Amp Up Your Typical Pizza Night With A Burger Twist

If we were to list off a few of America's most popular entrées, both burgers and pizza would be sure to be right at the top. According to QSR's 2024 Top 50, 15 spots (including the top slot) are held by burger chains, while pizza restaurants occupy another six. Once in a while, a daring restaurant or chain may try to create some kind of mashup like the pizza double cheeseburger trotted out in 1985, which was one of the weirdest Whoppers in Burger King history. But for the most part, pizza burgers may be the kind of thing that's better as a make-at-home meal.

If you live in the Midwest, you could try Supreme's Pizza-Burger (yes, the hyphen's part of the name) which is a frozen patty flavored with pizza sauce and stuffed with cheese. Fry it up, plop it on a bun, and add some more marinara and melted mozzarella or provolone to make it even better. If you don't have access to this product, or are more of DIYer, you can always flavor your own ground beef patties with pizza seasonings like garlic and oregano, and maybe even mix in a little Italian sausage meat to amp up the flavor. 

If you're making your own version, just fry the patty, top it with a slice of one of the aforementioned cheeses, and let it melt before sticking it between two buns. Use warm marinara sauce in place of cold ketchup, and sprinkle on some parmesan. Just make sure to add toppings to your burger the right way for the best results, which means sauce on both top and bottom bun. You might also add a few more pizza toppings like sliced pepperoni, crumbled cooked sausage, or sautéed onions. 

If pizza night is sacrosanct and you don't want to swap out your favorite meal for a burger, you can always approach the mashup from the opposite direction. Pizzas with burger toppings are also a thing, and a few years back Domino's had a cheeseburger pizza as part of its lineup. Pizza Hut once went to even greater extremes, offering a pizza whose crust was ringed with mini-cheeseburgers at restaurants in the Middle East and U.K. 

We won't suggest going to this length, but you could start with something easy — like an open-faced English muffin pizza with some ketchup stirred into the marinara, and a slice of American cheese replacing the mozzarella. The topping, of course, needs to include ground beef if you really want to embrace the theme.

If you'd rather go all-out with a full-scale burger pizza, you'll want a few more toppings, and a full-size pizza crust to pile them on. Store-bought is fine, but it's even better to make your own pizza dough. If you want a stretchy cheese pull, you may need to mix some mozzarella with the American cheese, or opt for a blend of mozzarella and cheddar for a more upscale cheeseburger. In addition to meat, cheese, and sauce, you could also sprinkle the pizza with shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes, but wait until it's out of the oven before doing so since neither of these toppings take well to cooking. Throw on some pickles, too, if you're a pickle person, and maybe a drizzle of mustard for color.