So goes the advice of Adam Perry Lang, owner of New York's Daisy May's BBQ USA restaurant, a classic rib shack known for its whole pig, pulled pork and beef ribs.

"Sometimes I love a burger that is rich in fat — 70-30 blend of protein to fat," he said in an email. "I like these on colder days when I need fat and heartiness. In the summertime, a leaner burger is appreciated. 90-10 can do the trick."

Whatever your blend, cook with care. He aims to create a moist, tender interior and a well-developed caramelized crust. He also favours a liberal amount of salt.

"I am a burger fanatic," he said. "My most memorable has to be the one I would get when I was eight years old spending our summers on the beach in Montauk. This was in front of Gurneys Inn. They called it the Gurney Burger and it was served on an English muffin. I have had others, but that was a burger memory."

For the AP's 20 Burgers of Summer series, Perry Lang offered up a basic burger — nearly a half-pounder — topped with caramelized onions spiked with chipotle chilies and Monterey Jack cheese.

GRIDDLED AND GRILLED MONTEREY JACK CHEESE BURGERS WITH SPICY CHIPOTLE CARAMELIZED ONIONS AND CILANTRO 

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"I always like to put together flavors that complement as well as contrast each other. This concept is especially important when creating a burger because you should experience that 'kapow factor' with each and every bite," she said in an e-mail.

So for her contribution to AP's 20 Burgers of Summer series, Martinez sought a balance of salty and sweet, which she satisfied by pairing grilled fresh figs with serrano ham.

"It was a short leap then to add the piquancy of a Cabrales blue (cheese), which complements the beef component of the burger," she said. "Can you say 'party on my plate'?"

Martinez is a big believer in big flavor in her burgers, and over the years says she has enjoyed many variations, including ones made from Kobe beef and seafood, even veggie varieties. But in the end, her blueprint for a great burger goes back to her childhood.

"Some of my fondest hamburger memories involve making homemade patties with my dad when I was little. He would season them with salt, fresh ground pepper and onion powder, then we would grill them over charcoal briquettes in our backyard, and the result was a slightly charred burger on the outside that was pink and juicy on the inside," she said.

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In short: In this crowd of gastronomic hauties, I'm the token vox populi. I'm the man on the street they always interview after someone important comes to town, only with hamburgers.

That said, I've also had the good fortune to both grow up in what Said Food Editor calls "mayonnaise America" and spend chunks of my life, including part of my childhood, in China, appreciating the tapestry of food there and missing it desperately when I'm home.

Then one day, Said Food Editor came to me and barked, "Make me a burger. Make me remember it." And it dawned on me: Why not take the best peppery, pungent, garlicky tastes of the street stalls of Sichuan (that's how we obnoxious China hands spell "Szechwan," the province where blunt-force cooking reigns) and transplant them into the American backyard burger?

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"I have seen all kinds of outlandish burger ideas, from making burgers with vegetables, fish, shrimp, you name it," said Nischan, whose cookbook, "Sustainably Delicious," and Westport, Conn., restaurant Dressing Room focus on ecologically sound eating.

"Yet as great and creative as these burgers can be (and fun), nothing beats a burger made with the meat that burgers were meant to be made with — grass-fed and grass-finished beef," Nischan said in an e-mail.

The greatness of a burger depends almost entirely on the quality of the meat. And because cattle were intended to eat only grass, he says the best burgers come from those who ate only that. Once he has his beef, he still likes to dress it up a bit.

"Once cooked to your liking, pairing this meat with cheese and butter from grass-fed dairy cattle adds a depth of additional richness that takes the burger closer to the promised land," he said. "And of course, what would a good sustainable burger be without the deep, tomato-y sweetness of locally grown, vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes?"

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"It may sound crazy coming from a French chef, but the inspiration behind this burger is actually McDonald's and Burger King," said Ripert, the man behind New York's award-winning Le Bernardin restaurant and Westend Bistro in Washington.

For Ripert, a great burger must be perfectly proportioned, a trait he thinks the fast-food giants have aced.

"All the elements are carefully controlled," he said via email. "The way they cut the pickles, the way they cut the tomatoes, the way they slice the salad, and the size, obviously make those burgers perfect."

Except the meat, that is.

"So what we did was we looked at their burgers carefully and studied the proportions, and then of course did the same thing, but with great meat," he said. "We're using sirloin mostly, but it's the fat content and ratio of fat to meat that is very important."

And don't forget a great bun. Ripert favored a fresh challah bun for his perfect burger.

Westend Bistro Burger
Serves: 4

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No slab of American would suffice for Matt Lee and Ted Lee, brothers who have made careers out of sharing the flavors of the South.

"A thick slab of melting cheese has always been our favorite addition to a burger," Matt said in an e-mail. "But our cravings these days also run to snappier, spicy-sour sensations that temper the richness of the cheese-topped burger and speed us toward a second helping."

So they reached for that classic Southern food, pimento cheese, albeit with an update.

"Our favorite new variation on pimento cheese uses Swiss (instead of the traditional cheddar) and banana peppers (instead of roasted red peppers)," said Matt Lee, who with his brother wrote the recent "The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern."

"We add capers, chives and chili flakes to torque the flavor up to 11 and to reinforce the crumbly, relish-like texture of the spread," he said.

