How do you Stack your Burger? How do you Keep the Trimming on the Burger?

I haven't had what I call a really good burger like from Whataburger in a really long time.  Usually every so often when we went to the big city, dear hubby would stop at McDonald's for a Quarter Pounder.  They are too big for me and I don't really like Quarter Pounders so I always got the burger on the dollar menu.

So usually the burgers I get are homemade. Homemade burgers are so much better than those fast-food burgers.  My problem is that the lettuce and tomato slide off my burger.

So how do you stack your burgers? And, this is the big question ... How do you keep all the trimming from sliding off the bun?

You raise a very deep metaphysical dilemma.   I have not had this problem ...but my wife has.  I suspect her burgers are rounder and smaller in diameter, and mine tend to be flat and wider in diameter  This will be an interesting thread to watch

I love a good cheeseburger! Years ago I got tired of having toppings push out the opposite side that I bite from, and put a lot of thought into this very serious problem. I have a few approaches, and I combine them all into the construction of a burger that does a real good job of staying together while I'm eating it.

Meat contracts when it cooks, and I found that if I make thinner patties that are shaped like a shallow bowl, with the edges being thicker than the center, after cooking it will have contracted into something nearly flat, as opposed to making a flat patty that cooks and contracts into a dome shape. This dome shape foundation was one source of toppings working their way out of the burger. The next points of study in my burger topping analyzing was friction. I like my burgers with everything, and that to me means cheese, lettuce, onion, tomato, pickle, salt & pepper, mustard and some mayo on the bun. Considering the textures of the toppings and that mustard and mayo act like grease on car parts, I tried applying toppings in different orders. I start off with a burger patty that has cheese side up on the bun that has mayo on it, and melted cheese isn't very grippy, so I go ahead and put mustard on the cheese as I don't think it will really make it any more slippery, then I apply a few rings of onion. The three or four rings of onion offers a surface that will press into melted cheese and mustard to the burger patty surface and offer a somewhat non-slip surface above. This is where I add a few slices of pickle rounds as they tend to nest within the structure of the onion. Next a slice of tomato and which I sprinkle sea salt and fresh ground pepper which provides a grit to the surface, like sand on an icy sidewalk. Then comes lettuce followed by the top bun. It's still not completely perfect but was a huge improvement, so the final piece to anchor the sum of all parts together is a long toothpick through the center! Mmmm!

Order of operations is important.

From the top down:

Bun
Mustard
Pickles (and onions if you are so inclined)
Cheese (I suppose bacon if you are so inclined as well, but bacon has a tendancy to pull out from a burger when you're biting and make the whole thing fall apart)
Patty
Tomato (not too much, one good slice of a properly sized tomato. Tomato on tomato gets slippery)
Leaf lettuce, not shredded (super important to stop the bottom bun from getting soggy with meat and tomato juice and falling apart)
Mayonnaise
Bun

Hi Nick

I am almost with you......but I see no mention of onion.

Keep your patty flat and large. cheese and sauces act like glue up to a point, but once that point is reached they are more lubricant like. so have some sauce but not much.
Cutting up the inside of the bun a bit helps as well.

Hi James,

I regard the tooth pick as questionable.

I ran across these today: