That’s the sampler! I’d spend, I dunno, $20? on five or six little condiment cups with a dollop of varieties. But I won’t spend $14 on a six ounce jar of any one of them, untested.
There is a culinary place for it, I must admit.
It irks me that this is called “American cheese”, being a very bland substance, the status of which as genuine cheese is dubious. I think that something called “American cheese” should be much more bold, much more flavorful, and in some way representative of America and its culture.
My taste for that comes and goes. I like it if it’s been long enough since I last had it, but if I have it very often, I quickly tire of it.
It’s as if, some time, in the beginning, an engineer that was designing Taco Bell’s menu, and another engineer that was designing my digestive system, decided to work together so that these two things were optimized for one another.
Something, a month or two ago, called my attention to spam musubi, and sparked in me a desire to try it. Just after I mentioned this to @Seanette, she showed me an advertisement she’d recently seen for the Shell gas station chain’s “Loop” convenience store, promoting their version of it. I wasted no time in giving it a try, and found I very much like it, almost as much as Taco Bell food. I’ve also tried the versions from a couple different Hawaiian restaurants in the area; but I think I like Shell’s version better. For a short while, Shell/Loop was very heavily promoting their musubi, but they no longer seem to be doing so. In fact, I can now find no mention of it on their web sites. Last I checked, though, it was still available at the Shell/Loop nearest where we live; and the Loop app does show, if you look at the listing for a specific location, whether it offers spam musubi or not.
@Seanette has figured out making spam musubi at home, and after some experimentation, I think she now produces a version that I like even more than Shell’s.
Visit Dollar General or similar, I’ve found 125 mg jars marked down to 99 cents at such places at times.
Hell, PM me your address and I’ll mail you one of those 125 mg things, I bought a bunch of them! Just ignore the best by date though, they truly keep forever. lol
I’ll totally look but it’s 125 grams, right? I know you recommend a thin layer but 125 mg is about half an aspirin tablet. I’d have grabbed Vegemite or Marmite at a dollar store if I ever saw it but it never occurred to me to look there.
I just ordered a bunch of Vegemite as I had run out. I go through my -mite phases and I’m big in the middle of a Vegemite binge. I love the stuff and it honestly elicits a sense of bliss when I bite into a piece of crusty bread with quality butter on it and a healthy smear (I don’t like it thin) of Vegemite. Like I seriously feel a little “high” that just makes me happy and feel contented and warm. It’s weird as I did not grow up with the stuff, yet it has such a nostalgic feel to me.
I like liverwurst. I like Miracle Whip. I like liverwurst sandwiches with Miracle Whip on them. (And a glass of chocolate milk to wash it down.)
That is so sweet of you! However, having tasted vegemite, I wonder if it will truly be the beginning of a beautiful friendship… 
I really don’t like yucking anybody else’s yum, but I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit!
ENOUGH! I’m going to cleanse our palates with some tasty poultry.
We were at a traditional Midwest supper club, and I loved the relish tray, the basket of crusty rolls with butter, the Old Fashioneds.
But when my wife ordered chicken, my mom went into what can only be called a rant: “WHY would anyone order CHICKEN?!?”
Well, because it’s half a bird, exotically seasoned and flame-grilled with crispy skin!
Mom: “Well, just LOOK at the rest of the menu!” (It had so many ways to order a hunk of steak slapped on your plate… something us minimal-red-meat people would not be excited about).
But to her (being a child of the depression?), chicken was for the lower classes…
Its Dandy!!
Yes, VERY thinly. I prefer sourdough toast with butter.
it is good for you- lots of vitamins, protein, low-fat. Too much sodium for some.
https://www.marmite.co.uk/nutrition-information.html
Yep, I use Hormel no beans for chili dogs and dig (melt cheese and chili together, serve with tortilla chips)
I usually get the bean burritos- fairly health for fast food.
There is “real” American cheese, and “pasteurized product cheese food”- which is not real cheese. Real American cheese is bland, sure, but melts nicely.
Some of your “base level” stuff I agree with, and quite a few surprise me, but who am I to criticize? I’m on the fence about McDonald’s, other than the fact that it’s indisputably unhealthy. I’ve warmed to their Quarter Pounder with Cheese since they started using fresh rather than frozen patties in it. Not sure why that should make a big difference, but it does. I used to think them rather greasy, but the new recipe seems to not have that problem.
You once posted pictures of making fried chicken I think for catering to some event. It did indeed look very yummy! Popeyes has been mentioned favourably in several threads here, but I’ve never had much luck with the one nearby. I suspect that Popeyes doesn’t have anywhere near the kind of quality control that McD’s has, aiming for consistent product everywhere, and that this place is just badly run. Likewise, I like Burger King but I can think of at least one urban location near where I used to live that was really badly run.
As I said above, who am I to criticize! You do you. But here are a couple of articles compiled from comments by former McDonald’s employees about things not to order, and filet-o-fish was on that list. Sometimes you might luck out, but I believe the reasoning was that it’s not very popular and hence often sits around a long time and gets dried out and yucky.
