You can nail the perfect patty, toast the bun to golden perfection, and layer on premium toppings, but it's the condiments that often make or break a burger. That sharp crunch of a dill pickle cutting through rich beef, the tangy sweetness of a quality relish, or the complexity of a whole-grain mustard—these details separate memorable burgers from forgettable ones. Welcome to the world beyond ketchup and mayo, where pickles come in a dozen varieties, relishes range from sweet to spicy, and mustards span the spectrum from ballpark yellow to champagne Dijon.
Most burger enthusiasts focus on the patty and overlook what sits on top of it, but professional chefs know better. The right condiment doesn't just add flavor—it creates contrast, balances richness, adds textural interest, and ties all the components together. This guide breaks down everything you need to know about burger condiments, from understanding the difference between dill and bread-and-butter pickles to discovering gourmet relishes that'll revolutionize your burger game.
Understanding Pickles for Burgers: More Than Just Cucumbers
Pickles aren't just an afterthought—they're architectural. That crunch, that acid, that bright pop of flavor does real work on a burger, cutting through fat and refreshing your palate between bites. But not all pickles bring the same thing to the table.
Dill Pickles: The Classic Choice
Dill pickles reign as the most popular burger pickle for good reason. Their assertive tanginess and satisfying crunch provide a sharp counterpoint to rich, fatty beef. Traditional dill pickles get their distinctive flavor from fresh dill, garlic, and a vinegar brine, creating that characteristic sour taste with aromatic undertones. The acidity level is typically higher than sweet pickles, making them particularly effective at cutting through cheese and special sauces.
When choosing dill pickles for burgers, look for chips or slices about 3-4mm (⅛ inch) thick—thick enough to maintain crunch but thin enough to bite through cleanly without the pickle shooting out the other side of your burger. Hamburger dill chips, specifically cut for burgers, hit this sweet spot perfectly. Their tart, slightly salty profile pairs beautifully with classic American cheeseburgers, bacon burgers, and anything with rich toppings like fried eggs or creamy sauces.
Bread and Butter Pickles: Sweet Meets Tangy
If you've ever had a Big Mac, you've experienced bread and butter pickles. These sweet pickles bring a completely different energy to burgers—less about cutting through richness and more about adding a sweet-tangy complexity. Made with a brine that includes sugar, vinegar, and spices like mustard seed, coriander, and turmeric, bread and butter pickles deliver sweetness balanced by acidity.
The sweetness makes them ideal for burgers with savory or smoky elements—think bacon cheeseburgers or burgers with barbecue sauce where the pickle's sweetness complements rather than contrasts. They also work surprisingly well with spicy burgers, where their sugar content helps temper heat. Fast food chains favor bread and butter pickles precisely because their balanced flavor appeals to a wide audience and pairs with heavily seasoned patties and sweet-leaning sauces.
Kosher Dill Pickles: Extra Crunch, Garlic Forward
Kosher dill pickles take everything great about regular dill pickles and amplify it. Despite the name, "kosher" doesn't necessarily mean the pickles follow Jewish dietary law—it refers to the traditional Jewish deli-style preparation that emphasizes garlic. These pickles pack more garlic punch, often have a firmer texture, and deliver an intensely satisfying crunch.
The extra garlic makes kosher dills particularly good on burgers where you want bold, assertive flavors rather than subtlety. They stand up to strong cheeses like blue cheese or aged cheddar, complement onions (especially raw red onion), and hold their own against peppery arugula or other assertive greens. If you're building a burger with attitude, kosher dills match that energy.
Fermented and Half-Sour Pickles: Probiotic Powerhouses
Fermented pickles represent the original pickle-making method—before vinegar brining became standard, cucumbers were preserved through lacto-fermentation. This process, where beneficial bacteria naturally present on cucumbers convert sugars into lactic acid, creates pickles with a different flavor profile: complex, slightly funky, and less aggressively sour than vinegar pickles.
Half-sour pickles are fermented for a shorter time, resulting in the mildest pickle variety. They maintain more of the cucumber's fresh character while adding subtle tang and developing that characteristic fermented complexity. These work beautifully on gourmet burgers where you don't want the pickle to dominate—wagyu burgers, delicate fish burgers, or burgers with subtle cheese like fresh mozzarella or burrata.
Full-sour fermented pickles pack more tang and funk, making them ideal for rich, fatty burgers where you want serious acid to cut through the richness. The fermentation also adds umami depth that vinegar pickles lack, creating a more complex flavor interaction with the beef.
