- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or # to comment.
Secret to White Castle burgers is steaming the patty over onions on the pan/griddle and putting the bottom bun on while steaming.
Secret to McDonald’s burgers is salt pepper and a touch of msg.
Big Mac sauce is ketchup mayo touch of mustard and some relish
Popeyes chicken is just buttermilk marinated chicken coated with flour cornstarch and a touch of baking soda.
More wholesome fast food at home and it’s cheaper too
Secret to McDonald’s is salt, pepper, and a touch of MSG
I work at MacDonald’s and the seasoning shakers ingredient list (because the spices come already mixed) contain a lot more than just those 3 things.
Because they add extra stabilizers and preservatives. Try it at home and the patties will taste the same.
It also has cumin, onion, and garlic powder in it.
Tried those mixed with the salt pepper and msg and it didn’t taste as similar
The leanness of the beef is a big factor in making burgers. I don’t know McDonald’s ratio; the boxes for the meat patties don’t have it listed. I have to imagine they use a pretty fatty blend tho. Their burgers are greasy as hell.
I use 85/15 from my supermarket and they slap. I ball it up then season the top, place it seasoned side down and smash it then season the flat side. Flip when the meat juices on top start bubbling. The cooked side will have and shiny crust to it and you’ll know you’re on the right path
I kinda wanna try about 1/4 of a tablespoon of baking soda in there the next time I make a burger to see how much better maillard reaction it gives and also see if it messes with the flavor. It helps browning, and I have been hearing recently it also keeps more juices in the meat.
Chick Fil A chicken is marinated in pickle juice before deep frying.
https://youtu.be/AQNg1dPKUFU?is=6drDN5x2dy2iEWtg
Try this recipe some day. You won’t regret it and after doing it once or twice you’ll be able to whip these up without much prep at all.
Also check out Jordan the Stallion on YouTube for all the fast food secrets.
Thank you for this. Neeeeed more useful stuuufffffff
He’s gotten more into the “I found this thing people were raving about, let me show you with a glasses throw” and less into the “hey check out this dope recipe it’s so good I threw my glasses” and “hey this fast food company pissed me off so here’s their secret recipe”
Noted, go for the older content.
Thanks all the same :) my partner likes food like a lot, and we don’t like spending way too much money, so options are good :)
I would also encourage “the plant slant” as another great recipe content creator and he also does shout outs to other good channels so you can springboard off there.
Thanks! I very much appreciate this, I like word of mouth advertising because people work together rather than they get paid for it
I like the maker spaces similarly, so Allen Pan is a good creator if you like mythbusters-type “is it possible to do” sort of stuff. 😁 same shout outs and collabs. He literally worked with them.
We are all fast food fry cooks on this blessed day
none of those have been any good in over a decade
True and the homemade versions taste better than they did a decade ago
They have $25.00 burgers?
No but a meal can be close to $25 and a $25 burger is just an overly thick patty stacked too high with too many ingredients. Anyone can make that at home
deleted by creator
a direct affront to the Christian religion
They’re a subsidiary of Kellanova, owned by Mars. Not exactly the small indie lefty company I was expecting. There also is no real MorningStar farms, or family, or group behind them.
They’re about as anti-christian as your average desk chair and about as offensive.
It’s about the name, not the actual company.
deleted by creator
Oh!
haha?
Super cheap? $9.20 for 16 oz from what I’m seeing in my area. Hardly cheap, much less super cheap.
deleted by creator
Less than 2.5 oz those seem like sliders. Though I wonder maybe they don’t lose as much of their weight during cooking.
And they’ll still charge you $15
deleted by creator
It makes you sound ignorant when you claim a common/boring but decent frozen veggie burger available at nearly any grocery store for like $5-7 is some kind of expensive bougie bullshit. Because it’s not.
When you compare that 5-7 dollar pack of frozen veg burgers to a pound of ground chuck or an entire ready to eat rotisserie chicken for the same price it’s really expensive.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
They’re like 4 for 5 dollars.
Someone show “Pulp Fiction” to a Gen Z and ask them what they think about the $5.00 milkshake
$5 in 1994 = $11.27 in today’s money. I’m not from the US, is that egregious or standard today?
The official inflation counter is nonsense.
Do a quick search of actual 1994 prices if you don’t believe me.
And $12.00 is what you’d spend at a high end restaurant or hotel for a 2026 milk shake.
Even Shake Shack, which is a good shake but still corporate fast food is like $8.
More than I would pay for one
I don’t know if it’s worth $11.27 but it’s pretty fucking good.
Depends on the place I guess. The old I’ve cream place in town? That’s a little pricey, but not unheard of. One of those smoothie places? I don’t think they have anything that cheap.
How much is like a dairy Queen shake these days? I’m blessed with an abundance of quality local establishments so I haven’t been in a while.
