This Powerhouse Topping Will Take Your Burgers From Good To Great

One of the biggest differences in restaurant burgers vs. homemade is that professional chefs are masters of selecting the perfect toppings for their handhelds. At a home cookout, you might limit yourself to ketchup and mustard ... maybe good ol' LTO if you're feeling ambitious. Here's a thought — instead of those boring slices of raw onions, how about slapping together a quick pickling liquid and upping your burger game exponentially with pickled onions? While raw onion tends to scream its presence with a sharp bite, pickled onion is a little more suave ... sweeter and more nuanced, all while retaining some of the original crisp that you love.

Social media is replete with ideas for pickling onions, but our personal favorite method is a standard recipe for homemade pickles following a 3-2-1 rule. It shines with cukes, obviously, but it's also a winning procedure when it comes to alliums of all varieties. You'll see variations on the water-vinegar-sugar formula that also include pickling spices and/or multiple types of acid, but you can feel free to play around with the process. As long as you understand the basic idea behind a quick pickle, your onions will likely turn out delicious, and come out ready to take your homemade burgers to the next level! 

Knowing what onions to pickle is almost as important as knowing how to do it in the first place. There's a difference between white and yellow onions, as you probably knew, and the differences between onions become much more apparent when they hit the pickle brine. Red onions are a very traditional choice for pickling. First of all, they have an innate sweetness that really comes to the forefront when you pickle them. Secondly, the pinkish color they turn when processed is attractive and looks great on a burger. This is not to say, however, that you should sleep on white or yellow onions: white onion pickled with spicy chiles is popular in Mexican cuisine and often uses lime juice instead of vinegar.

Pairing next-level toppings with your pickled onions is another art that you can master with experimentation and a little know-how concerning how flavors interact. Will you really play up the pungent flavors with a thick slice of an aged Cheddar or some funky blue cheese? Slather on a brown sugar-based BBQ sauce to punch the sweetness? If you go with a Mexican-inspired white onion pickle, how about some pico de gallo and guac for a messy, scrumptious handheld? We would also never say "no" to a burger piled with not just pickled onions, but pickled jalapeños for some heat ... pair this tangy combo with a smooth, creamy cheese. Creativity is the name of the game when building a burger that stars pickled onions, and we don't think you can go wrong.