I burn chips too! (not literally).
I use chips called CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Devices) and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) from Altera ( http://www.altera.com ) and Xilinx, Inc. ( http://www.xilinx.com ). These are blank chips which you put programs written in VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) and Verilog to configure the chip in any way you want. You can make all the logic circuits you want, design memory and even burn an 8-bit or 16-bit processor, video controller, lan controller, usb controller, etc in it.
You would need a CPLD/FPGA Development System which consists of an FPGA board (such as Spartan3/3E from Digilent, Inc. http://www.digilentinc.com ), VHDL or Verilog Compiler/Tools (ISE from Xilinx, Inc. and Quartus II from Altera) and a USB cable to download/burn your code into the chip from your PC.
You can download free open source codes known as IP cores which are pre-built programs for processors, microcontrollers, vga controllers, etc.
So I guess you can really burn chips, but you have to know where you will use it and of course you have to learn the tools of the trade. Good Luck!