Weekend Cooking...You Are Not My Old Friend!

..and I'm not Lovin It!

In the past, I have written that some of the foods I sample were all for you, my dear readers. The Coconut Chocolates, the Lobster Rolls, the Clam Chowder...the Beer.
OK, I may have been exaggerating a wee bit.
But this time, I am telling the truth!
I did this totally in the spirit of science.
This was a true experiment.
I did it just for you, my dear readers.
And I will not do it again.

See, I was reading an article on The Salt, NPR's Food blog. It was called From Nebraska Lab to McDonald's Tray: The McRib's Strange Journey.
Now, I rarely eat fast food, and I had never had a McRib.
But first, the recent McRib commercial got my attention. You know the one, where the couple is getting on the plane to go on their honeymoon and he gets a text that the McRib is back. Her comment "I married a 14 year old" is the punch line. But what really got my attention was the actress...she is the same girl that does the commercial for the Toyota Vensa where she says "I read an article...well, part of an article...online.." So True. Then she also does the commercial where she is shopping for jeans online and her mom says there is no needs.  She, the mom, has lots of old jeans in her old jean box she can have, nice and roomy!..funny.

So my point is, that is the only reason I heard the McRib commercial and knew it "was BACK!" And it is the reason I read about the "technology" that lead to the McRib's creation.

"The pork producers wanted to see more pork on the menu, and they were targeting McDonald's," Mandigo said.
Mandigo went to work in the lab and came up with a new take on an old-fashioned technology: sausage-making. Instead of just stuffing pork meat inside a casing, Mandigo used salt to extract proteins from the muscle. Those proteins become an emulsifier "to hold all the little pieces of meat together," he says.

...Mandigo's invention of what's called "restructured meats" was important enough to earn him induction into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame.

Restructured meat indeed. Like a flat, casing-less sausage made of "pork trimmings". Care to think about what those trimmings might be? Well, they include things like...

"tripe, heart and scalded stomach, which is then mixed with salt and water to extract proteins from the muscle. The proteins bind all the pork trimmings together so that it can be re-molded into any specific shape — in this case, a fake slab of ribs."

Then there is the story, which is true, that the McRib has 70 ingredients. OK, that is a bit misleading because most of them, 34, are in the "bun".

"The ingredients include such things as azodicarbonamide, ammonium sulfate and polysorbate. Azodicarbonamide is found in the McRib bun and is also used in the process to make foam plastic; much like what gym mats are made of. The use of this component is banned in other countries outside of America because of a belief that exposure to the substance may cause asthma. The U.S. limits the amount of it in flour products based on their findings in lab testings."

OK, I read that after I actually ate one.
I made the stop at Mickey D's just for this test.

What did I think of it?
It doesn't look that bad, does it.
Well, the onion was nice...and the pickles were OK. It was downhill from there. The bun..totally unmemorable. You have to wonder what all those ingredients are possibly for. The BBQ sauce would not have been bad if there was not so much of it, but then I may have been able to see the meat byproduct patty.And that might not have been a good thing.
The patty, had no real taste or texture and is as far from real pork as Ronald McDonald is from a creepy clown. Oh no...wait..they are actually the same thing! But this is so unlike pork that it could have been anything.
I have had a pork sandwich and this is not it.

I am not a vegan, not even a vegetarian. I do eat meat.
OK, I like meat. But even I have my limits.
And I have met them.
This is not meat..and I am not sure it was a bun.
Will I be having a McRib in the future?
No.
Not even for you, my dear readers.

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This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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