On the surface, cooking and building the perfect burger seems easy. But to achieve perfection creating an amazing burger takes great skill.

It all starts with a patty with the perfect ground beef combination of lean and fat. That patty needs to be cooked just right. The cheese to needs to be great. The bun needs to taste amazing and have just the right ratio of bread to meat. The balance of lettuce, tomato, onion, and other veggie toppings needs to be perfect. And condiments, well, with thousands of options and combinations - they need to have a personality that fits the burger.

When you put all of these elements together, what seems like a simple combination on the surface clearly becomes a meal that needs to be made by a master. Creating the perfect burger is no joke and balancing all of these simple elements is way more complicated than we think, and that skill needs to be executed with speed and precision. We want great burgers, and we want 'em fast!

So which local restaurants are burger masters? The experts in turning ground beef into an amazing, perfectly balanced hand-held meal? We opened this one up to our listeners on Facebook, and tasked who serves the best burgers in the Capital Region? These were the 10 most popular answers - ranking them as the 10 best in the greater Albany area.

The Capital Region's 10 Best Burgers [RANKED]

Ground beef patty, bun, toppings, and condiments. Sounds simple, right? Far from it! A perfect burger is an art form and just like a great painting, each brush stroke of ingredients is essential to the final product. The chef is the artist, and there are the best restaurants in the Capital Region for a burger masterpiece.

Gallery Credit: Matty Jeff

The Capital Region's Best Pizza Joints [RANKED]

Whether it is an 8 cut or a slice on the go, New York and the Capital Region are known for having a multitude of great pizza joints. Here are the 5 best in greater Albany according to GNA Listeners.

Gallery Credit: Matty Jeff

The Capital Region's 10 Best Hot Dogs [RANKED]

It is a food that seems so simple to make, but yet, the best of the best just cannot be recreated. When it comes hot dogs, buns, and the best combinations of toppings, these are the tops in greater Albany.

Gallery Credit: Matty Jeff