The result is a pleasantly piquant Southern take on the classic burger.

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Martha Stewart isn't a big griller, but she still enjoys creating delicious varieties of burgers during summer, especially on her wood grill. In fact, in a first for her nearly 20-year-old magazine, Martha Stewart Living, she even put a burger and beer on the cover of the June issue.

And when Stewart does burgers, she considers the whole burger to make sure she gets it right.

"It is not just about using the freshest meats — chuck, sirloin, turkey, chicken — but also about the added flavorings, buns and toppings," she said in an e-mail.

For AP's 20 Burgers of Summer series, Stewart offered one of her favorites, a chicken burger with Japanese flavors, including wasabi, ginger and soy sauce.

"You will love it," she said.

Just be sure not to press the burger, which compacts the meat.

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To get from dream to dinner plate, the man famous for showing Americans just how good and even upscale Mexican food can be drew inspiration from queso fundido, an appetizer of melted cheese, onions, chilies and sometimes meat.

"I love cheeseburgers and I love Mexican queso fundido, so my concept was to bring the two things together," he said via e-mail. "My favorite queso fundido involves melted cheese with chorizo sausage, roasted poblano chilies and caramelized onions."

So Bayless whose restaurants include Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago decided to deconstruct the queso fundido a bit, adding the chorizo to the burger itself and using the melted cheese, roasted peppers and caramelized onions as toppings.

"For me, it needs to be grilled and have a nice balance between bun and meat," said Bayless, who recently prepared President Barack Obama's second state dinner. "Too much of either isn't good, nor is too many add-ons. Balance is key, both in ingredients and flavors."

QUESO FUNDIDO BURGER

Start to finish: 45 minutes.

INGREDIENTS:

2 fresh medium poblano chilies

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"It took us about five months to come up with a grind (of meat) we liked," said Love, a Texas chef who several years ago defeated Masaharu Morimoto on Food Network's "Iron Chef." "We finally came up with that 50-50 mix of prime sirloin and prime brisket. Then we started on the pickles. Then we started on the sauce.

"It took us forever to make this burger," he said.

That's because Love -- whose Fort Worth, Texas, restaurants include The Lonesome Dover Western Bistro and a burger joint called The Love Shack -- takes his burgers seriously.

"I do have a passion for burgers. I think a cheeseburger is one of those four or five foods that are so simple" it has to be done right, he said.

And he marvels at the versatility of burgers. "It can go from a road stop pick-up-and-go food to being a sit-down-with-a-white-tablecloth thing. Which is what makes it so tremendous," he said.

For Love, creating a tremendous burger meant not just perfecting the blend and grind of meat, but also seasoning it from the inside out, rather than just on the outside.

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"As a chef coming up, I always had this love affair with the burger," says Marcus Samuelsson, who got his start at a three-star Michelin restaurant in France. "We work with this French food all day. But at night we want a burger."

And so Samuelsson -- who was born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden and learned to cook across Europe -- embraced the burger, which he calls "the most iconic meal in America."

But like the rest of his cooking -- a fusion of European sensibilities and American and African ingredients -- Samuelsson's burgers blend cultures. And he says he has a rich palette from which to draw.

"When you do the history of the burger, you realize that every country and culture in the world has something like a beef patty with bread and a pickle," he says. "It really shows how unified we are as a people. We want something comforting. We want some heat on it. And we want something pickled on it. And that's essentially what a burger is."

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The good news? Christopher Kimball, the man behind the pleasantly obsessive-compulsive wing of the food world — Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines — delivers on both counts. In fact, for a burger as good as Kimball offered up for the AP's 20 Burgers of Summer series, I'd suffer twice the hassle.

No pre-ground beef is harmed in the making of these burgers. Kimball starts with sirloin steak tips and boneless beef short ribs, which are chilled until firm in the freezer, then coarsely ground in a food processor. This produces burgers that are tender, meaty and incredibly moist.

Hands down, they are the best hamburger I have ever eaten. Ever.

"This style of burger is nothing like most modern burgers," Kimball says. "It is rich, thin, craggy, crusty, salty and comes with an incredible sauce. Instead of a softball of meat, you are getting a modest layer of intensely flavored beef and a classic roadhouse burger sauce."

True to form, you earn that goodness with a fussy method for making it. The meat is barely handled, and never gets packed into a patty. The process is more of a gentle shaping of the chopped meat, which is on a tray, not in your hands.

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Either way, it's the sort of burger Spike Mendelsohn says is needed to fuel the people behind the world's largest news organization, and what he set out to create when asked to develop a hamburger inspired by The Associated Press.

Because, er. nothing says great burger like wall-to-wall coverage of war, politics and upset celebrities, right?

Despite the (lack of?) inspiration he was handed, true to his burger master cred -- his Washington burger joint, Good Stuff Eatery, has become a hotspot for the likes of first lady Michelle Obama -- Mendelsohn came up with a winner.

"For the people that never stop," Mendelsohn said of his 24/7 burger, the first in AP's weekly series -- 20 Burgers of Summer, a celebration of the delicious diversity of the great American hamburger.

"Whether you're embedded with troops in Iraq, photographing the animals of Africa or live from the White House, here's the burger that will keep you going any time of day," said Mendelsohn, whose ode to burgers, "The Good Stuff Cookbook," is out later this month.

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