How to make the best Big Mac copycat at home. This week we go head to head to head against the one and only Big Mac sandwich. This episode was our pilot episode of the new channel Throwdown Kitchen and we had a blast making it. Following the Big Mac recipe: Two all beef, patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles onions on a sesame seed bun was easy. Making the best Big Mac at home , the hard part.
We decide to follow almost all the rules but changed it up just a little bit. Larger burgers, tweaking the grilled buns and adding a few extra pickles is all it took to be a winning Big Mac copy cat recipe.
Table of contents
Watch How To Make Big Macs At Home
Ingredients For The Best Big Mac At Home
To make a Big Mac at home you will need all the ingredients from the popular jingle. Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles onions and sesame seed hamburger buns. However the devil is in the detail, so let’s start digging through our pantry before we head off to the grocery store.
You are all familiar with the basics. So it’s fairly easy to source the ground beef, iceberg lettuce, white onion, hamburger pickles and american cheese. Meanwhile, for the burger buns we have found that Arnold’s sesame seed buns seem to be the best for this recipe. Arnold’s burger buns do not come sliced in threes, so we will have to “hack the buns” to come up with a triple decker sandwich.
To make the special Big Mac sauce, you will assemble a few condiments, most of which are in your pantry. Mayonnaise, yellow mustard, dill pickle, white vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder, sugar and paprika are all needed for the special sauce. There is no ketchup in Big Mac sauce. Almost every burger chain and Chef has their own secret burger sauce and we hope to one day have tried them all. But today, it’s a Big Mac copycat sauce all the way.
What is The Best Ground Beef For Burgers?
McDonald’s restaurants use 100 percent ground beef in it’s burgers. That ground beef recipe contains trimmings from the chuck, round and sirloin. There are no fillers or additives in the final patty. That combination of meats does make for a nice burger with good beefy flavor. The round and the sirloin add a nice beefy flavor, while the chuck adds a well rounded amount of fat. After all, fat is flavor!
Unless your going to take the time to cut and trim, then grind or process these cuts of meat, the best choice for your burger is going to be Black Angus ground chuck with an 80 to 20 percent ratio of beef to fat.
Black Angus is the most common breed of beef cattle in the United States and is well know for its consistent marbling, subsequently making for a juicy, tender and flavorful copycat Big Mac.
How To Make The Best Big Mac At Home
You’ve gathered all the ingredients and now it’s time to actually make a home made Big Mac. The first thing to do is focus on the special sauce. It’s not secret sauce, it’s special sauce. There are several recipes floating around the internet for MCD’s special sauce (make that thousands) and many of them are just copies of each other. We think our special sauce is the closest tasting to the original recipe. So give it a try and taste test yourself. Without the special sauce the Big Mac is just another double decker club sandwich.
Start With The Big Mac Special Sauce
Go on the assumption that the creator of the sauce was using ingredients that were available in the store in 1967. Items that already appeared on the stores menu would make this sandwich easy to produce and cost efficient. This is long before the age of the internet and occurred during the heyday of the fast food wars. The Big Mac was born to compete directly with Bob’s Big Boy Sandwich and within a year the sandwich became so popular it was added to all the McDonald’s restaurant menus across the U.S.
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup chopped dill pickles
- 1 and 1/2 tablespoons prepared yellow mustard
- 1 teaspoon white vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
- Pinch of salt and pepper
Place all the ingredients for your Big Mac special sauce copycat into a bowl and whisk together. It’s important to cover and set in the refrigerator for at least an hour so that the flavors get happy and tighten up together.
Prep Your Big Mac Ingredients
While your sauce is setting up, it’s time to get the other condiments ready for plating up. Fresh iceberg lettuce is shredded and chopped. White onions are finely diced, dill pickles are sliced and burger patties are formed.
The Black Angus chuck patties are weighed into 2 ounce balls and then thinly pressed into 4 inch patties on parchment squares. They will be thin! We have found that once pressed out, the patties must go into the refrigerator until you are ready to cook. They can even go into the freezer for 5 minutes. This freezer time helps them hold their shape on the griddle.
The Three Layer Big Mac Bun
The hardest part of this recipe is the creation of a three layer bun. True, the buns are not previously sliced into three sections. A heel, a club and a crown. But the burger bun does already have the bottom, named the heal, and the top, named the crown. All we need is the center, named the club. So the simple answer is too take one heal and shave off the crusted side. Simple right? Now we have our three layer burger buns.
Ready To Cook, Assemble and Eat Our Big Mac Clones
Finally we are ready to go. We have all of our ingredients, including our burgers, special sauce, and the three way sesame seed bun. Let’s get cooking. Start by preheating a pan to 350 degrees. We want a nice hot pan for our burgers. A hot pan will give a nice caramelized exterior crust to our burgers. Cook the burgers for two minutes each side, sprinkling the burgers with a little salt and pepper after flipping. Finally, begin to assemble the Best Big Macs At Home that you’ve ever had!
Big Mac Order Of Toppings
There is a right way to assemble a Big Mac and we think it is one of the most important steps in creating a Big Mac copycat at home. So build this burger from the heel up.
- Heel Bun
- Special Sauce
- Chopped Onion
- Chopped Lettuce
- Slice Of American Cheese
- Beef Patty
- Club Bun
- Special Sauce
- Chopped Onion
- Chopped Lettuce
- Pickle Chips
- Beef Patty
- Crown Bun
Big Mac Recipe
Equipment
- Griddle
Ingredients
Big Mac Sauce
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup chopped dill pickle
- 1 1/2 tbsp prepared yellow mustard
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/4 tsp garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp onion powder
- pinch salt and pepper
The Burgers
- 1/2 pound Black Angus ground chuck beef
- 4 sesame seed buns
- 2 slices american yellow cheese
- 1 medium white onion
- 1 head iceberg lettuce
- 4 dill pickles
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
Instructions
- Make the burger sauce. Combine all the sauce ingredients in a bowl and whisk together. Refrigerate and let all the flavors combine and the sauce to set up.
- Make the burger patties. Form 2 ounces of ground chuck into balls and press out into 4 inch circle. Place in freezer or refrigerator for 5 minutes.
- Dice the onion, shred the lettuce and slice the pickles
- Heat a large skillet to 350 degrees and toast the buns with a little butter. Remove the buns when they are slightly browned and golden.
- Cook the burgers for 2 minutes per side. Sprinkle with salt and pepper after flipping.
- Assemble the burgers from bottom to top in this order:Bun Heel, Special Sauce, Onion, Lettuce, 1 Cheese Slice, Beef Patty, Bun Club, Special Sauce, Onions, Lettuce, 2 Pickle Chips, Beef Patty, Bun Crown
Notes
Nutrition
“One of the greatest sins in ‘burgerdom,’ I think, is making a burger that is difficult to eat. Where the bread-to-meat ratio is out of whack. Where it’s either too greasy or not greasy enough. Or the damn thing just doesn’t hold together the way God intended burgers to hold together.”
Anthony Bourdain
There you have it. The iconic Big Mac sandwich prepared at home with fresh ingredients. There is something special about sharing your memories and tastes with your family and friends. We are so glad we could share ours with you.
Frequently Asked Questions About Making The Best Big Mac At Home
You can substitute aluminum foil that had been lightly oiled with cooking spray.
To get the real MacDonald’s copycat experience, you should use a pan to properly caramelize the burgers.
We can only assume that the accountants in corporate have considered every possibility and have decided that it’s not cost effective to serve more than one slice of cheese. If someone in corporate will get back to us on that it would be appreciated. One of the advantages of making a Big Mac at home is that you can have another slice of cheese!
About Throwdown Kitchen
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