Personally, having the buns, lettuce, sliced tomatoes, etc. are a little hassle.

I've always find salad ingredients tricky to keep and maintain. Otherwise I would make my own burgers a lot more.

(I seldom go to fast food places)

I had the very much the same problem, until our fridge died and the replacement I bought came with one of those temperature and humidity controlled vegetable drawers.

I hadn't paid it any mind, since I assumed it was just some marketing gimmick. But much to my surprise, those things actually work — vegetables easily keep three times as long in them.

Doesn't help with the buns, of course.

_A_ burger? Sure. _The_ burger? Not by a long shot.

I've been trying off and on for a year to recreate my platonic ideal of a burger, the (German) McD Quarterpounder with cheese of yore before they switched to their "made to order" system.

I've yet to nail either the patty or the bun. Recreating something specific at home is non-trivial.

Fascinating! The made to order system has them cook the patty "fresh" as shown here:

[1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IVRlYugm69Y

Just to be clear, are you trying to mimic the burger as it was made before this new system was introduced? Because that was just a frozen puck...

Right! I'm talking about the "batch-made burgers resting in a warming cabinet until sold" process.

That resting process gives them some time to meld together, I presume. To me, a good burger is a messy, fused together thing that looks as if someone has taken a nap on them.

With made-to-order, McDonalds not only lost the "fast" in "fast food", but the result is just some stack of components that is so lukewarm, half of the time the cheese hasn't even melted.

Regarding fresh vs. frozen - I honestly do not know whether they have changed anything there, at least here in DE. If they did, I cannot taste the difference, and I regularly grind my own meat at home.

In the video they use a seasoning that looks like it is more than salt (maybe salt + black pepper?). Maybe combine a big mac patty with that seasoning and you might get close to the original Quarter pounder?

Also did you follow procedures for cooking like they do? (mainly crushing the patty on a grill).

>That resting process gives them some time to meld together, I presume. To me, a good burger is a messy, fused together thing that looks as if someone has taken a nap on them.

You can do that today by just putting the crushed patty into a warming bin. But its got to be something in the meat mixture that causes all that grease and taste you are looking for.

You might be able to find that seasoning on eBay or make friends with someone who works at a mcDonalds and have them sneak out some of the seasoning or some of the uncooked patties so you can compare.

At least that should be the proper thinking. If you watch all the videos in the channel above they essentially show every item being made. Its various combinations of mostly the same ingredients. My first job out of school was at a Wendys and I saw the same thing there. Small set of SKUs and all the menu items were various combinations of the same things.

The old non freshly made patties have got to be similar to their regular cheeseburger/big mac patties because this is a fast food place so they must be keeping unique SKUs to a minimum. Wikipedia does state that the change in 2018 was a move to fresh beef with "preservatives removed".

The way i'd start is by first ordering two items, a big mac with nothing but the meat as well as a quarter pounder with no meat. Then quickly put the patty on the quarter pounder(or just ask them to do this lol). Start with that as a taste test.

  In the video they use a seasoning that looks like it is more than salt (maybe salt + black pepper?). Maybe combine a big mac patty with that seasoning and you might get close to the original Quarter pounder?

That is a really good question for which the answer has so far eluded me. The texture I have pretty much nailed by adding salt into the ground beef instead of seasoning from the outside, which makes it denser, more meatloaf-like, pretty much like freezing them would.

And the warming bin effect can be faked by wrapping it in grease paper and microwaving them for ten, fifteen seconds.

Thanks for the link to the channel! I'll give some of the other videos a watch. I'm pretty sure though that German burgers have never used preservatives or fillers — the former would not have been legal and the latter because they were always steadfast that the patties were 100% plain German beef.

And the taste test with everything else removed is a good idea, too! I'll give that a shot.

Man, now I really want to make another batch. Maybe together with the beef tallow fried fries I have always wanted to try...

Some McDonalds burgers are made using dehydrated onions on the griddle along with the meat patty.

I don't recall if that's the case for the QP because I never order that.

Interesting, thanks! I didn't know that.

That channel is owned by a American Mcdonalds franchiser (maybe they unofficially are promoting him? idk). Any way it shows a great deal of insight into how an American Mcdonalds operates.

But fortunately it's trivial to do better than that specific.

No, it isn't, which was my point entirely.

Besides — are you American? If you are, you are unlikely to know what my _that_ even is. I have eaten at McDonalds in the US, and it's not an experience I would care to repeat.

So if that's true, I can kinda see where you are coming from, but still - different strokes and all that jazz?

I thought your point was about exact reproduction? I was being slightly snidely critical of fast food burgers in general, saying it's easy to make better. (If you really want exact, the only helpful things I can think of which I almost said are to add more/introduce sugar to the bun - yet somehow keep it more like a washing-up sponge than brioche - and cook the burger from frozen, it'll change the texture.)

No, I'm British, I don't know how British McDonalds burgers compare to German ones, but it's probably almost 20y since I've had one anyway. I did have one in the Netherlands ..10y ago (though gosh, that visit feels much more recent!) which was certainly different to here, but y'know, it's still fast food.

Adding more sugar to the buns is an interesting idea, thanks. I will give that a shot for my next batch.

The texture of the patty is one of the things I have nailed; that was just a matter of adding salt into the mince instead of seasoning from the outside - that makes them a little denser, more meatloaf-like, like freezing would.

And yeah, the regional differences are interesting. I had my last one in the Netherlands.. 21 years ago, and they still served them in styrofoam containers, many years after they had been phased out in Germany.

And in Denmark, you could draft your own condiments into little waffle cones. Cute.