I Combined EVERY Fast Food Burger in America | Food Theory

Everywhere you look online right now, we're seeing variations of the same video ordering. Every single fast food burger. Every single. Fast food burger, every single burger, every major fast food burger, everybody trying every burger from every restaurant but, seriously, who has time for all that? We here at Theorist are all about efficiency, a smarter approach to things. If I'm going to be having myself a burger from every restaurant across America then I'm going to be doing it in one big bite.

That's why today we've concocted a new unholy creation that the Internet has never seen before: a single burger formed from mixing together all the elements of all the most popular joints across America a Frankenstein's monster of a creation, a Frankenburger to use my friend Safiya Nygaard's terminology. It is the distillation of the perfectly average burger. But what's it going to taste like and what secrets will we learn along the way in creating this puppy? Hope you're hungry, friends, becau

se we've got a beef with beef. Hello, Internet. Welcome to Food Theory, where today we're serving up a quarter pounder with knowledge. Save the cheese for another day. So I don't know if you've noticed this recently across YouTube.com, but a lot of content today seems to be focused around this idea of going to every drive thru ever. Well, my friends, Food Theory wanted to be a part of that trend and then we thought, you know what, we don't got time for that. So instead, what if we did it the Foo

d Theory way? What if we did it the smarter way? What if we went to one of each of the major fast food drive in restaurants across America and fuzed all of their burgers together into one average fast food burger. The ultimate burger. The ultimate average fast food burger. Right? Like basically if you took like the high highs and the lows and fused them together, who is your C average student? I'm very excited for this, as you should be. I am. Too. There's a lot of excitement for me. A I have no

t eaten today and you know me, I get very cranky. Oh, he is. He is a hungry boy. He's got big muscles that need a lot of energy. You can't see them in this jacket that I'm bustin' out of. Yeah. Don't flex too hard. I don't want to I don't want to bust through that quality Theorywear. New FNAF merchandise which is available via the merch shelf down below. Nice plug. Dang, how smooth. I have practice. So goal one here is to just get a general lay of the land and not just identify who's got the bes

t fast food burger because that's been done to death. Oh, no. Friends in true Food Theory style we're overthinking this to a critical level. Fast food will never be the same. Nor will our stomachs. Let me introduce you to the contenders for today's episode, and then you can point out the ones that you haven't you haven't experienced before. So we've got yourself, you know, your mainstream boys, you got your McDonald's, your Burger King's, your Wendy's. We've got kind of your guys have really sur

ged onto the scene over the last couple of years, which is Five Guys. You've got that ultimate classic, Sonic, fastest thing alive. You've got Hardee's or Carl's Junior, depending on where in the country you are. You've got Culver's, which is another one of those boys that looks like it's kind of surging through the rankings. And lastly, we have our regional favorite, which is Cookout. If we were filming this over on the West Coast, this would have been In-N-Out. Yeah, but because we're filming

this one in North Carolina, we thought Cook Out was a good example of that. I'm a creature of habit as well. So whenever I do have my cheat day that I have like fast food and I go all out, it's usually McDonald's. And I thought Sonic went bankrupt circa 2005. And so I'm really excited to try most of these. All right. So the way this is ultimately going to break down is in three separate phases. Phase number one, what you've seen on YouTube a thousand times before. We're going to try all the diff

erent burgers and just give our general assessment of the full, complete package. Then for phase two. We're going to look under the hood and look at the individual components of each burger. So we're going to look at the bun, we're going to look at the patty, we're going to look at the toppings, basically. Deconstructing the burgers so we can get an analytical assessment of who's got the best individual elements there. And then finally, in phase three, the monstrosity comes to life. We take all

the buns, we take all the patties, we take all the toppings and fuse them together into one beautiful, beastly, disgustingly wonderful burger: the Frankenburger. Probably should have done this on Halloween. So without any further ado, I'm hungry. He's hungry. His muscles need feeding. Let's get to tasting. All right, let's just work our way down the line with a standard and a classic here, the quarter pounder with cheese. Now, Santi, what was the rationale for choosing these particular burgers?

So we wanted to make sure to equalize them across the board. So we stuck with one patty. All of these will have onions, pickles and the condiments that come as is. But because McDonald's has such an iconic sauce and the Big Mac sauce, we will be experiencing that here. Classic, iconic. I'm actually not a quarter pounder with cheese guy. If I'm going to McDonald's, I'm getting a single hamburger with only ketchup and pickle. That's it. I know. We can't be friends. So this is really interesting. U

sually when I'm eating burgers, I don't get the onions on them because the onion dominates the flavor of the burger. Yeah, I'm getting onion, I'm getting the Thousand Island. Everything else is kind of getting lost in the sauce. Funny enough, as it is, Big Mac sauce does not have an island in it. Get out of here. So the tang that most people think is that is thousand island comes from the white wine vinegar that they put in and the pickle juice. Wait, so what is McDonald's special sauce? They're

