The Ingredient We Didn't Expect To Find In McDonald's Chicken McNuggets

McDonald's may have built its brand on burgers and fries, but chicken McNuggets have been an equally beloved menu fixture since their 1983 debut. While chicken nuggets may seem fairly straightforward, there's lots of room to add or remove ingredients and make each fast food recipe unique. In the case of McDonald's, this keystone nugget ingredient is lemon juice solids.

It might seem like an unusual pairing at first, but lemon and chicken are a classic combination in a wide range of dishes, so why not in a McNugget too? The acidity of the lemon juice helps balance out the savoriness of white meat chicken — no pink slime here — and adds a subtle but distinct lightness to every bite.

Out of several major fast food brands, only McDonald's includes any lemon in its chicken nuggets. Lemon is absent from the frozen nuggets sold by Tyson, one of McDonald's preferred suppliers, and from Pilgrim's, the closest at-home option to authentic McNuggets. It's not exactly a secret ingredient, but lemon juice solids do make McNuggets stand out from the pack.

The merits of lemon and chicken are well-established, but why did McDonald's specifically use lemon juice solids in its McNugget recipe? The answer lies in the realities of mass-producing tens of millions of Chicken McNuggets every day. To produce chicken nuggets on a global scale, McDonald's needs to simplify the process as much as reasonably possible.

Lemon juice solids are primarily the dehydrated remnants of evaporated lemon juice. The concentrated, lemony powder has a long shelf life and does not need to be refrigerated, making it simple to ship and store on an industrial scale. This is much easier for McDonald's to work with than freshly squeezed lemon juice or even lemon juice concentrate, neither of which will last as long even when refrigerated.

This enables McDonald's to mass produce McNuggets with plenty of lemon on hand, less pressure to use it all before it spoils, and none of the extra steps — and costs — that would come with using alternatives like fresh lemon. If only they would bring back the dark meat.