takeaway Burgers Can Be Healthier Than Takeaway Salads

As the popularity of health food continues to rise, more and more fast food restaurants are beginning to offer salad options in a bid to retain weight-conscious customers. However, depending on where you go and which salad dressing you order, it might actually be healthier to plump for a juicy burger.

The Perfect Burger Starts At 200 Grams


Fast food chains keeping trying to create bigger burgers. Home burger chefs, on the other hand, need to keep the pre-cooked weight around 200 grams to get the proper level of flavour and juiciness.

Can You Make A Cheeseburger For $1?


As part of its 40th anniversary in Australia, McDonald’s recently completed a promotion where it sold standard cheeseburgers for $1 for an hour every day. Judging by the queues every time I passed a Maccas over lunch, that promotion worked well — but could you replicate that pricing yourself? Lifehacker investigates.

McDonald’s Doesn’t Use ‘Pink Slime’ In Australia


The news that McDonald’s will be stopping the use of ‘pink slime’ — essentially random beef offcuts mixed with ammonium hydroxide — in its burgers has been the subject of fervent online coverage. But local Maccas fiends shouldn’t panic: the additive isn’t (and hasn’t ever been) used in the Australian product.

McDonald’s Finally Comes Clean On False Advertising (Kind Of)


The above image is an official marketing release that recently appeared on McDonald’s Facebook page. It’s part of the company’s “Our Food, Your Questions” campaign, which purports to answer customer queries about McDonald’s food products honestly.

Introducing The ‘Togo Burger’: A Suitcase For Your Fast Food


A design student in the US has created a hyper-efficient way to package and carry fast food. His folding contraption comes with separate compartments for a burger, hot chips and soft drink. The whole meal can then be carried one-handed. A cure for cancer can wait.

Why Nobody Should Buy Hungry Jack’s ‘Twosdays’ Deal, Ever


4700kj. That’s the total kilojoule count of Hungry Jack’s two-for-one Bacon Deluxe ‘Twosdays’ offer, which is available on each Tuesday throughout the month — beware the Ides of March.

Annihilate Your Taste-Buds With The ‘McEverything’ Burger

If you thought our recent /”Noah’s Ark” burger was pretty hardcore, think again. A blogger in the US has created the ‘McEverything’ — a mountain-sized artery-clogger consisting of 43 seperate menu items.

This Is Why America Is The Fattest Nation On Earth


According to BMC Public Health data, an average adult in the USA weighs over 80 kilograms. We think this “small” McDonald’s cheeseburger meal might have something to do with it…

Which Is Australia’s Favourite Fast Food Chain?


Roy Morgan Research has released its figures for Australian takeaway consumption in 2013. The report includes the average number of takeaway visits per month and the ten most popular chains in the country. While the featured restaurants aren’t surprising, the ordering did cause us to raise an eyebrow. Pizza and health-promoting subs aren’t as popular as you might think.

Takeaway Truth

Takeaway Truth: The Burger King Bacon & Sausage Croissan’wich


America has a bit of a problem when it comes to fast food mashups. From the “Cronut” to “Baconnaise“, there is no limit to the culinary portmanteaus on offer. The latest entry in this extreme food craze is the “Croissandwich”. This is essentially a croissant mixed with a burger (which Americans prefer to call “sandwich” for some reason.) It substitutes a typical burger bun for croissant bread and comes with a range of available fillings.

Takeaway Truth: Hungry Jack’s Grill Masters Fiery Angus


They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s true, Hungry Jack’s must be McDonald’s biggest fan. Time and time again, the flame-grilled burger specialist has taken note of what works at Macca’s and then brought out a slightly tweaked version of the same concept. Its latest rip-off/re-imagining is the Angus Grill Masters; premium, plus-size burgers that take their design cues from McDonald’s Create Your Taste range.

Takeaway Truth: McDonald’s Aussie BBQ Angus Burger


The Aussie BBQ Angus Burger is the latest premium offering from Ronald’s fancy M Selections range. It packs in an Angus beef patty, a rasher of bacon, cheese, caramelised onions, tomato, whole leaf lettuce, BBQ sauce, mayo and beetroot between a chilli chive bun.

Takeaway Truth ‘New Orleans’ Special: McDonald’s Bacon Habanero Ranch Quarter Pounder


This week, the Lifehacker team has been busy covering TechEd 2013 as part of our World Of Servers series. In-between the barrage of server seminars and data demos, we found time to sample some traditional New Orleans cuisine, including alligator pizza, fried green tomatoes, po-boys, moonshine and more. In addition to this, we also stopped by McDonald’s to check out some of their US-only menu items.

Takeaway Truth: KFC Zinger Stacker And Kentucky Burgers


KFC has revamped its burger range with two new menu offerings: the KFC Zinger Stacker and KFC Kentucky. They are being marketed as a plus-sized indulgence for people with big appetites, heralded by the slogan “Oooh yeah!” (Good thing “Macho Man” Randy Savage isn’t alive to sue.)

Takeaway Truth: Hungry Jack’s Ultimate Double Whopper And Deluxe Country Burger


When we started the Takeaway Truth series a few months ago, we purposely held off on featuring Hungry Jack’s. The reason for this was simple: we knew it was going to be awful and anything that followed was sure to be anti-climactic.

The Results Are In: Here Is Australia’s Worst-Looking Burger

Last week, we invited readers to vote for the worst-looking fast food item from Takeaway Truth; an ongoing series where we compare takeaway advertising images to what you actually get served. In all, the poll received over 750 votes with the majority of nominations going to one specific offender.


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