Elevate Your Burger King Whopper With These 5 Ordering Tips

Burger King's Whopper is an iconic sandwich introduced as the chain's house specialty in the 1950s. The classic Whopper has a quarter-pound beef patty, mayo, ketchup, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, white onions, and a toasted sesame seed bun. The famous BK motto is "Have It Your Way," though, so there are lots of options for elevating the famous sandwich beyond that basic formula.

BK offers various customization options for the Whopper, from eliminating ingredients and adjusting sauce levels to adding extra toppings like cheese and bacon. You can also sub in an Impossible patty if you want to go meatless or request no buns for a low-carb burger. There's even an option to request the BK kitchen to cut your Whopper in half for you — which may not sound like a big deal, but people swear by it, stating it makes the sandwich easier to hold, less messy to eat, and gives you instant access to the juicy nucleus of the burger where all the toppings can be savored in one bite.

If you want an elevated Whopper on your next Burger King run, the following ordering tips can give you a delicious level-up. All of these upgrades can be completed right in the app, or via the online ordering interface. Simply click on the tile for a specific condiment or ingredient and the graphic will flip around to reveal your options.

Malibu chicken, which is a sort of deconstructed chicken cordon bleu, is a dish that has been popularized by the Sizzler restaurant chain and features breaded chicken topped with ham, Swiss cheese, and honey mustard sauce. You can easily approximate this formula on a Whopper by choosing the option to include Swiss cheese, adding bacon instead of ham, and eliminating the included Whopper sauces (I'll tell you why you need to nix the ketchup and mayo in a second). Whether you keep or ditch the vegetables that come standard on the Whopper is at your discretion, as a typical malibu chicken sandwich often doesn't include veggies.

Once your Whopper customizing is finalized, add some chicken nuggets to your order — a four-piece should do it — and choose honey mustard for your dipping sauce. With all of the food in hand, you just need to add the nuggies and honey mustard to your sandwich, and voila! Order up for one Malibu chicken Whopper. Yes, admittedly, there's a little assembly required, but it's worth it.

Fry sauce. If you're from Utah, you know. This simple sauce is a treasure in the Beehive State, and it levels up the french fry game in a way Utahns can't get enough of. It can level up your Whopper, too. At its most basic level, fry sauce is a mixture of mayonnaise and ketchup, but blends go beyond that to bring in spices and other additions. Its tangy, salty-sweetness adds delicious flavor dimensions and brings a perfect bit of "it" factor to the Whopper. 

To get a Utah-style Whopper sauced up with the state's favorite condiment, start by selecting the extra ketchup and mayonnaise options when customizing your sammie. Add light mustard (mustard is an optional ingredient in fry sauce — some like it and some don't; but for the purposes of our Utah-style Whopper, on it goes!). Many fry sauce recipes also bring pickle juice into the mix, so if you want to be super legit and chow down like a Utahn, you can also select light pickles for your order. 

Bonus factoid: BKs in Utah and the surrounding region actually have packaged fry sauce among their condiment options, because we Utahns are just that crazy about fry sauce. So, if you're ordering in Utah or some of the neighboring states, you can ask for the real thing to top your Whopper.

The sandwich creation known as a ranch hand burger is a well-stacked affair featuring robust beef patties (if your day job is working with cows, you should definitely get the best picks of meat) and toppings like bacon, varying kinds of cheese, some type of fried onion accompaniment, and veggies like lettuce, tomato, and onion. The sauce element is ranch dressing, barbecue sauce, or a mixture of both. With Burger King's customization options, creating a ranch hand-style Whopper is easy as can be.

Start with double patties for that hefty meat element. You could even go for a triple or more — they really mean it when they say have it your way. A U.K. man once ordered a Whopper with 36 beef patties, so nobody is going to look at you askance for requesting a meager two or three. Bonus: Piling on the patties elevates your Whopper to a very high-protein fast-food burger.

Add both kinds of cheese — the online interface gives you the option of American or Swiss — along with bacon and onion rings, then select whatever veggies suit your fancy. If you like your food on the spicy side, you can add jalapeños — some ranch burger recipes call for them and some don't. For the sauce, choose "No" to remove the Whopper's included ketchup and mayonnaise. You'll need to separately order Hidden Valley Ranch and BBQ dipping sauces from the condiments menu and add them by hand.

The result is a hearty Whopper that would fill up any ranch worker after a hard day of caring for livestock and repairing fences. Another bonus: You don't have to butcher your own beef — that job's on the house.

Fresh is always best, especially when it comes to fast food. The more time a french fry or burger spends away from its heat source, the less tasty it is. So, if you want the best possible experience when chowing down on your BK Whopper, you need to invoke the "Hot Off the Broiler" option.

Selecting this Whopper customization is a simple ordering hack that ensures you get a fresh beef patty. Just click the "Hot Off the Broiler" button in the online ordering interface or utter those words at the counter or drive-thru to make sure the flame-broiled beef on your Whopper is freshly cooked for your feasting pleasure. Some Reddit posters, self-identifying as former Burger King employees, state the hold time for BK burgers is 30 minutes before they're tossed out, while others state the hold time is 40 minutes for Whoppers.

If you're ordering in person at a restaurant, some online posters recommend asking for an off-the-broiler Whopper at the counter, not the drive-thru, for courtesy's sake. The rationale is it takes more time to grill one fresh, so making the request in a busy drive-thru line holds up the queue of cars.

Flame-broiled is a given when you're ordering a Whopper, but some like it hot in terms of flaming condiments, too. If you enjoy your food on the spicy side, an ordinary Whopper has probably never done much to satisfy those heat cravings. But, luckily, that problem is easily remedied with a couple of customization requests.

When ordering your BK sammie, simply choose the "add jalapeños" option on the customization part of the ordering page to bring a kick to the fast-food party. Then, separately order the chain's Buffalo dipping sauce and add it by hand for some extra spice. Featuring cayenne pepper among its ingredients, the sauce will definitely help turn up the heat in your hamburger.