Adjust it for M2 supply. That is true inflation.
A large pizza now costs over $20.
That’s a deal. Most pizzas in my area at 30-40 per large.
It astounds me how drastic prices vary in the US.
Like sure, we (Australia) also have higher and lower cost areas, but the difference is not this staggering.
$40 USD for a large pizza? You’ve got to be kidding me.
And I’m betting there will be places in the US where the same is like $12-15 for the same quality/quality, right?
That’s nuts.
Theres a massive difference between the boonies, a medium city, a large city, and an affluent city, and a huge difference between those places in california, texas, utah, colorado, ohio, georgia, etc.
Every state is basically a country of its own, and about the size of one
$40 and tip.
I cant get lunch in Dallas under $25, unless I hit chick-fil-a.
Incredible, I thought NYC was expensive back in 2016.
Oof
pizza is one of the things that’s actually beat inflation. look up how much a pizza hut pizza cost in 1995 considering the prevailing wage at the time.
spoiler: a large cheese would cost $30 at menu prices adjusted for inflation.
you just get lower quality these days; it’s the same with so many other items. a pair of gap jeans was the same price in the late 90s as it is now even with a doubled minimum wage in NY.
but dipshits will gaslight you online being like, ‘actually, you’re just being nostalgic and nothing was ever better than it is now.’
My partner still has functional socks and underwear from the 90’s. Last pair of the sturdiest pants in the store ripped irreparably after three washes. To say things are ‘just’ a bit lower quality is quite the understatement.
We’re pivoting to buying fabric, and making our own fucking clothes. cheaper now, time included
I know it isn’t the best, but a certain D pizza chain is kind of king for a pizza quick fix without breaking the bank.
Place near me was charging $40 for a pizza and I just can’t.
For that quick fix or really any kind of fix, that pizza chain is all I’m trying to afford right now. Do miss the local spots but can’t stomach the tag. She prefers a simple cheese pizza and there’s no reason those should cost so much.
not at Little Ceasar’s :3
$20 pizza is still one of the best deals around for feeding a lot of kids.
I’m ok with $20 for an 18 inch non chain pizza.
I buy 60 lbs of 00 pizza flour every 6 months.
I make pizzas starting on the range in a ripping hot cast iron pan, finish them under the broiler for in a couple minutes.
Pizza is INCREDIBLY cheap to make from raw ingredients, you can even use really good cheese and pep and come out less than $10 a pie.
I don’t why everyone hasn’t stopped eating out and just cook at home these days
$25 can get me the ingredients for 20 hamburgers
The hell it can with these hamburger meat prices.
I know, right? 1lb of hamburger is around $8 for me. I buy ground turkey instead. It’s generally leaner and I get it for $10 for 3lbs. It doesn’t taste exactly the same, but I like it and it’s way cheaper.
When we can, we like to do a mix of ground turkey and beef, cause the turkey taste is a bit different. The mix we have found great for things like chili, spaghetti, loose meat (mamwich) etc… Gives some beefy flavor and saves a little money.
You can also use a beef broth or bullion cube and it’ll basically infuse the turkey with the beef flavor.
That is a great idea too! Thank you!
$25 can get me the ingredients for 20 hamburgers
No it cannot. 10 would be a large stretch, let alone 20.
Let’s see… quarter pound patties are a little on the big end so assume 3oz patties, that’s 3.75 lbs of beef which is also about what 80/20 costs per pound on sale here. So a little over 14$ for the beef, buns are a buck fifty or so for an eight pack, you need three to make twenty burgers so that’s about 4.50$ more. Now you gotta put lettuce tomato pickle and onion on your twenty burgers that’s about a quarter head of lettuce, so a buck there, two or three cheap slicer tomatoes there’s two dollars, honestly fifty cents worth of pickles if you put four on each one and probably one onion is overkill so let’s round up to a whole dollar there.
Tbh excluding the condiments a dollar twenty five or so for a burger made at home is about right. If you wanted to go overboard the probably 1/8 jar of mayo and 1/4 squirt bottle of mustard is a buck or two. Now you’re a few bucks over but it’s an all the way burger not some knuckleheads “whatever I had in the fridge” concoction.
I used the sale price of ground beef because it’s the most expensive thing and if you’re cooking at home the most expensive component of a meal being on sale is what prompts you to make it.
Hmm, so my current sale price on that beef is $16.83 and as the other person pointed out a 3 oz before-grilling burger is well below what anyone would be satisfied with. So at most I’m making 15 burgers with that and that’s not including tax. If you’re going back to 2007 for those $1.50 buns can you buy me a truck load or two while you’re at it? Even the store brand here on sale are $1.79 and again that’s not including tax. Bringing our pre-tax total to $22.20… shall I continue? Everyone I know who eats burgers prefers cheese on them so that a few more dollars on top of the other toppings/condiments too.
