Everything Burgers

Is there anything betters than burgers? We doubt it. Unless it's burgers perfectly paired with a delicious glass of Sutter Home wine. Or perhaps winning $50,000 for your best burger recipe. Or a burger-perfect grilled dessert created by our Culinary Department to celebrate the 18th anniversary of our Build a Better Burger® National Recipe Contest and Cook-Off.

We want to satisfy your every burger craving. You're invited to explore Everything Burgers for information and inspiration about America's favorite dish.

Bon appetit!

Call for Entries.

Sutter Home’s Build a Better Burger® contest turns 18 this summer, so to celebrate the coming of voting age during a national election year we are looking for America’s best local burgers. We invite you to create burgers that are representative of where you live, where you grew up, or your heritage. Submitted recipes should highlight the foods, products, or cooking traditions of your community, state, or region of the nation. Each recipe must include a brief introduction that tells the judges why this is a great local American burger.

In addition to our longstanding rule that recipes be written to make six burgers, this year we’ve expanded the rule to also allow recipes that make six servings in case you choose to create a single giant burger that can be cut into six pieces for sharing or if you wish to make enough small burgers or “sliders” to serve six people as a main course.

To encourage recipes that are not overly complex for busy home cooks, we’ve modified the rules to allow a total of two hours to prepare all of the components and assemble the burgers instead of the three hours that we’ve previously allowed.

Although there is no limit to the number of ingredients allowed in a recipe, we urge you to keep your shopping list on the shorter side and choose ingredients that are readily available in most well-stocked supermarkets.

Feel free to enter as many recipes as you wish, but before submitting or mailing them, please read and follow all of the rules carefully. If you’ve previously entered recipes to our contest that were not chosen as finalists, feel free to update and resubmit them, even it they appear on the contest site’s Burgerbase. If they’ve been published elsewhere, however, they are ineligible for submission.

We hope that you’ll elect to enter Build a Better Burger® this year, and we’re looking forward to recipes that celebrate the rich diversity of our nation. Perhaps after the preliminary judges hold our caucus, your recipe will be among the ten on the ballot for the general election on September 27, when a panel of noted authorities on regional American cooking will cast their votes to choose the country’s top burgers.

James McNair
Honorary Chairman and Head Judge, Build a Better Burger

Jeffrey Starr
Culinary Director and Executive Chef, Sutter Home Family Vineyards