If you've ever eaten a McDonald's breakfast, we're guessing one of the sides stands out in your mind. There's no denying there's something extra special about McDonald's hash browns. Somehow, these shredded-potato patties manage to be both crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, with that perfect golden-brown color we can never seem to achieve at home.
It's no surprise that the McDonald's corporate office once revealed customers' top request was for breakfast all day long. McDonald's refers to its hash browns as "breakfast royalty." We won't argue with that honorific.
So what's the secret behind the restaurant's incredible hash browns? Credit an ingredient added to the oil used to fry the hash browns—and those famous french fries—partway before freezing them and shipping them to restaurants.
In the restaurant's early days, McDonald's relied on a mixture of cottonseed oil and beef tallow for frying; this blend was still in use when breakfast items were added to the menu in the 1970s. Although the combination was delicious, it was also unhealthy—beef tallow is a form of rendered fat, which gave the fries and hash browns a high amount of saturated fat.
To make their fried menu items healthier, McDonald's began cooking potato sides with vegetable oil in 1990. But the fast-food joint wasn't willing to sacrifice that signature flavor: McDonald's added natural beef flavoring to the oil to preserve the taste customers had come to love. (You can find it on the list of ingredients for both their hash browns and fries.) This change is why you might've noticed that McDonald's hash browns and fries started tasting a little different in the 90s and why some people remember McDonald's french fries tasting better when they were children.
What is Natural Beef Flavoring?
This question is a little tricky because it involves complicated food chemistry. According to the McDonald's menu, their natural beef flavoring uses hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients.
To create natural beef flavoring without beef, food scientists singled out the amino acids that give beef its flavor. Since it would be way too expensive (and wasteful) to extract the amino acids from beef without actually using any meat, scientists figured out a way to recreate the same flavors with more common ingredients like wheat and milk. (Are McDonald's hash browns vegetarian, then? Perhaps, since this flavoring is inspired by meat, not extracted from it. But vegan? No.)
How McDonald's Hash Browns Are Made
Of course, more than just beef flavoring goes into making McDonald's hash browns. It starts with fresh potatoes, which are inspected to make sure they meet McDonald's standards. Then they're washed and peeled before being rechecked for blemishes or imperfections. The approved potatoes are then sent through a mechanical cutter, which slices the potatoes into strips.
Next, those strips are blanched in hot water for a few minutes, then dried and cut into the hash brown-sized pieces that make up the restaurant's signature patties. The pieces are mixed with salt, pepper, cornflour, and potato flour, formed into McDonald's oval shape, and partially fried in vegetable oil and beef flavoring before being frozen and shipped to restaurants.
You'll still get fresh-fried McDonald's hash browns each time you order them. When an order for hash browns comes in, the cook will finish frying them so they arrive to you hot, crispy, and fresh. So are hash browns good for you? Not particularly, as nothing fried qualifies as healthy. But they're undoubtedly delicious—and a worthwhile indulgence every now and then.
Biting into these crispy potato patties, you'd never guess there's so much effort and history behind McDonald's hash browns or fries. Now, the next time you're skimming the menu at the drive-thru, you'll have a new level of appreciation for those ultra-addictive hash browns and fries.
To make their fried menu items healthier, McDonald's began cooking potato sides with vegetable oil in 1990. But the fast-food joint wasn't willing to sacrifice that signature flavor: McDonald's added natural beef flavoring to the oil to preserve the taste customers had come to love.
When our suppliers partially fry our cut potatoes, they use an oil blend that contains beef flavoring. This ensures the great-tasting and recognizable flavor we all love from our World Famous Fries®. The Fries are cooked in our kitchens, seasoned with salt, and served hot to you.
Cooking the potatoes with garlic, powder onion powder and olive oil makes them far more flavorful than diner hash browns. Cooking over moderate heat and stirring the potatoes every couple of minutes ensures that you don't burn your hash browns.
McDonald's spends millions on food scientists to find the exact flour and oil and sugar and salt balance (plus other more esoteric ingredients that your average person has no knowledge of, like maltodextrin) along with the perfect particular brands of those ingredients, to get the flavor they want.
Eating those tasty McDonald's fries even releases dopamine in your brain, the neurotransmitter that triggers feelings of pleasure. So how does McDonald's do it? In addition to frying and seasoning the fries, McDonald's coats them in dextrose, a form a sugar.
The fast-food chain gets its co*ke syrup delivered in stainless steel tanks. According to the New York Times, the material keeps the soda fresher, and your tongue can taste the difference. Check out these other 17 things McDonald's employees won't tell you.
For hash browns, McDonald's use 'JR Simplot Pocatello, Idaho', according to the MSDS. Source: David Ratchford's answer to Why do the hashbrowns at McDonald's taste so much better than the ones I make at home? The good news: they also supply Walmart!
Yes, hash browns are perfectly healthy, containing most of the vitamins and minerals found in potatoes—vitamins B1, B3, B6, magnesium, phosphorus, riboflavin and thiamin. The skin of a potato is also high in vitamin C, folate and potassium.
Butter helps both browning and flavor, while oil lowers the smoke point, allowing your pan to do the steady, even cooking needed for perfectly crisped potatoes.
At time of writing this article the ingredients of McDonald's hash browns are potatoes, non-hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt, maize flour, dehydrated potato, dextrose, stabiliser and black pepper extract. As they do not contain onion, garlic or flavouring, these hash browns are low in FODMAPs.
After comparing McDonald's ingredients and nutritional info to various other hash brown brands, Haracz confirmed that Aldi's Season's Choice Hash Brown Patties were the closest to the real thing. However, Haracz warns that even though these hash browns will come close, they won't necessarily be the exact same thing.
McDonald's hash browns are made in the West Midlands, using British-grown potatoes. They are then cooked in a 100% vegetable oil made up of a blend of sunflower and rapeseed oil.
Obviously, the lack of beef fat is what truly sullies this potential dupe. The makeup of Aldi's hash browns may be identical to McDonald's, but without that key beef flavoring in the frying oil, the comparison falls flat. Recreating McDonald's hash brown is just impossible without that beef flavor.
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:strip_icc()/McDonalds-Hash-Browns-68f24cbcaa0a4131b209bf5d12c70785.png "This Is Why McDonald's Hash Browns (and Fries) Taste So Good (1)")
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