I do so love a sneaky burger. I don’t eat them very often but when I do, I want it to be amazing and worth every single cheese-laden calorie.

What constitutes the perfect burger? Does it include mustard and mayo? Do you need salad in there? Is ketchup compulsory? This became a heated discussion at a wine-fulled dinner party a few weeks ago where two people, it materialised, felt passionately that their homemade versions were The Best.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I did what any other sensible person would have done. I suggested a burger-off.

So this Sunday, an elite team of eating-machines got together for a blind tasting. The key criteria was that no one had eaten either burger before.

We expanded to a total of 11 adults and nine kids. Too big a group for me to contemplate comfortably hosting at ours, so we decamped to a beautiful black and white at the last minute. Thank you JW.

Without further a-do, on to the food. Each of the two contestants had to show their workings.

Here’s Jane HAND-grinding her beef on Saturday at midnight:

Here’s evidence of contestant number 2 – none other than Mr Changmoh – grinding his beef just a few moments before we left the house to go to the cook-off:

As I was chief photographer, I went rather over-the-top in proving which part of the cow our meat had come from (apologies for bad pic above which rather muddles the mince up with my kilner jar of granola behind it – not a good look)

Can you guess?

Yup, for both cooks in fact, it was beef short ribs…for the most part (Jane also includes sirloin and brisket in her recipe, Team B usually just add sirloin).

Both teams had quite different looking patties:

And there was much debate over the cheese. American plastic? Team B says yes. Or pre-sliced proper cheddar (Team A)?

And toppings:

Here they all are sweating over the BBQ (Team A somewhat hindered by a lovely but, none-the-less, not wildly helpful baby girl).

The result were two very different creations:

After eating and ruminating, out came the pen and paper for proper, written voting. This was serious.

Votes were counted by the thoroughly correct and proper Mr Jelf:

And the winner, by ONE vote, was…Team A.

Next: Both Jane and Mr Changmoh have agreed to a sausage-off. Considerably less work, I am looking forwards already.

Can’t be bothered? If it all sounds like rather hard work, just head down to Omakase Burger at Turf City or Wisma – read my review of them here. Or try much acclaimed Roadhouse in Dempsey which I haven’t done yet…probably just as well.