I work as a butcher in a supermarket.We used to carry a line of pork that was so lean it would be tough and tasteless without being injected with a saline solution.This covered spareribs and backribs.Tasted like crap!But you couldn’t over cook it.I haven’t seen it in a year or so tho.
They’re DEFINITELY different these days.
I had the displeasure of actually cooking McDonald’s burgers while I was in high school. Back then, the meat was RED and it was frozen. It was cooked on a grille. Nowadays, the meat comes to the store pre-cooked (?) and it warmed in these microwave drawers. It’s really strange.
I have McDonald’s probably every 6 months or so, and I agree with the OP – it’s WAY salty.
It’s sad (to me, anyway) that McDonald’s hamburger meat tastes so much better in Japan. I suspect it also tastes better in some other countries too, but I haven’t had any McD’s food in Europe for a while (or anywhere else).
I’ve always thought that other countries (other than USA) like Japan have much more stringent meat inspection standards as well as food standards in general. I don’t know if this is so, but the burgers in Japan taste a lot better. They taste like meat.
Carefully check the labels on the pork in the supermarket: Swift brand pork carries special labels even on the tray-packaged individual cuts, and these labels specifically note that the pork has been “enhanced” with a solution.
Ah, yes. Here’s a link directly to the Swift & Co. website.
Yeah, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to find packaged cold cuts that have not been so “enhanced” with a flavoring agent. If I ever quit eating meat, it’s gonna be because it’s turned into shit.
Hey, you leave my Chum Bucket out of this!
I always preferred Carl’s Jr. anyway.
I thought that within a country (or perhaps worldwide) the food at all McD’s is kept identical, so that the taste is the same whatever McD’s you use.
I’ve thought McDonald’s burgers tasted like cardboard for years. I will not eat them; if there is noplace else to eat, I’ll go to Mickey D’s and order a chicken grill (well if they still have them) which is almost edible, but if I want a burger, it’s the local A&W. If there was a Burger King closer than ten miles away, I’d go there but my once-a-quarter (if that) burger is an A&W one.
I pretty much have quit eating meat because most of it is boring. There’s so many other tasty things to eat that I don’t really miss it. I’ll sometimes buy some ground beef and put it into a Mexican dish just for the extra iron because I figure I need it, but I wouldn’t do it otherwise.
Your post libels crap.
I can’t recall the last time I ate fast food.
I highly doubt the meat comes to the store pre-cooked. Those drawers you see are the fancy steam drawer contraption they came up with so they can assemble them to order. I think they do have microwaves that they heat the assembled burgers in though. Clearly they are under the impression that the cheese must be melted.
One of the ther things they stopped doing when they moved to the steam drawer system was toasting buns. All the buns other than the Filet-o-fish were toasted. Those were steamed. Now you just get a plain, non toasted, bun on everything.
Ugh… I may have to go to McDonald’s at lunch and try peeking in the kitchen.
Haven’t had one in a few years, but I thought the whole point was that they’re just a quick, shitty meal, when you don’t have time for anything else?
Don’t tell me people actually buy them for the taste?
The meat comes to the store frozen and raw, they are then cooked on the grill and the surplus is stored in the “heat drawers” until needed on a per order basis. As far as I can tell the buns are still toasted for all of the burgers and the bun is still steamed for the filet of fish as well. I had a big mac attack last night after reading all these McD threads and can vouch that mine came from a drawer but the bun was definitely toasted. I can also attest that the last filet o fish I had definitely had the characteristic steamed bun.
I too was on grill in my McDonald’s days. I had some moves that could equal the best teppan yaki flourishes out there. Plenty of time to get good with the spat.
I think Mc Donald’s turned to the drawer meat because of the “have it your way” pressure and competition. But I also tend to believe the biggest factor was waste. Those premade burgers sat under a heat lamp for ten minutes and if they didn’t sell within 10-15 minutes they were thrown away and the cost eaten. I can vouch that when I worked there there was a lot of waste from this business plan and it probably cut severely into the very low profit margin. Just didn’t make sense in the burger wars, so Wendy and BK’s burger making methods won out (can’t beat em join em.) and now all the fast food places pretty much serves up beef that has been stored. No more fresh off the grill burgers unless you go during a lunch or dinner rush. This is probably the quality difference that many of you are complaining about.
I had a McD burger for the first time in years the other day, and this thread is right on my experience. I’ve been somewhat of a vegetarian for a few years (or… my wife has been), and when I had my McD burger I actually thought to myself: “Did it really taste like this…?” I suspected that my memory of a juicy and meaty burger was a mind trick of the protein starving brain, but reading this thread, well, perhaps they actually made some changes.
(Living and eating in Europe.)
Dude, it’s ninety-nine cents for a bacon double cheeseburger. Who cares?
(Junior Woodchucks! Nice!)
Back in the day, McDonald’s was the only reasonable choice if you wanted a fast, decent lunch at a reasonable price. The fries were the best among other fast food choices and the beef tasted like a fresh grilled hamburger. Nowadays, Fuddruckers and Five Guys serve much better quality and the wait times and prices are reasonable for the quality you get. There’s just more alternatives.
One difference between then and now is that, because the burgers are assembled as needed, the meat has not cooled and, er, congealed like it did before, even under the heat lamps. And now they get consumed immediately, rather than Mom snapping, “Wait until we get home.”
Let your burger sit for a half hour before you eat it and you might find it tastes very much like the McBurger of your youth.
I agree with everything you said here except the toasted bun part. Maybe it is a regional thing but around here the bun is definitely not toasted.
I wish I had the same hifalutin’ tastes as y’all. But fuck it, I’ve got little pride, so I’ll admit it: I love McD’s burgers, and I don’t notice a difference. Maybe it’s 'cause my local McDonald’s adds just a touch of love. 
What I want to know is when McDonalds stopped being “fast” fast food.
I used to have McDonalds…I’d walk to the counter, place my order, the counterperson would push buttons, take my money, while he was making change someone would throw a cup under the pop dispenser, throw a burger from the hopper and some fries from the hopper onto a tray, grab the now filled cup and by the time the change was in my hand, the tray was full.
Now I go in, and there is no hopper of burgers. I order a quarter pounder (actually, I don’t anymore - gluten intolerant so my options for fast food are really limited) and they might as well be butchering the cow back there for the amount of time it takes to get the burger on the tray (and we KNOW they aren’t, those little pre-cooked meat patties are not exactly fresh). They have a delay of three orders now - and sometimes I’m standing around waiting for my food for five or ten minutes.
It also used to be that, unless you were almost alone in the restaurant, everyone working at a McDonalds was in motion. Now they appear to have three people on every shift (maybe four when its busy) whose job it is to stand behind the counter motionlessly and get in the way of the person trying to get my food.