You can't travel very far in America without bumping into a burger chain. They exist in dense urban cores, suburban strip malls and tiny towns. There are so many of them you'd think we had reached the saturation point, yet they multiply every year. With so many, they compete by creating a cacophony of brightly colored ads hoping to catch our distracted attention.

I've been doing my very best to avoid most of these places since I was a teenager. Wasn't it better to focus attention on smaller, family-owned operations? When challenged to find the best chain burgers, I felt both a sense of disgust and, honestly, curiosity. I mean, how bad can Burger King be? (Turns out, very.)

But I have to admit that times have changed for the better. It's now possible to get not just a good burger at a chain restaurant, but a great one. Sure, there's still an awful lot of questionable options out there, but they are being crowded out by places using fresh meat, soft buns and high-quality toppings.

We set out to rank all of Chicago's fast food burgers. To be included the chain restaurant had to have a national presence. That meant regional chains like In-N-Out (West Coast), Whataburger (South) and M Burger (Chicago) didn't make the cut. That left me with 18 diverse options, from fast food joints with dollar menus to trendy joints where the cheapest option tops $13.

Along the way, I learned a couple of important lessons.

Using fresh beef instead of frozen beef makes a huge difference. All the best burgers used fresh meat, and all the worst tossed frozen pucks onto the griddle or conveyor-belt grill.

Smashed burgers are the best fast food burgers. My top four picks featured beef smashed on a griddle. You might think this violent process squeezes out the juices, but if done immediately after the beef hits the griddle, that's not actually the case. Plus, you get beef with a stunning brown crust, which always, 100 percent of the time, tastes better than gray, flaccid meat.