Ground beef, ground pork (2/3, 1/3 ratio), spinach, feta cheese, thyme and oregano…mix, form and grill.
Oh man! You’ve gotta start with the hard questions. 
I admit that I take the ‘just add it ‘till it looks good’ camp with the spicing, but I will try to give an approximation of amounts. Please bear in mind that I’m guessing, you should adjust to personal preferences, and that I’m often an idiot when it comes to describing things.
In a pound of ground beef I’ll add about 1 teaspoon of garlic salt, 2 tsp. each of the dill weed and mustard powder, and a tablespoon of Italian seasoning. I also add about half a green bell pepper and a quarter small onion, both diced finely. As for Worcestershire Sauce, perhaps 10 shakes. This all gets mixed together and formed into 3 or 4 patties.
I hope this helps.
I will admit the purist hamburger philosophy has me intrigued. As usual with SDMB food threads there are a lot of great opinions and I will also have to try the simple method mentioned by Trunk, pulykamell and others.
I LOVE a pure beef burger when I can get ground sirloin that is fresh. The real world, however puts me into that meatloaf category I fear (but that my family loves):
1lb Cheap, high fat content beef mixed with 1lb of ground sausage (could be Jimmy Dean, could be whatever is on sale). The sausage at the local is often 1/2 the price of the beef - so it helps when being frugal.
I add in salt, pepper, worcesteshistishistishire sauce, sometimes a packet of lipton’s onion soup mix, raw onion, random other condiments, tabasco, egg and if I am really on a budget some bread crumbs.
Sue me.
I WILL take all of the additions and mix them up separately, then pour that mixture into the bowl with the beef and pork. That way I am only kneading in the seasonings; to reduce the amount of work on the beef.
Then it is time to divide up into balls that are flattened as much as possible to go on the grill. Topped with quality cheese (I like blue, my wife likes cheddar as do the boys). Lightly grilled burger buns, and a gallon of ketchup for the 5 year old.
Yeah…I’m basically going for the style of hamburger that you might get at a place like Fuddrucker’s or In ‘n’ Out burger. You do want to start with fairly decent meat (stuff that’s been freshly ground at the butcher’s or, better yet, ground yourself,) but you don’t have to go nuts looking for expensive stuff. I just get ground chuck and avoid the more expensive ground sirloin (much too lean for the perfect burger, IMHO). Freshly ground supermarket chuck is perfectly fine. Just avoid the crap that comes in plastic tubes.
Question on how to cook the burgers for you all.
Grilling isn’t an option for me at my new apartment, and I just learned the other day that I seem to only know how to cook a tasty burger on a grill. I have tried stovetop and under the broiler but I can’t seem to get them right. They are greesy and overcooked every time. I never had this problem when I was grilling.
How do you guys cook yours? Let’s say I am shooting for them to be medium.
heh. Well, I’ll add this, which I probably should have included in my original post: 80/20 is as fatty as I go with grilled burgers. The 73/27 stuff they sell as “hamburger” has too much fat in it, and when you grill it, the extra fat will drip into your grill and cause serious flaming flare-ups. But you gotta have some fat, both for flavor and to hold the whole thing together, so I try to avoid the 97% lean type ground beef; burgers made from that stuff tend to fall apart on me.
But I stand by my minimalist recipe. Not every meal has to be an epicurean journey of wonder and delight. Burgers are a picnic food, fer cryin’ out loud. Keep it simple.
Watch it! You’re describing my typical shopping pattern. 
Thanks for this added information. The added flavorings have been a response to mediocre meat selection (although it does taste good!). It is good to know you don’t have to upgrade all the way to ground steak. I have also gone in the wrong direction regarding fat content. I typically buy 93/7 meat but recognize the wisdom of using fatter meat for extra burger flavor. I think a bit of experimenting this spring is in order.
NAF1138, have you ever tried a George Foreman grill? We got one years ago as a present and were very :rolleyes: about it. But, contrary to dubious expectations, we love it. It works great for grilled chicken and burgers when you don’t want to break out the full outdoor grill. I haven’t pan fried a hamburger for years now.
