Burger thread #24: McDonalds' switch to fresh beef

Will fresh beef improve McDonalds' standing in the burger hierarchy?

  • Yes

    Votes: 5 18.5%

  • No

    Votes: 22 81.5%
  • Total voters
    27
Clark1961 said:
If you didn't like the tea in India to the point of not caring about coffee....god help ya.

I should edit this. Lived in India for 3 months. Had tea in everything from the local maharajah's hotel to a truck stop to a villager's home. Wonderful flavor. The hospitality went up as the status went down. The tea in the countryside was wonderful.
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Not sure where you imputed that I didn't like the tea (chai)?
But I do have a preference for my morning coffee.

Where I live we raise beautiful grass-fed beef. Doesn't mean I wish to forego chicken or pork ;)
 
Crappy beef is crappy beef no matter how you handle it. People talk about freezing like it does some great injustice to beef. I am not convinced it has any effect on the texture or anything else of ground beef, especially the mealy crap that Mc'ds served.

What going to unfrozen patties likely is going to do is either force McDs to step up their hygiene or we're going to start seeing a lot more sickness from eating there. At least when they're plopped on the griddle from a near frozen state, all that E Coli that there suppliers ground into the meat hasn't had a chance to proliferate like it would when allowed to sit at room temperature or above next to the griddle waiting to be cooked.
 
Bacon egg and cheese mcgriddle makes for some mighty fine hangover breakfast. Pair it with a fine steaming hot don't-spill-this-on-you-because-it's-steaming-fkng-hot coffee and you're good to go.
 
Used to love their shakes. So cold and thick it wouldn't go through the straw. Looked forward all year to the shamrock shakes. Then they shifted their focus to designer coffees and that affected the shakes. Smaller cups, whipped cream, some sort of brown stuff drizzled on top. Stupid little domed caps. Thin and tasteless. No way to dispose of the whipped "cream." Fries used to be great, now overcooked and over salted. Ug.
 
flyingron said:
Crappy beef is crappy beef no matter how you handle it. People talk about freezing like it does some great injustice to beef. I am not convinced it has any effect on the texture or anything else of ground beef, especially the mealy crap that Mc'ds served.

What going to unfrozen patties likely is going to do is either force McDs to step up their hygiene or we're going to start seeing a lot more sickness from eating there. At least when they're plopped on the griddle from a near frozen state, all that E Coli that there suppliers ground into the meat hasn't had a chance to proliferate like it would when allowed to sit at room temperature or above next to the griddle waiting to be cooked.
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That's what I was thinking, I doubt the burgers will taste any different but will they have more food borne illness issues? I guess if they're going after the Chipolte crowd, a little ecoli is needed....
 
ircphoenix said:
Every adjustment they've made to appeal to the Chipotle eaters has made their food worse. They aren't using cow fat to make the fries, and the fries have sucked ever since, whereas McDonald's used to have the best fries. They try to cover it with salt. Gross.

They changed the chicken nuggets to an "all natural" nugget... and they taste worse too.

I never ate at McDonald's because it was healthy. Or vegan friendly. Or anything else. And you're not going to convince those people to eat at McDonald's no matter what you do. So they need to keep appealing to those that got them where they are and stop trying to increase sales by appealing to a demographic that will never eat there.
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It started downhill a long time ago when they got rid of the Styrofoam no Big Mac containers and the old fried pies.
 
Don't ask me why I did this, but I did do a food safety stint and did some reading on this (mostly because I do love a good burger and even steak tartar, we had a great bar in Balitmore named Alonso's that had a raw beef sandwich). Slaughterhouses are messy places. There is bacteria, even fecal matter all over the place. Now if you keep things below 40 degrees until they are cooked (to a point above 140) you don't have to much worry about it proliferating.

With a normal cut of meat, let's say a steak. This isn't a problem. In fact, you can age meat for a long time. No problem as the stuff stays on the surface and it gets cooked away pretty quickly. Even rare preparations heat up the surface above the point needed to kill the bad stuff.

