The hamburger is a symbol of everything that makes America great. Straightforward, egalitarian, substantial, and good-natured, it is also a little bloody at times.

It may come big and ungarnished, the East Coast ideal, tender and untroubled by bones or gristle, everything you look for in a filet mignon but seldom find. It may be the West Coast model, swelling with vegetation, brimming with health and well-being, piled high with all that a seed catalog can provide. A great burger, regardless of regional differences, instills a sense of optimism and fulfillment, that all is right at the table or the counter or the woodgrain, screwed-to-the-floor, fast-food booth.

At its best, it eliminates the need for conversation or the urge to glance up at the TV over the bar. If you find yourself eating silently, eyes closed, ignoring everything around you, even the unavoidable burger-joint din, you have come upon a burger that can be pronounced a success.

Of course, it must be molded by hand, artfully seared, and offered medium-rare. If that’s too much to ask, not overcooked would be nice. Whose idea was it anyway that serving desiccated burgers to Americans would enable all of us to spring back to health? Excessive reliance on condiments is another alarming development, especially in the matter of ketchup, the burger Band-Aid. Ketchup is valuable only when an emergency jolt of moisture, sweetness, acidity, and flavor is required. No hamburger is inedible if you put enough ketchup on it, but no hamburger that has ketchup on it can be considered great. Mustard is a mistake, unless you’re French and welcome a vinegary jolt with your food, while pickles, those subversive little sweet and sour instruments, fill me with dread. When I find pickles furtively inserted into my burger, I generally look to the heavens with a clenched fist and sob, “Why?“

I’ve always claimed I’d go a long way for the right burger, and indeed I did. I traveled 23,750 miles—that’s just 1,152 miles short of encircling the globe at the equator—looking for the best ones in America. I consumed more than 150,000 calories but resisted drinking a can of soda with every burger, saving more than 22,000 calories that way. I ate crazy burgers, Kobe burgers, bison burgers, longhorn burgers, ostrich burgers, onion burgers, lamb burgers, and of course, cheeseburgers. (Note that cheese goes so well with burgers that the word is assembled differently, with no space in between.) I tried fast-food burgers, and while there’s a sameness to them that overwhelms any attempts at excellence, I found some mighty fine values on those dollar menus, assuming you don’t mind your burgers hard and dry, like the smiles on the faces of the teenagers who take your order. I visited Burger Heaven. Actually, I went to a few places called that. I was also in burger hell, which is Milwaukee, home of the butter burger, essentially meat saturated with grease.

My goal was to find the twenty best burgers, and with apologies to all the restaurants, stands, bars, and grills I missed, I’d like to believe I did well. I ate 162 burgers in ninety-three establishments. Some of them were fancified, proffering foie gras-stuffed burgers costing as much as $29. Some were dumps, with burgers hovering near a buck. At no time, despite pleas from loved ones, did I have a physician standing by. I found no correlation between price and tastiness, nor did ambience count for a great deal. A burger requires only a cook of modest accomplishments, one who knows enough to remove it from the fire before it has lost its juiciness and not to press down hard with a spatula—squishing might work with grilled cheese, but it’s fatal for burgers. Waitresses who work in burger joints can have scars and tattoos, as long as they’re not self-inflicted. Motorcycles are fine, provided they’re not parked inside.