I haven’t, but you are now the third person in about a week to suggest one now that I don’t have a full grill. It sounds gimicky to me, but it might not be a bad way to go.
A slightly messy way to do hamburgers indoors is to take a cooling rack and place it on your roast rack inside a roasting pan and then broil the Hamburgers but keep them on the lower middle rack of your oven. There is a good chance of grease splatter all over the inside of you oven.
Would one of those cast-iron grill pans (like this) that sits on the stovetop work?
If I’m not grilling, I just pan fry mine, about 2-3 minutes a side, over high heat in a cast iron pan. For thicker burgers, you may consider covering the pan at some point for a couple of minutes for doneness, but I tend to make my burgers 1/4 pound in size, so this isn’t necessary.
Just make sure to get the pan nice and hot before throwing the patties on. A light spray of Pam or other cooking oil is helpful.
Fresh ground ginger
Fresh ground garlic
Soy sauce
Red Wine Vinegar
Salt
Pepper
Pepper jack on top
A1 Steak sauce
Romaine Lettuce
Tomato
Third pound of ground sirloin. Split in two. Add Montreal Steak Seasoning. Work each half well-slap slap hand to hand. Form into patties. Take some good soft blue cheese, cut a slice. Place on top of one patty. Take the other patty and put on top. Seal the sides so it is one patty. Grill to med-rare. Toasted kaiser, Maille Old-Style mustard and ketchup. Serve with cole slaw.
That’s how I cook my burgers.
Our butcher is nice and accommodating. So I get about a pound of rump steak and they grind it for me.
That gets shaped into 2 burgers (huge burgers, but we have no sides) then they get slapped on the high grill-pan until they’re charred on the outside. That’s just enough cooking to leave them juicy and a bit pink on the outside. Then sliced cheese, tomato, ketchup and mustard are added. Yum.
YUM! I’m going to have to try this on the weekend. There’s drool all over my keyboard. 
Glad to hear it. I’ve been looking at something like that for my next upgrade, and was hoping it might work. I also like that the flip side would let me make pancakes more than two at a time.
Winner - because this my exact recipe. As long as the final product is just north of medium rare but south of medium.
And the chimney starter is an absolute necessity. Lighter fluid or those abominations that are self starting charcoal should be cause for incarceration.
My grampa firmly believed that a hamburger should contain nothing but beef and bread and the former cooked into hockey pucks.
He’s dead now. Um…I’m not sure if I should put a 
or a 
after that sentence.
Anyhow. Ground beef, diced onion, S&P, Worcestershire sauce, cooked to medium or medium-rare over flame while sprinkling on some balsamic vinegar with each flip and, for the last few minutes, finished with melty cheesy goodness.
I know what good beef tastes like, and if this thread was about good steak I’d agree with the “nothing more than S&P, but even that’s pushing it” camp.
But we’re talking about less-than-optimal beef (unless, of course, you’re grinding your very own dry-aged sirloin) served on (all-to-often) sweetened bread with varying amounts and combinations of cheese, bacon, onions, relish, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard, Miracle Whip, mayo, and Special Sauce (aka thousand island dressing).
I can almost get it if the purists put their unadulterated perfect patty on a plate and eat it with a fork but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here.
Well, for one, I would never use sirloin (much less dry-aged sirloin) in a hamburger. Too lean. Chuck all the way.
Second, and you hit it on the head, you add whatever flavors you need at the table. You’ve got fresh onion, mustard, ketchup, pickle, etc. Why bother with adulterating the patty at all? To turn the tables, to me it seems to make more sense if you’re going to season and add so many ingredients to the patty already, to eat it plain, rather than cooking up a plain patty and then adding ingredients to taste at the table, no?
Third, and this is my main reason for not adulterating the meat, is once you start putting all the other stuff in, you need to knead the meat together and you ruin the delicate texture of a very loose hand-formed patty.