The problem with ground beef is that stuff gets mixed in uniformly through out the patty. Your choices are then to either cook the thing throughout (which is what most of the fast food places do, partially because the patties are so thin you can't do otherwise but partially because they do want to avoid this problem) or you have to be real careful about your handling of the meat. There are some really bad strains like E. Coli 0157:H7 that show up from time to time and can even be fatal.
 
No fried pies anymore? I guess I haven't been in a McD's in a long time. I loved those cherry pies.

I prefer McDowell's.

 
GRG55 said:
Spent 16 days desperately trying to find a decent cup of coffee anywhere in the region to no avail. And I mean desperate. Longest stretch for me without coffee since I was a pre-schooler.
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I gave up caffeine for Lent this year. 2 more weeks!
 
GRG55 said:
Nothing more to add about the McD food. But got a +'ve story about McD.

Many nations are tea drinkers. Did a project nearly 20 years ago in northwest India. Flew in and out of Delhi. Inbound, the usual airport pickup and straight on the road to the job. Spent 16 days desperately trying to find a decent cup of coffee anywhere in the region to no avail. And I mean desperate. Longest stretch for me without coffee since I was a pre-schooler. If this had been Japan, probably would have done the sword through the abdomen thing.

Get back to New Delhi, have a hotel for the day as my flight leaves next day early morning. Spot those double arches a block from hotel. Filed direct with no intermediate waypoints to that destination immediately upon checking in. Coffee tasted EXACTLY like back home. There is a merciful God after all. Passed on the Maharajah burger - lamb, not beef. No idea if it was "fresh" or frozen pattie, or if there was mold in the bun. ;)
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I understand your addiction, but Japan has really good, strong coffee as well as pretty good tea. And when you visit McD's, you can enjoy a Teriyaki McBurger the size of a small burger at home for just more than the cost of a Big Mac . . . .
 
flyingron said:
Don't ask me why I did this, but I did do a food safety stint and did some reading on this (mostly because I do love a good burger and even steak tartar, we had a great bar in Balitmore named Alonso's that had a raw beef sandwich). Slaughterhouses are messy places. There is bacteria, even fecal matter all over the place. Now if you keep things below 40 degrees until they are cooked (to a point above 140) you don't have to much worry about it proliferating.

With a normal cut of meat, let's say a steak. This isn't a problem. In fact, you can age meat for a long time. No problem as the stuff stays on the surface and it gets cooked away pretty quickly. Even rare preparations heat up the surface above the point needed to kill the bad stuff.

The problem with ground beef is that stuff gets mixed in uniformly through out the patty. Your choices are then to either cook the thing throughout (which is what most of the fast food places do, partially because the patties are so thin you can't do otherwise but partially because they do want to avoid this problem) or you have to be real careful about your handling of the meat. There are some really bad strains like E. Coli 0157:H7 that show up from time to time and can even be fatal.
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This. This right here is why I'm buying a hand crank meat grinder and making my own hamburger. Well, that, and I can get my own custom mix of cuts for the Perfect Burger. But the pink slime fiasco started me down this path.
 
GRG55 said:
Not sure where you imputed that I didn't like the tea (chai)?
But I do have a preference for my morning coffee.

Where I live we raise beautiful grass-fed beef. Doesn't mean I wish to forego chicken or pork ;)
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Read it again.
 
Ravioli said:
There was an old joke that McD's had sold 140 million burgers and the execs had to consider slaughtering a third cow.

Yah, they sell crap... but sometimes I need some cheap calories so I'll do a Big Mac and McNuggets. Probably 2-3 times a year.
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Not so cheap any more. "Value" meals are about $8 with tax and license.
 
In Germany, by law, a restaurant is required to provide a minimum of two items - bread, and beer. So, you can get a McBeer in a German McDonalds. Pretty nifty, huh. That said, I've never felt the need to order a beer from McDonalds. I'm not even sure what kind they served.
 
