Surfing YouTube, I keep coming across videos in which someone tells you how to make a McDonald's hamburger at home. Why does anyone want to make a McDonald's hamburger at home? Did these suddenly become hard to obtain? Or too expensive? It would cost me less money to go to McDonald's and buy a hamburger than it would to purchase the ingredients to make one at home. It would also cost me less time to walk to the nearest McDonald's and buy one, plus the bathroom at McDonald's is probably cleaner than mine.
Also, while I was there I could buy fries to go with it and get free ketchup. There are also YouTube videos about how to replicate McDonald's fries at home and again, it would less time and money to walk to that McDonald's and buy fries than to make them myself.
Maybe the premise here is that I could make a better McDonald's hamburger at home than I can get at a McDonald's? No, that's not logical. If it was better, it wouldn't be a McDonald's hamburger. And in those videos, they usually promise you that if you follow their instructions carefully, what you will get will be indistinguishable from what you'd get at a McDonald's. I haven't tried following any of these tutorials but I'm skeptical.
For one thing, they never mention anything about wearing a paper hat. I would think that would be essential. You might also need to pay yourself poorly.
For another, they tell you to go out and buy whatever kind of meat and bun you can find. I would guess your ketchup, mustard, onions and maybe even pickles wouldn't be far from what McDonald's uses. But don't you have to freeze the beef for a few months and then defrost it to get that McDonald's texture? And isn't the flavor of a McDonald's hamburger about 65% bun? How can a different kind of bun result in the exact same burger?
But I keep coming back to the Why? in all this. Why, if you're going to cook, cook one of those? I can understand trying to replicate the bouillabaisse made at Chez Michel in Marseilles, which many food critics hail as the best in the world. You'd impress the hell out of your friends if you could serve that and besides, how often do you find yourself near Chez Michel? (How often do I find myself near a McDonald's? Practically every time I go anywhere.) And you almost never find great bouillabaisse on a Dollar Menu.
This just does not seem like a worthwhile endeavor to me. Then again, neither did me writing or you reading this blog post and yet we both did just that. Go figure.