Either you live somewhere even cheaper than the small town I’m from, significantly, and also do not pay sales tax, or from where I’m sitting there is not way in hell you’re making 20 burgers with $25. That’s not even if you skimp on the meat, get everything on sale, and provide barely any toppings. To be honest with you, the last time that ratio seems possible was like 10-15 years ago.
I like my burgers that size. With the meat hand mixed, salted and peppered etc it adds a lot of flavor to the rest of the thing without being overwhelming. Double or triple will get you more meat without sacrificing crust or cook time. That is of course, more burgers on your sandwitch.
I thought a buck fifty was high for buns, but not everyone has a bakery thrift so I went by Walmart’s generic price for gv brand buns. You should not sleep on the Walmart bakery if there is one near you, they have ~$1 unsliced loaves.
Adjusting for tax is easy. Just multiply by your grocery tax rate like *1.08 or whatever.
The person said hamburgers and if you order a hamburger you don’t get cheese. At this volume though it almost makes sense to put the kraft singles back on the shelf and use half slices of velveeta. Much cheaper and tbh on a generic burger perfectly tasty and very photogenic.
All the way is not “barely any toppings”. Pickles, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo and mustard is a good burger!
I got half a mind to cook burgers tonight and double check my math but my wife would be pissed. 😡 Why are there two dozen fully assembled cheeseburgers on a half sheet in the fridge! 🤷 To test my abilities, also we need to buy more velveeta to make broccoli cheese soup so girls night is cancelled.
We have differing opinions here obviously. I try to avoid wal-mart as much as I can for several reasons, and that might be key to your ability to make 20 burgers for $25. I mean, granting you everything you’re claiming I am still doubting it. For me, even if I went price shopping, and forced myself to be okay with smaller burgers, I’d still be extremely hard pressed to do that, I honestly don’t think it would be possible here. Where I live the cost of living is higher than average, but also when I compare grocery prices to small rural towns, they typically aren’t too different.
Anyhow, this whole discussion started around how burgers are supposedly $25 now at restaurants. Which isn’t true at all. And also the higher priced burgers people are complaining about here will never be just “Pickles, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo and mustard”. They likely will have blue cheese, bacon, avocado, and other higher priced ingredients on them. They likely will be larger than a quarter pound. Not really comparable to the burgers you are describing. You can dismiss that if you like, but personally I love burgers, just not the way you describe them. I don’t like raw onions, mustard, mayo, or really even lettuce typically, on my burger. I guess I have expensive tastes when it comes to burgers or something, because I didn’t even think I liked them until I was like 15 and I found that they can be made with many different toppings that I do like.
I’m not dismissing what you like. I just used a very common definition of burger for the question of “how many burgers can you make for $25.”
The food has changed a lot in the last few decades. The McDonald’s quarter pounder used to be advertised as a big burger. That’s just four ounces!
Restaurants may not actually sell you a $25 burger, but the $15 burger is made possible because you get a minuscule amount of the expensive ingredient and they can turn the leftover avocado or bleu into guac or Cesar salad and sell that to you as well.
I can’t recommend moving to multiple smaller patties as opposed to one big one enough though. You get more flavor that way, they cook faster and there’s a very convenient place to put more cheese.
I didn’t mean you were dismissing my tastes really, just that ingredient differences would be relevant to this discussion. These kinds of threads tend to drift in focus due to UI issues (hard to view the whole thread without getting distracted) and the passage of time, but what I’m getting at is still just that 1) the original comment touting 20 burgers for $25 is between very difficult and impossible from all I know, and 2) even if it were possible, they would be quite different from even most $10, let alone $25 burgers.
Again, our grocery stores here are pretty close to national standard prices but our restaurants are on the expensive end. Despite those facts, I would struggle myself to make even 15 burgers for $25, and at the same time, I have no trouble finding a higher quality (restaurant) burger than those for $10-15. So from my end it feels like there’s a lot of exaggeration going on about the restaurant prices when it comes to burgers. We don’t need exaggerations to fully agree: food is very expensive now, of course. I easily remember the McDonald’s dollar menu. Doesn’t even feel that long ago. I’m pretty sure my $3 meal from that era would easily cost $13 at this point, even from McDonald’s. Which is a frightening rate of increase (over 4x in ~20 yrs).
