This Fast Food Burger Fact Will Have You Questioning Reality

What makes you crave your favorite fast-food burger? Is it the warm, toasty bun, the oozy melted cheese, or the smattering of your favorite condiments to create a special sauce? Or is it the juicy patty itself: Meaty, savory, and charred fresh off the grill? The advertisements on TV may know how to entice you with these words and images, but when it comes to fast food, the main priority is convenience. And oftentimes, convenience means skipping a few steps to get your food fast instead of fresh.

One of those steps includes a little deceitful trick to pump out burgers that look appetizing. Those "fresh off the grill" burger patties? They're not usually grilled at all. In fact, they're manufactured with fake burn marks to give them that cooked-on-the-grill appearance. That's right, even some of your favorite go-to burger chains in the US still use this trick to make their burgers more appealing. This is just one of a few bizarre secrets the fast food chains won't tell you, but how do they do it?

If you've ever dabbled in grilling, you know those dark, uniform charcoal lines come from the cooking grid imprinting on the burger patty as it grills. But grilling requires a watchful eye and can be quite time-consuming, so fast food chains instead manufacture their patties ahead of time and freeze them before shipping them to their brick-and-mortar locations. During the manufacturing process, a branding iron marks each patty quickly with grill marks.

So if the grill marks are all fake, how do fast food burger chains make them taste grilled too? A McDonald's chef claimed that the chain seasons its burgers with only salt and pepper. The fake, uniform grill marks are just the cherry on top, tricking the customer into believing their burger was grilled-to-order instead of reheated from frozen. The hungry consumer fills in the blanks, thinking that the burger tastes charcoal-grilled upon seeing the grill marks.

If this bubble-bursting fact has you craving a real grilled burger, luckily, there are ways to make your favorite fast food burger at home. This way, you can even upgrade and personalize the burger to satisfy your fast food chain-specific cravings. The main element to focus on to accurately recreate a fast food burger is the specific chain's secret ingredient. For most fast food burgers, there's a condiment or special sauce that makes the burger unique. McDonald's, for example, uses Big Mac sauce that some compare to Thousand Island Dressing, a hint of mustard, and a few pickles to set its Big Mac burger apart.

You can even smash the patties to thin them out to really recreate a fast food burger texture. But if you're more of a Burger King fan, you can keep the patty thick to more closely imitate a Whopper. One thing is for certain — your homemade grilled burger is sure to surpass a fast food one in terms of freshness. But if you don't mind the fake, manufactured grill marks in exchange for a convenient, easy burger, then your favorite fast food chain can certainly deliver.