10 October 2023 , 17:52
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A former McDonald's corporate chef has spilled the beans on a major recipe change to one of their most popular menu items – and it's split TikTok users on whether it's a good thing or not.
Mike Haracz, who lives in Illinois, worked for the Golden Arches until 2019 – and has been sharing tricks of the trade to improve customers' experiences. The popular chef, who has more than 200,000 followers, was answering a comment from another TikTok user about the change the fast-food giant had made to their Chicken McNuggets formula – with a move away from using some 'dark meat' to everything being all-white.
Mike, whose top tips have already been featured in The Mirror, read a comment which said: "What I really want to know is, why did they change the nugget formula? The old one was superior."
And Mike replied that he assumed the user meant when Chicken McNuggets had dark meat in them and advised that a "couple of things have changed over time".
He said: "Yes, first they remove dark meat because back in the day, white meat... chicken breast, was considered premium and it was a marketable thing, so now we've got all white meat chicken nuggets and there's also the healthy Halo effect. Yes it is a fried, battered, chopped and formed chicken nugget, but when you say there's no more dark meat, which is usually fattier and indulgent, if it's all white meat you think it's a little better for you, which you can argue it is or it isn't."
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He added that there is the FDA/USDA regulations on ingredients, so there might have been ingredients used for the chicken nugget previously that are no longer allowed to be used and had to be removed, then there are also such things as McDonald's initiatives, such as removing artificial flavours, colours and preservatives because that's what people say they want, which is marketable, especially as people have strong opinions on these ingredients.
All of those continually change the product, and there is also the need for the company to continually cut costs. He suspected that meant adding more water and filler while trying to make the product taste the same.
He added: "That's what R&D chefs, food scientists do if that's the ask if that's the deliverable they're trying to hit, but one of the other interesting things is McDonald's is vertically integrated into their chicken, meaning unlike their beef, which they buy on the open market, McDonald's owns the bird, the eggs, the farm, they control the feed – they use every part of the bird that they can and what they can't use they actually sell."
He said that any by-products – eggshells, chicken feet, feathers, things that don't go in the chicken nugget or the McDonald's menu are sold by McDonald's to other companies, "or it gets sold off for probably a profit, so that's why they changed it".
However, that explanation split his followers, with one viewer saying: "My bonus kid was so mad when dark meat went away! My MIL would buy 20 nuggets so they would have 6 dark ones," and another added that: "Still say dark meat nuggets were vastly superior. Boo on white meat nuggets."
On the other hand, a third said: "Ewww the dark meat was gross!" and a fourth wrote: "It's still premium, I don't like dark meat, white meat ftw."