Everything Burgers
Explore Everything Burgers for information about America's favorite food icon, and discover details of the first 20 years of our Build a Better Burger® Recipe Contest and Cook-Off. We hope that these pages help get your creative juices flowing for creating a burger worthy of capturing our $100,000 Grand Prize!
For inspiration, check out the winning recipes to see what grabbed the attention of the judges in past years, and learn about the creative cooks behind those recipes in our hall of fame.
Through the years, we’ve assembled an impressive array of notable culinary experts for our Cook-Offs, as evidenced in the brief bios of past judges. For the 20th Anniversary, we’ve invited some of our favorites to return for another round of judging; meet them under judges.
The history page provides brief summaries of each BBB since 1990, while the timeline tracks the history of burgers in America.
Finally, we offer suggestions for pairing wine with burgers and guidelines for making better burgers and creating winning recipes.
Call for Entries.
The summer of 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of Sutter Home Winery’s Build a Better Burger® Recipe Contest. To celebrate this important year, we’ve created a new book, Burger Parties (Ten Speed Press), a collection of sixteen themed parties with great burgers from past Cook-Offs along with wine-based cocktails, appetizers, side dishes, desserts, and wine pairings.
With a Grand Prize of $100,000, we’re expecting to see many more entries than ever, and we’re hoping to discover among them the very best burgers in our two-decade history. So, once again, we call on good cooks from across the nation to ignite your imaginations, fire up your grills, and join in the fun of our annual search for America’s best burgers.
We’re always looking for highly creative recipes that are packed with flavor. You may choose to reinvent your favorite burger with exciting new toppings, turn the elements of a classic dish into a burger, show off your ethnic or cultural background, highlight the unique dishes or products of your part of the country, or surprise us with a completely new concept in burgers.
When we make burgers, we choose sustainable and organic agricultural ingredients whenever possible, including humanely raised meats and locally grown, seasonal produce, and we encourage you to do the same when you create your recipe entries.
Feel free to enter as many recipes as you wish, but before submitting or mailing them, please read the rules carefully, as several changes have been made this year. If you’ve previously entered recipes to our contest that did not make it to the final Cook-Off, you may update and resubmit them, even if they appear on the contest site’s Burgerbase. If they’ve been published elsewhere, however, they are ineligible for submission.
Since 1990, the creativity shown by innovative backyard chefs across America has been impressive. We’re anxious to see what’s offered for our consideration this time, and we look forward to welcoming ten of you to Napa Valley for the BBBig 20th Anniversary Cook-Off on September 25.
James McNair
Honorary Chairman and Head Judge, Sutter Home’s Build a Better Burger
Jeffrey Starr
Culinary Director and Executive Chef, Sutter Home Family Vineyards
Cook-Off Details
Once the ten Finalists have been notified and gone through the approval process, a complete Finalist Handbook will be send to each. All questions regarding travel, the entire event weekend, and specifics about how the Cook-Off day works will be addressed in the handbook.