Could be. I thought the running Taco bell joke was how they use the same 5 ingredients for everything.
Since at least 1998, if not longer. 
That’s funny, and it sounds tasty. Now I want one.
That’s true of most fast food mexican food.
It worked out fine, the meat was fatty (you have to have fat to make it stick together.). I cut it up in small pieces and put them on a tray in the freezer for half an hour. Then I pulsed them in my little food processor a few at a time till they looked like ground meat. Maybe 10 pulses, if that. Take out the bigger bits and do them, too. Stir with a fork, lightly, don’t mash it down till you form it into patties (and you can freeze those for half an hour before cooking if they seem loose and crumbly). The trick is to not over-grind, you don’t want a sticky paste. … Ground pork you can buy is a lot easier, but if the store doesn’t have any, you can whizz it in the food processor.
This is not remotely true. Mexican fast food outside the Bell contains dozens of ingredients. (Though I do remember that Onion article). But the combination of so few ingredients, though not necessarily delicious, is often ingenious. Anyone who has had real taqueria sauces and toppings will not be overimpressed.
“What if we get a hard taco and wrap it in a soft taco? We could add extra cheese slurry to weld the two tacos together!”
Exactly, though I quite actively dislike Taco Bell, and consider it absolute bottom-of-the-barrel fast food to my tastes. It fulfills a desire for Taco Bell food, which is just its own category of food that I could understand. I crave White Castle from time to time, and that’s not something I would hold up as satisfying a desire for a hamburger. It’s a specific desire for White Castle. (And they, at least in some places, now have a “1921 slider” which actually resembles and tastes like a reasonable hamburger, that I don’t like because that’s not what I go to White Castle for.) Hell, my neighborhood is about 85% Hispanic, and there’s a Taco Bell AND a Chipotle that thrives here and it sure ain’t supported solely by non-Hispanics. (The local tacquerias and other Mexican restaurants do quite well here, too.)
The Double-Decker taco! What is this new devilry?!?! One of my guilty pleasures. And it was refried beans that welded it all together. The “Supreme” version was even better.
OK, back to the McRib, for your pleasure.
And that’s how I feel about McDonald’s!
For anyone intrigued by this idea, I heartily recommend the very entertaining show Fast Foodies. (It just finished its second season.) It is a show on truTV.
On the show there are 3 celebrity chefs, and each week a celebrity guest comes in and shares their favorite fast food item. Everything from hot dogs, to burgers, to chicken nuggets, to pizza. Most of the time it’s a well-known franchise like McDonald’s or Wendy’s or Taco Bell. The celebrity will reveal the item, talk about why they like it, and what they like about it.
Then they start the first stage of the competition, where they have to do their best to recreate the item as faithfully as they can just by finding things around their kitchen. The goal is to get as close as possible to the original, which often results in reactions like, “This is delicious, but it tastes too good.” It’s fun to see them trying to figure out what the original fast food place was doing to make their food, such as making an onion paste to form into molds for onion rings rather than using real sliced onion.
The celebrity tastes the food, then picks a winner of the three. The second stage of the competition begins, where each chef tries to come up with a fine dining item that reminds the celebrity of the original food item using very fancy ingredients and techniques. A wagyu beef carpaccio might replace a burger, or you’d replace pizza sauce with an heirloom tomato bisque. Something crazy, fancy, and extremely delicious that somehow tied back to the fast food item. During this phase, the two chefs who lost the first round have to complete a challenge in the middle of their cook, which is sometimes humiliating, uncomfortable, and/or gross.
After the second round, the celebrity picks their favorite meal and the chef you made that item is declared the “Chompion” and claims a ridiculous over-the-top giant trophy (which just gets passed around each episode). They also usually get some kind of fast food merchandise, like a hat, or shirt, or something else branded by the franchise. (One time it was a red pigtail wig from Wendy’s.) The losers this round have to suffer some kind of awful fate, which is almost always disgusting.
It’s all tongue-in-cheek as there is no real prize on the line, and much of the show is banter between the chefs and the celebrity, but it’s good fun and it’s a very interesting celebration of trashy fast food and Avant Garde fine dining. Also, most of the celebrities are people I am a fan of, and it’s fun to see them goof around with the chefs for the duration of the show.
Yeah, once they realize the error of their ways and stop, it is counterproductive to keep punishing them. Otherwise, why should they stop?
Good cite. There is just too much fakenews hate about big companies being passed around.
A totally well-founded opinion. 
Actually, McD’s would have worked as well as an example of a place I go to not because I want a good hamburger, but because I want a McDonald’s. And I don’t like their newer fresh Quarter Pounder with cheese because it’s trying to taste like a hamburger, and not a McDonald’s.
Yes! When I want a TB taco, I don’t want a real taco.
I miss Grant Imahara. He passed away 2 years ago, not quite making his 50th birthday. RIP man.
It’s really cool that McDonald’s participated in that video. There’s no better way to dispel those kinds of rumors. Seeing the process and seeing that it’s not really as weird as you assume, it does ease some fears and change opinion about the sandwich.
(I’m still not a fan anymore, they just don’t taste as good as I remember.)
All this chatter go me to a McD’s today for a Filet O’ Fish. It was an outstanding example of bare adequacy, but it scratched an itch 
.
If beans instead of cheese were used to cleverly attach a hard taco to a soft one, so much the better. It seems there is still ample room for future innovations, and, sit down for this, it may also include sour cream. Maybe the hard taco is a giant Dorito. !Locossimo!.
Gentlemen! (Gentlepersons?)… May I introduce the Crunchwrap Cheezito Cool Ranch Supreme?
Jolibee’s, the Philippine fast food chain with some American locations, has an Aloha Burger which has a slice of pineapple. It’s pretty good.
Never had it. I did hear a location opened up in Toronto a few years back.
I’m a picky eater and have never had a McRib. I picture them being gristly. Are they? Do you sometimes get maybe a rubbery bite?
Question: Isn’t a McRib just a pork burger that’s shaped like ribs? That is, wouldn’t ground pork with some shaped into a patty taste the same?