Spicy and Hot Pickles: Heat Meets Acid
Spicy pickles bring a double-threat of heat and acid to burgers. Made by adding jalapeños, habaneros, red pepper flakes, or hot sauce to the brine, these pickles deliver the refreshing qualities of standard pickles with a kick that builds as you eat.
The beauty of spicy pickles on burgers is how the vinegar and heat work together—the acid cuts richness while the capsaicin adds excitement without overwhelming the beef flavor. They're particularly effective on burgers with cooling elements like lettuce, tomato, and mayo, where the pickle provides the only heat, or on already-spicy burgers where you're going all-in on fire. Some spicy pickles lean toward jalapeño's vegetal heat, while others use cayenne for a cleaner burn—choose based on your burger's flavor profile.
Relish Varieties: Beyond Basic Sweet Pickle
Relish is where pickles meet chutney—cooked and pickled products made from chopped vegetables, fruits, or herbs. While sweet pickle relish dominates American burgers, the world of relish offers far more complexity.
Sweet Pickle Relish: The Classic
Sweet pickle relish is finely chopped cucumbers preserved in a sweet-and-sour brine, typically with mustard seed and turmeric for color and complexity. It's a key component in thousand island dressing and Big Mac sauce, and it adds sweetness, texture, and moisture to burgers without the architectural challenge of pickle slices.
The chopped format means relish distributes evenly across the burger, ensuring every bite gets that sweet-tangy hit. It also stays put better than sliced pickles, which can slip out mid-bite. Quality matters here—premium relishes like Mt. Olive Sweet Relish deliver actual crunch from pickle pieces, while cheaper versions can be mushy and overly sweet. Look for relishes where you can see distinct vegetable pieces rather than an undifferentiated mush.
Dill Relish: Savory Alternative
Dill relish takes the same chopped-cucumber format as sweet relish but uses a dill-forward, savory brine instead of a sweet one. The result is all the convenience and even distribution of relish with the sharp, garlicky flavor profile of dill pickles. It's particularly useful when you want dill flavor throughout your burger rather than concentrated in specific bites where pickle slices sit.
Dill relish shines on hot dogs and sausages, but it's equally effective on burgers with ingredients that would clash with sweetness—think mustard-heavy burgers, anything with sauerkraut or other fermented toppings, or burgers where you're going for a deli-inspired flavor profile.
Gourmet and Specialty Relishes: Global Flavors
The craft condiment movement has brought a renaissance of creative relishes that go far beyond cucumbers. Indian-spiced pickled beet relish combines earthy sweetness with warming spices like cumin and coriander. Thai orange ginger relish adds citrus brightness and warming ginger that pairs beautifully with pork or turkey burgers. Tomatillo relish brings Mexican-inspired tanginess and works wonderfully on burgers with pepper jack cheese or jalapeños.
Some gourmet burger sets include triple ale onion spread—sweet caramelized onions with beer for depth—or spicy tomato kasundi, an Indian-style tomato condiment with complex spicing. These specialty relishes transform burgers from American classics to global fusion creations, and they're particularly valuable when you're trying to create a specific flavor profile or ethnic-inspired burger.
Mustard: From Ballpark Yellow to Champagne Dijon
Mustard might be the most underrated burger condiment. While ketchup gets all the attention, mustard brings complexity, heat, and acidity that ketchup can't match.
Yellow Mustard: The Cookout Classic
Bright yellow, mildly tangy, and instantly recognizable, yellow mustard (also called American mustard or ballpark mustard) is the default for many burger lovers. Made from yellow mustard seeds, vinegar, and turmeric (for color), it's mild enough not to overpower but tangy enough to cut through rich toppings. The smooth texture spreads easily and stays put, and the bright color adds visual appeal.
Yellow mustard works best on straightforward burgers where you want a classic flavor profile—cheeseburgers, bacon burgers, and anything where nostalgia is part of the appeal. It's also the mustard of choice for smash burgers, where its sharpness complements the caramelized crust without competing with the beef's flavor.
Dijon Mustard: Sophisticated Heat
Dijon mustard, originating from Dijon, France, is made from brown or black mustard seeds and white wine or wine vinegar, creating a sharper, more sophisticated heat than yellow mustard. The flavor is more complex—less vinegar-forward, more nuanced, with a warmth that builds gradually rather than hitting immediately.
Genuine Dijon elevates gourmet burgers, particularly those with upscale ingredients like gruyère, caramelized onions, arugula, or truffle mayo. It also pairs beautifully with beef quality—if you're using premium beef or wagyu, Dijon's refinement matches that investment. Spread it on the bun or mix it into aioli for a more subtle application.
