Fast Food Friday – McDonald’s

Well here we go.  What I was going to call the “Fast Food Bacon Burger Tour” has now just been shortened to “Fast Food Friday”.  Every week TDB will be taking a look at a different chain, starting with QSR (quick service restaurant) burger joints.

We shall start with the granddaddy of them all – McDonald’s.  Nothing symbolic about this selection, they just happen to be within walking distance of work and I had a coupon this week

McDonald’s held out for a long time before adding strip bacon to their menu items.  It was only recently with the invention of their premium chicken sandwiches that bacon has found a permanent place at the golden arches.

For our bacon taste test, I ordered their new Bacon & Cheese Angus Third Pounder.

Let’s open this bad boy up.

Three strips of bacon, that is pretty standard for a bacon cheeseburger at any restaurant.  From a coverage standpoint, we are looking at about 70%.  That’s not too bad as it provided some bacon in just about every bite of the burger.  Let’s take a closer look…

Their bacon look exactly like the typical precooked boxed stuff you by at the store.  It is cut incredibly thin and has that same yellowish shine to it.

Surprisingly it was cooked through pretty well…not overly chewy.  That’s good as you can get a clean bite into the burger without having to worry about pulling out a “string” of bacon.  It didn’t have much of an aroma and in terms of taste, incredibly salty with very little smoke flavor.

I heard a radio commercial on the way in to work today for this exact sandwich.  The announcer used a descripter like “exquisite bacon”…oh McDonald’s…there is nothing exquisite about your bacon.  It gets the job done, but just barely.

So here are my results according to The BRS…

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Restaurant: McDonald’s
Menu Item: Third Pound Angus Burger

Appearance: 1 2 3 4 5

Overall Coverage: 1 2 3 4 5

Bacon Per Bite: 1 2 3 4 5

The left end is “not enough” and the right end is “too much”, so a perfect score would be 5

Pork Flavor
not enough << 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 >> too much

Smoke
not enough << 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 >> too much

Salt
not enough << 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 >> too much

Sugar
not enough << 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 >> too much

Fat
not enough << 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 >> too much

Texture
too chewy << 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 >> too crisp

OVERALL SCORE: 2.44

ADDL NOTES:

While I did have some bacon in just about every bite with this burger, the overall lack of a literal bacon taste (whether it was drowned out by the rest of the ingredients or just due to the blandness of the bacon) is why I gave it only a 3.

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Next week – Burger King