Sac Arrow said:
In Germany, by law, a restaurant is required to provide a minimum of two items - bread, and beer. So, you can get a McBeer in a German McDonalds. Pretty nifty, huh. That said, I've never felt the need to order a beer from McDonalds. I'm not even sure what kind they served.
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And the Reinheitsgebot says you can only put water, hops, and malt in the beer (the 16th century Germans hadn't discovered that yeast was what caused fermentation to happen).
 
flyingron said:
And the Reinheitsgebot says you can only put water, hops, and malt in the beer (the 16th century Germans hadn't discovered that yeast was what caused fermentation to happen).
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I think that they presumed that in theory, the yeast was in the air. At least that was the attitudes the Belgians had.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I think that they presumed that in theory, the yeast was in the air. At least that was the attitudes the Belgians had.
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They didn't know why it happened, but indeed it was stray yeast that made it happen. They just assumed that it was a spontaneous reaction of the other components. The fact hat yeast played a role didn't occur for another couple of centuries when Pasteur figured it out.
 
I -assume- they started getting consistent results as the yeast from the previous batches probably hung around. And I'm not a beer maker (yet), but isn't it true that not all yeasts make a good beer? For example, you can't use bread yeast, right?

(I love modern beer production, is what I'm saying.)
 
flyingron said:
No fried pies anymore? I guess I haven't been in a McD's in a long time. I loved those cherry pies.

I prefer McDowell's.

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Yep. They haven't fried the pies in a long time. They're some kind of cardboard crust now that's pretending to be "baked" that's really just warmed up in a warmer. Nasty things.

I actually ate at McDs today. The $1 cheeseburger and a $1 large Diet Coke. Nothing else. Then I sat in the parking lot eating it and did the "survey" online on my phone on the web browser and multitasked that for a free Egg McMuffin with purchase of one.

Yep, all 10 out of 10... or whatever their high score was. It's like a video game to me to see how fast I can do it.

Then I write down the little code you get and once in a while decide I want two mcmuffins for a breakfast that'll be plenty of food to not bother with lunch.

I already have my own coffee with me in the car in the morning, so I just stop when we had a light dinner and I'm not planning on leaving the office for lunch and grab the BOGO mcmuffins. If I really don't feel like two of them, I'll give one to a co-worker.

I make their loss leaders pay off pretty hard. LOL. $2 + whatever a mcmuffin is these days and I've eaten twice and probably shared breakfast with someone else.

Hardly anyone will turn down a McMuffin and Cheapskates-R-Us me, poking on the phone through a silly review website, got the silly thing for free anyway. "Here, I got you a McMuffin..." heh.

Sometimes I sweet talk the drive thru folks -- if they'll play along -- I have a coupon for a buy one get one egg mcmuffin here but what I'd really prefer is sausage McMuffins... any way you could do that?

LOL... it works more often than you'd think it should. Their staff doesn't care. Unless you run into the morning "manager in training" who's all gung ho. Or a by the book cashier. Works more than it doesn't.

I remember many a day when I pounded down many a double quarter pounder. Nowadays the silly little single $1 cheeseburger is a portion size that's usually just fine by me. It's mostly bun, but who cares? It's crap, but it's damned cheap. If I'm bothering to stop at all, it's just because I screwed up my schedule somehow and didn't make a sandwich before leaving home. The little cheeseburger will tide me over until I get to where I can have a reasonable meal, without bothering to pay $10 for a silly sub sandwich somewhere.

The Diet Coke is just my own little addiction. I could be an ass and order a water. Haha.

Probably the best thing in the $1 cheeseburger is the pickle. Hahaha. I should start asking for extra pickles. Hahaha.
 
Actually, it's a "Royal Cheese" in France. Probably because in France a "pound" is on unheard of concept (other than the currency of the guys across the channel). In Canada, it was indeed un quart de livre (literally a quarter pound). In Switzerland it's a Cheesburger Royal.
 
denverpilot said:
Yep. They haven't fried the pies in a long time. They're some kind of cardboard crust now that's pretending to be "baked" that's really just warmed up in a warmer. Nasty things.

I actually ate at McDs today. The $1 cheeseburger and a $1 large Diet Coke. Nothing else. Then I sat in the parking lot eating it and did the "survey" online on my phone on the web browser and multitasked that for a free Egg McMuffin with purchase of one.

Yep, all 10 out of 10... or whatever their high score was. It's like a video game to me to see how fast I can do it.

Then I write down the little code you get and once in a while decide I want two mcmuffins for a breakfast that'll be plenty of food to not bother with lunch.