The burgers on a real plate and all are 1/4 lbs. Not 3 oz. They are 3oz after cooking though. And the thing is, you can’t buy a quarter head of lettuce. So bump all those partials up to full units you can buy. Cause many will have the unused part thrown away. Then don’t forget the cost to cook it. Propane, or charcoal, or whatever. And you need something to clean all the dishes and utensiles… we can call the cost of the dishes and utensiles a wash though, just about everyone uses those all the time. But the grill… toss about $5 toward it. The cheap ones don’t last long, and you need a flipper and such. Now the big thing you are skipping is the time. Time to go to the store, time to prep. Time to cook, and the worst one usually… time to make a meal plan that includes this before hand, rather than just going out to eat when you haven’t planned. And in some families… one or more persons won’t eat the damn burger, so you have to make something else they will eat…
Don’t forget that you gotta pay the mortgage and bills to have a roof over your head and the lights on too. You don’t wanna be eating your burgers outside in the dark.
Also true. So safe to say, you cannot get everything you need to make 20 burgers for $25.
Oh yeah, better factor in you parents entire lifetime earnings because without them you wouldn’t be able to be there eating that burger!
Ok but by the time instacart delivers my groceries to me I could have just gone out for the same cost so I just have Uber Eats go out for me so I can pay an additional premium for my premium food and still have to do the cleanup myself wait what?
Life involves effort. Crazy, I know.
Ok but by the time instacart delivers my groceries to me I could have just gone out for the same cost
Did you know…
-
You can go to the grocery store yourself, pick things out yourself, and take them home yourself? It’s cheaper, too!
-
You can buy more than 1 meal’s worth of food at a time and then store food at home for later – you actually don’t have to make a special order for every single meal!
Now you’re just being silly…
(…but based on the downvotes I guess my sarcasm was not laid on thick enough)
I thought it was funny.
-
Because my family lives at home and they’re all reactionary shitwads
It’s only normalized if you buy it.
To recreate a McGangbang these days it’s upwards of $50, same as in town
Back in my day, you could buy a single McDonald’s cheeseburger for 39¢ on sale or 75¢ regular price. Adjusted for inflation, that’s 77¢/$1.48 now. Now they average at nearly $4.
Hamburgers are supposed to be 25$ (well, money is made up and a price is only relative but you get what I mean). Beef is expensive as fuck to grow. Between time, land, water, food, raising a cow is an endeavor, it might be one of the hardest food sources to grow that we have, and that’s even with raising them locked in a cell their whole life, which we should try not to do.
I think the 25$ hamburger is a good thing, it reflects the real cost of beef. The only reason it’s been low is because we subsidize the cattle industry immensely, and we used to do it more. It’s also because demand has gone down and supply has followed, the more people eat vegetarian the more a hamburger will be priced like the luxury it should be.
And to be fair, I know that our crops of cattle feed were ruined by the tariffs and the straight closing, I would bet the increased cost is preempting the expected downfall of these crops in the coming years.
You’re right about the real cost, but this isn’t normalization of cost - beef production is still as high as ever and is still being subsidized with tax dollars, and the difference in price is being pocketed by meat companies while taxpayers eat the production cost. It’s the tariff refund problem again.
This situation is the worst of all possible worlds.
Goddamn a decade ago we’d go out to a bar that had burger night and the deal was a draft pint, and a burger with fries for $8, and those were legit burgers.
Climate change made beef more expensive.
That’s coming because of screw worms.
Climate change affecting food is 5-10years away.
The $25 burger is shit.
Burgers, in general, are shit.
What makes them good is the bang for buck. The concept is in their design. Some good shit between buns, allowing it to be consumed faster than a traditionally segmented dish. If you have time, wallet, and dignity, you take the dish. If not, you just get the chef to shove it between buns and serve it up.
If a burger is not doing those things, it is not a burger. It is a shit burger. Arguably it’s so shit, it’s an expensive burger-themed dish.
I don’t hate or love burgers. I’m just a realist.
Burgers, in general, are shit.
I don’t hate or love burgers. I’m just a realist.
Sounds like you don’t like them. Which is an affront to food everywhere.
No, I like them. Especially classic Red Hook street style. But I know what they are not and I know that I will only find disappointment in someone putting something on my plate at that price and try tell me it’s a burger.
At today’s food prices, I don’t think it’s uncommon at all for a burger to be good enough to be worth $20 if it comes with a side. Some fast food places almost cost that much now and their quality is lower than the places I don’t mind paying a fairly standard meal price for a burger.
I get it, shit’s expensive and it sucks but it also feels so weird to me how often this drum is beaten of “burgers aren’t worth much money”. Why not? They can be very filling and delicious, and the burgers I like most have a least a semi-expensive topping or two on them.
25$ for a burger WTF???
My local burger place makes the best hurgers I have ever tried and they range from 10€ to 14€ depending on the style you take.
Nah man it’s standard everywhere /s
Well the dollar is pretty much worthless so…
What does this person think cost of living is?
“4 for $100” is a wild sentence for anything not steak, much less smashburgers (fries are a separate order) made by hipster dickheads with tribal tats and 1800s mustaches
Ah, yes, I’ll have the quarter hundred biller.
