Taste Test: The McRib Might Not Be Worthy of Worship, But It's Not Bad

Elusiveness has made McDonald's McRib an icon with a cult-like following. It's the D.B. Cooper of fast-food sandwiches. The fact that no one can get their hands on one right when they want it just makes people want it more.

That's why McDonald's latest tour of its signature pork sandwich pretends that THIS will be the last time you'll ever be able to get your hands on one. But we've heard that before. McDonald's knows how to play with its customers' minds. The media's, too, apparently. But even if you know that and have a rudimentary idea of the ingredients that go into making a McRib, it's still good, or at least good enough for something passed through the drive-thru window of a fast-food emporium.

One version of the McRib's origin story says it started as a military spinoff, which doesn't sound appetizing. The U.S. Army helped develop the process of adding a stew of chemical binders and preservatives to flaked meats and compressing them into new shapes as part of its work to create foods that are less expensive, durable and palatable to the troops.

Vegans and epicures might ask just whose side the Army is on. Killjoys.
 
Another version places the credit — or blame, if you will — at the feet of the University of Nebraska's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources. A press release issued by the school in 1982 said the general method for creating the "pork" patty for the McRib was developed there thanks to an $85,000 grant from the National Pork Producers Council. There's no doubt whose side the pork producers are on: According to the release, the arrival of the McRib boosted the price of pork.

Whoever came up with the process, the result is called restructured meat. These products start off with meat trimmings that are compacted and packaged into simpler shapes to save storage space. McDonald's adopted the technique and used small flakes of meat from the shoulders of a pig to create its vaguely rib-shaped protein patty.

Somehow, that still didn't stop me from wanting to try it. What would America be today without its devotion to science, which gave us restructured meat delights like the turkey roll, chicken nuggets and McRib patties? Besides several zillion tons lighter, I mean.

The McRib is delivered in a cardboard container that locks in the heat, so when you open it, the saucy smell hits you in the face. The meat patty rests between two mini-hoagie slices that are soft and warm but relatively tasteless. They should shake some of the sesame seeds off the Big Mac buns and put them on this.

McDonald's slathers its McRib patty in barbecue sauce. It's as if someone picked it up by one corner and dunked in a vat of the stuff, like Achilles' mother, Thetis, dipped him into the river Styx.

You read that right — a reference to Greek mythology in a review of the McRib. That's just so you know we're not complete slobs here at the Observer, even if our faces and other body parts are occasionally — fine, weekly — stained with globs of barbecue sauce. Corralling the messy sauce means taking your life in your hands if you try to eat a McRib while driving.

The container also holds a smattering of onions and pickle slices to give the dish a little more flavor.
But the sauce does most of the work. It's the same barbecue sauce that you use to dunk your McNuggets and eventually french fries when you run out of McNuggets. Fortunately, it's a good sauce even if you wouldn't buy a bottle of the stuff to marinate some chicken for the grill.

It has always intrigued me how the sauce could carry a sandwich limping across the finish line, so I ordered an extra McRib with no sauce. Apparently, it's an option that's always been available.

It's better with the sauce. The patty of pork flakes (not a breakfast cereal, yet) is bland, and the pickles and onions don't do anything to help it. There's not an ounce of seasoning on the thing without the sauce. It almost like eating a split hot dog on sandwich bread.

Even so, the sauce is better than most fast-food barbecue dips, and it complements the minor amount of porkiness in the patty. The McRib is still good for a sandwich of the boxed meat variety.