Upgrade Your Hamburgers With Some Inspiration From The Chicago-Style Hot Dog

A proper Chicago-style hotdog features a speckled, poppy seed bun, which houses an all-beef frankfurter, underneath toppings like yellow mustard, sweet pickle relish, diced, raw white onion, a couple of tomato wedges, a dill pickle spear, sport peppers, and a healthy sprinkle of celery salt. It's the perfect combination of savory, sweet, and spicy. If you're missing any of these ingredients, then you, my friend, do not have yourself a Chicago dog.

The Chicago dog is the backbone of Windy City cuisine. Its excellence is just about the only thing that Cubs and Sox fans can agree on, and it's the pride and joy of Chicago. That's why, as a person who was raised in the Chicagoland area, the idea of tweaking a Chicago-style hot dog in any way is terrifying. However, as a person who also hasn't lived in Chicago for nearly two decades, when the craving for a Chicago dog hits, it hits hard — hard enough to open up the definition of Chicago-style to include other grilled meats like a burger. The beauty of biting into a Chicago-style hamburger is that you get all of the same toppings that make a Chicago-style hotdog special, with a more ergonomic serving vessel.

While the rules of engagement to a Chicago-style hotdog are as rigid as the Willis Tower itself, there's a lot more room for experimentation with this creation. We recommend using all the ingredients listed above, but tweaking them to fit the burger mold.

For example, a dill pickle spear works in a hot dog bun but would be better cut up into flat slices for a burger. An inventive way to make sure the celery salt doesn't disappear into the big flavors of your burger is to mix in ½ teaspoon of celery salt per 1-1½ of ground beef. Additionally, the tomato wedges would be better diced, or even sliced into thin rounds like traditional tomato-topped burgers. Try slathering the bottoms of your poppy seed buns with mustard and toasting them up on the grill to infuse that delicious vinegary flavor into the bread.