I already have my own coffee with me in the car in the morning, so I just stop when we had a light dinner and I'm not planning on leaving the office for lunch and grab the BOGO mcmuffins. If I really don't feel like two of them, I'll give one to a co-worker.

I make their loss leaders pay off pretty hard. LOL. $2 + whatever a mcmuffin is these days and I've eaten twice and probably shared breakfast with someone else.

Hardly anyone will turn down a McMuffin and Cheapskates-R-Us me, poking on the phone through a silly review website, got the silly thing for free anyway. "Here, I got you a McMuffin..." heh.

Sometimes I sweet talk the drive thru folks -- if they'll play along -- I have a coupon for a buy one get one egg mcmuffin here but what I'd really prefer is sausage McMuffins... any way you could do that?

LOL... it works more often than you'd think it should. Their staff doesn't care. Unless you run into the morning "manager in training" who's all gung ho. Or a by the book cashier. Works more than it doesn't.

I remember many a day when I pounded down many a double quarter pounder. Nowadays the silly little single $1 cheeseburger is a portion size that's usually just fine by me. It's mostly bun, but who cares? It's crap, but it's damned cheap. If I'm bothering to stop at all, it's just because I screwed up my schedule somehow and didn't make a sandwich before leaving home. The little cheeseburger will tide me over until I get to where I can have a reasonable meal, without bothering to pay $10 for a silly sub sandwich somewhere.

The Diet Coke is just my own little addiction. I could be an ass and order a water. Haha.

Probably the best thing in the $1 cheeseburger is the pickle. Hahaha. I should start asking for extra pickles. Hahaha.
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I forgot about those pies. I used to eat them when I was a kid. I never really enjoyed them because they were always so hot I would burn my mouth on the first bite.
 
Carl's did a similar thing, with their "All natural burger." It costs twice as much, and the campaign seems to imply that their standard burger patties are unhealthy and laden with hormones and antibiotics (which they may well be) but in the end, a burger is a burger, and price prevails, I tried one once just to see what the shtick was about, and decided it was the overpriced marketing gimmick I suspected it to be. The standard burgers are tastier and juicier. Or maybe the "all natural" burger I ordered was overcooked. Sometimes they do that. They still have them on the menu as of right now but I never see people ordering them.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I forgot about those pies. I used to eat them when I was a kid. I never really enjoyed them because they were always so hot I would burn my mouth on the first bite.
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Should have sued them fella!
 
saddletramp said:
Okay...why do they call a Quarterpounder a Royale in France? Sounds vaguely familiar.
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Well the reference being made is from the movie Pulp Fiction.

Now if you want the actual reason, it's because of the Académie française - the French language police. By changing the name to Royale with Cheese, it became a product name which was barely acceptable to the AF. Otherwise the AF would have dictated to McD's what they had to call the burger and it probably would have been a descriptive term five to six words long made by using existing french words to describe the burger. Something like "double hamburger with cheese, onions and pickles" I cannot recall a firm example, but I know I've seen one in the past where something very simple in English became a 10 word phrase in French. Of course the actual French people just butchered the english name and used it everywhere except in "public" written form.
 
Mistake Not... said:
This. This right here is why I'm buying a hand crank meat grinder and making my own hamburger. Well, that, and I can get my own custom mix of cuts for the Perfect Burger. But the pink slime fiasco started me down this path.
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Some cheap meat just went on sale and got me thinking about this post. Do you have a recommendation on a good make/model of meat grinder?
 
If you already have a Kitchenaid stand mixer, you can get a nice attachment for that.
 
asicer said:
Some cheap meat just went on sale and got me thinking about this post. Do you have a recommendation on a good make/model of meat grinder?
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If you have a good food processor you can chop up the meat in that (carefully) and the end result is similar to grinding. It was on an episode of Good Eats. Other than that I think all the manual crank grinders I've seen are basically the same.
 
dmspilot said:
If you have a good food processor you can chop up the meat in that (carefully) and the end result is similar to grinding. It was on an episode of Good Eats. Other than that I think all the manual crank grinders I've seen are basically the same.
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I saw that episode too. Unfortunately my food processor is very small. It would take too many batches to be worthwhile.
 
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