Whole Grain Mustard: Texture and Complexity
Whole grain mustard (also called grainy mustard or stone-ground mustard) contains partially crushed mustard seeds, creating a rustic texture and explosive pops of flavor as seeds burst when you bite down. The flavor is typically similar to Dijon—wine-based, sharp, complex—but the textural element adds another dimension.
The seeds provide satisfying pops of heat and the rustic appearance suggests artisanal quality, making whole grain mustard ideal for gourmet burgers, burgers on artisan buns, and situations where you want condiments to feel handcrafted rather than processed. It also works brilliantly in burger sauces, where the seeds add textural interest.
Honey Mustard: Sweet Heat Balance
Honey mustard combines mustard's sharpness with honey's floral sweetness, creating a condiment that bridges sweet and savory. The honey tempers mustard's bite while the mustard prevents the honey from being cloying. Some versions lean sweeter (honey with a hint of mustard) while others are mustard-forward with honey providing balance.
On burgers, honey mustard works particularly well with chicken, turkey, or pork rather than beef, where its sweetness can compete with caramelization. It's also excellent on burgers with bacon, where sweet and smoky play off each other, or burgers with sharp cheese like aged cheddar where you need sweetness for balance.
Spicy Brown Mustard: Bold and Aggressive
Spicy brown mustard (also called deli mustard) brings more heat and less refinement than Dijon. Made from brown mustard seeds with less vinegar, it delivers straightforward, aggressive mustard flavor with a kick. This is the mustard you find at New York delis, and it has an appropriate no-nonsense attitude.
The boldness makes spicy brown mustard perfect for big, messy burgers where subtlety would be lost—burgers piled with pastrami, corned beef, or other deli meats, or burgers with strong flavors like blue cheese or pickled vegetables. If your burger is trying to be delicate and refined, look elsewhere. If it's trying to punch you in the taste buds, spicy brown mustard is your friend.
Beer and Specialty Mustards: Artisan Territory
Craft mustard makers have embraced beer, wine, fruit, and spices to create mustards that are condiments and conversation pieces. Beer mustards incorporate ale or stout, adding malty depth and sometimes a slight bitterness that pairs beautifully with beef. Fruit mustards might include fig, cherry, or apricot, adding sweetness and complexity.
Southern-style rustic mustards combine whole grain texture with BBQ-inspired sweetness and vinegar tang, creating mustards specifically designed for burgers and barbecue. These specialty mustards work best when they're the star condiment—don't bury a $12 craft mustard under six other toppings. Let it shine on a simple burger where its complexity can be appreciated.
Strategic Condiment Pairing: Matching Flavors to Burger Styles
Understanding condiments individually is one thing; knowing how to pair them with specific burger styles is where expertise lives.
Classic American Cheeseburgers
For the quintessential American cheeseburger—beef patty, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion—stick with classics: dill pickle chips, yellow mustard, and ketchup. This combination has endured for a reason: the dill pickle's acidity cuts the cheese's richness, the mustard adds sharpness without overwhelming, and the ketchup provides sweetness and moisture. Some prefer bread and butter pickles for a sweeter profile, which works if you're skipping ketchup or using sharp cheddar instead of American cheese.
Gourmet and Upscale Burgers
When you're working with premium beef, artisan buns, and sophisticated toppings like gruyère or caramelized onions, your condiments should match that energy. Swap yellow mustard for Dijon or whole grain, replace standard pickles with fermented half-sours or house-made pickles, and consider gourmet relishes like pickled beet or tomatillo. The goal is complexity rather than nostalgia—each condiment should add layers of flavor rather than hitting familiar notes.
Spicy Burgers
For burgers built around heat—pepper jack cheese, jalapeños, hot sauce, chipotle mayo—you have two options: amplify or contrast. Amplifying means adding spicy pickles or hot relish, pushing the burger into fire-breathing territory. Contrasting means using sweet pickles or honey mustard to provide relief and prevent palate fatigue. Most people prefer some contrast, as all-heat gets exhausting, but if you're serving heat-seekers, go all in.
Bacon and BBQ Burgers
Burgers with bacon, BBQ sauce, or other sweet-smoky elements benefit from condiments that either complement or contrast that sweetness. Dill pickles provide contrast, cutting through sweet BBQ sauce and salty bacon with their acid. Alternatively, bread and butter pickles and honey mustard lean into the sweetness, creating a dessert-like burger experience that some love (and others find cloying). The right choice depends on personal preference and how sweet your BBQ sauce is.