Some comments and their sources:
The modest Filet-O-Fish doesn’t have a whole lot going for it. It consists of just a lightly breaded square fish filet, tater sauce, and a half slice of American cheese on a steamed bun — a bun unique to the Filet-O-Fish, while other McDonald’s sandwiches require a grilled bun. This fishy (pun intended) meal sparks so many questions: Why is the filet square? Why no lettuce or tomato? Why a half slice of cheese and not a full slice? Why didn’t McDonald’s immediately throw this recipe in the ocean where it belongs?
We appreciate that McDonald’s offers a non-meat sandwich, but we wish it would step up its game for the pescatarians among us. The fish lacks any sort of crisp, leaving us wondering why McDonald’s even bothered to bread it in the first place. The steamed bun gets soggy quickly, while the tartar sauce is watery, and the flavor of American cheese doesn’t pair well with seafood whatsoever.
8 Items To Avoid Ordering At McDonald's
The fishy secret? This sandwich often languishes in warming cabinets for hours before being served (as confirmed by multiple former McDonald’s employees on Reddit), likely due to its low demand.
10 Things You Should Never Order at McDonald’s
Mine,too, assuming that’s the same thing as “Kraft singles”. But only used for grilled cheese sandwiches and on cheeseburgers.
Objectively it’s not good food, yet I always have a couple of cans on hand. Maybe because it was standard fare while wilderness camping, cooked either over a campfire or on a propane camp stove. With a lot of freshly grated parmesan, it’s really not bad once in a while. But then I make up for it by cooking up a batch of imported Italian ravioli and a really good pasta sauce!
I just want to add, with regard to the two articles I posted about what not to order at McDonald’s, that some of it is obviously subjective, and one might want to take the proscriptions more seriously when the two articles agree – both, for instance, recommend against both the Big Mac and the Filet-o-Fish. But I vehemently disagree with the first article’s condemnation of McDonald’s coffee. Maybe it varies by region or something, but I’ve pretty consistently found McDonald’s coffee to be smooth and deeply flavourful – a real treat with a Bacon & Egg McMuffin and hash brown. So there, I acknowledge yet another guilty pleasure!
I favor Jollibee for fried chicken, but Popeye’s does have tasty biscuits.
Consistency between fast-food locations is problematic in my area. For quite a while, several Burger Kings had a really weird and unpleasant aftertaste to the food (I suspect oil wasn’t getting properly maintained), but there was a location that was dependably quite good near my most recent temp gig. OTOH, the JitB nearest my apartment is pretty bad, but others in different parts of town are just fine.
Maybe you should look at the thread title again.
I’m aware of the thread title. Maybe you should consider my further comment that while some of the criticisms are obviously subjective, some of them offer well-supported reasons why you shouldn’t order certain items on the McDonald’s menu. But if you like them anyway, go right ahead. As I said about three times, who am I to criticize? I’m just offering information, FWIW.
Yeah, there’s a Burger King in an urban location near where I used to live that I stopped going to, and in fact developed a distate for BK. The place was dirty and badly managed and the last straw was a Whopper that just tasted off. That wasn’t an oil problem, that tasted like meat that was on the verge of going bad.
The one up here in suburbia is just great. I give their Whopper an edge even over the much-improved McD’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese. In the rare cases when I allow myself a fast-food indulgence, it’s a toss-up which one I’ll go for. But the guys at BK seemed appreciative and supportive of my Ukrainian car flag, so there’s that! The teenagers at McD’s appear to be apolitical! 
Okay, the filet-o-fish is the only sandwich I’ll order at McDonald’s. And it’s not true that it usually languishes in warming cabinets, on the contrary, in my experience, if they have it at all, they need to make one fresh for me, because of low demand. I can often see this taking place. The breading is always crisp. I order it with “light sauce”, which is one pump, rather than two. (I used to scrape half the sauce off, until an ex-McDonald’s manager told me about this option.)
Sometimes they accidentally leave off the cheese, and it doesn’t make much difference. That cheese is so bland it’s basically just some extra fat.
I can’t speak to the subjective stuff, that’s subjective. But the objective stuff you’ve listed is generally false.
(I don’t like McDonald’s. My mom would buy dinner there sometimes when i was a kid, and i refused to eat it. I later discovered the fish sandwich is palatable. But i basically only eat there in airports, when my options are limited. Perhaps the airport ones are run differently.)
If I order a filet-o-fish they will ALWAYS divert me from the drive through into the curbside pickup area to wait for the 5-7 minutes it takes them to make it.
Maybe the experience varies by store, but I bet what you and I are experiencing is the McDonald’s standard and what others are reporting is deviations from the standard. I have a friend who worked at McDonald’s in the UK as a teenager and he was impressed by the detailed standards and compliance regimes they had. Of course if you have a franchised model that pays low wages, actual compliance may vary. Also may not be as true in the US.
lol, yeah grams not mgs. My fingers tend to default to mg when keyboarding as that is such a common medication amount
It’s collagen. The same substance that gives bone broth its health benefits and makes for a great flavor and consistency in soups and stews. Gelatinous gold.
I’ve never actually tried vegemite / marmite / other ‘-mites’, and with all this talk of it I really want to try it now. I love other umami-rich foods so I think I will definitely have a taste for it.