Beyond the Basics: Other Condiment Considerations
While pickles, relishes, and mustards form the condiment trinity, a few other players deserve mention.
Ketchup Varieties
Standard ketchup has its place, but craft ketchups made with actual tomatoes (rather than tomato paste), reduced sugar, or added spices like smoked paprika or chipotle can elevate burgers. Some gourmet burger restaurants make house ketchup specifically to complement their patties. If you're going premium on everything else, why use bottom-shelf ketchup?
Mayonnaise and Aioli
While technically a sauce rather than a condiment, mayo deserves consideration here. Quality mayonnaise made with good oil and real eggs tastes dramatically different from bargain-brand mayo. Aioli—garlic-infused mayo—adds another dimension, and flavored aiolis (chipotle, truffle, herb) can serve as both condiment and sauce. The key is using mayo strategically rather than slathering it thoughtlessly.
Hot Sauce and Fermented Hot Sauce
A few dashes of hot sauce can wake up a burger without overwhelming it. Standard vinegar-based hot sauces like Tabasco or Frank's RedHot add heat and acid. Fermented hot sauces aged like fine wine deliver complex heat with umami depth. Use sparingly—hot sauce should accent, not dominate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between pickles and relish?
Pickles are whole or sliced cucumbers preserved in brine, maintaining their shape and providing textural crunch on burgers. Relish is chopped pickled vegetables (often cucumbers) in a sweet or savory brine that distributes evenly across burgers, adding flavor and moisture without the structural challenges of sliced pickles. Both serve similar flavor purposes but different textural roles.
Should I use dill or bread and butter pickles on burgers?
It depends on your burger's flavor profile and personal preference. Dill pickles work best with rich, fatty burgers where you need acidity to cut through cheese and sauces—they provide sharp contrast. Bread and butter pickles suit burgers with savory or smoky elements like bacon or BBQ sauce, where their sweetness complements rather than contrasts. Try both and let your taste buds decide.
Can I use the same condiments for beef and chicken burgers?
While you can, chicken and turkey burgers typically benefit from different condiments than beef. Their milder, leaner flavor pairs better with honey mustard, bread and butter pickles, and sweeter relishes, whereas beef's richness calls for sharper, more acidic condiments like dill pickles and Dijon. Adjust your condiments to match your protein's intensity.
How do I keep pickles from making my burger soggy?
Pat pickle slices dry with a paper towel before adding them to your burger, removing excess brine that contributes to sogginess. Place pickles on top of the patty rather than directly on the bun, and add a barrier like lettuce between wet ingredients and the bun. Toast your bun well, as toasted bread resists moisture better than soft, untoasted buns.
What are the best gourmet condiments to elevate homemade burgers?
Whole grain mustard adds sophistication and textural interest over yellow mustard. Fermented pickles provide probiotic complexity that vinegar pickles lack. Specialty relishes like pickled beet, tomatillo, or onion jam introduce global flavors. House-made aioli with roasted garlic or herbs transforms ordinary mayo into something special. Any of these upgrades instantly elevates burgers from backyard standard to restaurant quality.
Wrapping It Up: The Condiment Mindset
Great burgers aren't just about great beef—they're about the complete experience, and condiments play a starring role in that story. The right pickle cuts richness at exactly the right moment. The perfect mustard adds complexity without competing. A thoughtful relish ties everything together into a cohesive bite.
The beauty of condiments is their accessibility—you don't need expensive equipment or expert technique to upgrade your burger game. A $5 jar of good whole grain mustard or a package of quality fermented pickles instantly elevates every burger you make. Start exploring beyond the defaults, taste with intention, and pay attention to how different condiments interact with your burger's other elements.
Your burger condiment journey starts simple: try dill pickles if you usually use bread and butter, or vice versa. Swap yellow mustard for Dijon on your next burger. Pick up a jar of gourmet relish and see what it brings to the table. Each small change teaches you something about flavor, balance, and what you personally love in a burger. Before long, you'll be pairing condiments like a pro, creating burgers that hit every note—rich, tangy, sweet, sharp, and utterly unforgettable.
Sources:
- RecipeTin Eats - Special Burger Sauce
- BBQ Revolt - The 15 Best Pickles for Burgers
- Pickle Anything - The Best Pickles For Burgers
- Wozz Kitchen Creations - Gourmet Burger Condiments
- Sarah Scoop - 25 Best Condiments for Burgers