going to come after me for this. It is mayonnaise, yellow mustard. You can get fancy with the mustard, but keep it to yellow mustard, white wine, vinegar, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, pickle juice and relish. And what you want to do is really finely dice onion. Mix it all in. There you are. You got a Big Mac sauce. How do you know that? Because I make my own Big Mac sauce. That's awesome. Yeah, it's one of those things people think that ketchup goes into it, but it doesn't. The red hue

comes from the paprika. So if you ever see out there someone saying, Oh, I got a Big Mac recipe and they bust out the ketchup, they're wrong. Next up is the Whopper. There's no onion on this guy. In the like in the Mayo. It's kind of hidden in there. Oh, interesting. So because of the mayo, I actually don't get the onion on this in the same way that I got the onion on the on the Quarter Pounder. And it's funny because all I get is mayo. I feel the crunch of the pickle and the flavor of the meat

, which I will say I do like. I would agree the mayo dominates the entire flavor of this, as well as that flame grilled flavoring that you get that is iconic at Burger King. It is an actual seasoning or some additive that's added into this to make it taste flame grilled. So we've been dunking quite a bit on Burger King over the last couple of episodes. And this one is no exception. Santi and I both remembered having heard at some point in our lives that the flame grilling flavor of a Burger King

burger is actually an artificial seasoning added onto it after the fact. But we did some research and we actually found that the flame grill taste actually does come from real flame grilling. Statements from previous employees do verify that they take the frozen patties and cook them over a flame grill. Burger King even did a whole ad campaign to tell people that there isn't some sort of secret to their iconic taste. It is truly just real fire. So this time, I guess we owe Burger King an apolog

y. It is the only time that will ever offer that creepy face in apology. It is the stuff of nightmares. Wendy's! Excited for the square patty. Yeah. The flavor is off the bun, my friend. I probably shouldn't keep handing them to you. I'm sure you don't want my hands all up in your business. I love it. But you can have. Never mind. Okay, let's move on to. Oh, my God. This is by far the least flavorful, the lowest quality bun. And overall, just kind of like, eh, yeah, I don't love it. All right. N

ext up, Five Guys. Now, this one is a bit of an outlier because this is the only one not available through a drive thru. Right. All the other guys here are like you could run through a drive thru and get it really easily. Five Guys is more of a fast casual, but because it's surged on a lot of people's lists recently, because it was on our healthiest fast food burger that we did a couple of weeks ago, felt like it should be included here. You remember Five Guys when it was just starting out? Yeah

, kind of. And maybe not just starting out, but just trying to hit the scene. I went there once and never went back there again because of how they served their fries. Dump it in the bag. Wait, you never went there again because of that? Yep. What is. Wrong...? It was the grease. They gave you a bag. Yeah. Full of fries and grease at the bottom where the burger was like wrapped. So by the time you get to the burger, your hands are disgustingly greasy. The, the fries are just all over. And it's t

he bag of grease. It's a bag of grease. Oh, my gosh. That's the best part of Five Guys is the baglers. And so you get like triple the amount of fries that you paid for as a bonus. It's so exciting. Like, I look inside the bag and I'm like, Wow, look at how many fries I've gotten that I didn't pay for. It's like free, free fries. I need a fry receptacle. I can't just have them free in the bag with no worries. No, no, no. I want them worried in a little cardboard thing. Agree to disagree I guess h

ere. Boop. It is so much more flavorful and so much more explosive in your mouth compared to anything else. And even though there's mayo and onion on here, I feel there's a lot better balance of those flavors. Yes. Than any of the burgers that we've had so far. Yeah, this is cool. I like that. Well done. All right. Now into the back half. And this is the territory where he's not familiar. So this is pretty exciting right here. We got Sonic. Hmm... Oh, that's really interesting. That pickle. That

's all I'm getting. There's like nothing here. Same flavor combination as all the other guys. But I'm not getting a whole lot of flavor at all, period. Yeah, there is mayo, but it's not really giving me any flavor. Yeah, there's onions, but it's not really giving me anything. Yeah, there is meat, but again, kind of flavorless. I can feel the mayo. Like from a textural standpoint. I know it's there. I feel the creaminess that it's delivering to the burger, but when it comes to flavor, there's jus

t no flavor here. No, it's shocking. And then a strong start for the ones I don't know. Well, maybe you don't know them for a reason, right? Sure. Sonic, like, it's not necessarily known for its burgers per say. Hardee's on the other hand it has the meats, right? I mean, that's Arby's. But by the end of the day, Hardee's, you look across their menu and they got two things. They got a bunch of big burgers and they got a bunch of chicken sandwiches. And that is what they are known for. And they ha

ve a thick burger. Yeah, their whole thing is the thick burger, hard bun. Oh, oh. Hmm. *Maniacal laughter* Mm hmm. This feels like the bad version of the Burger King burger. Yes! It is... It has the same, like, flame grilled style that it's going for, but a thousand times less good. Santi and I both picked up on this flavor profile, and it turns out that it's largely thanks to the so-called charco-broiled cooking that Hardee's does with their patties process similar to the flame grilling a Burge

r King, but using Char Rock broilers, essentially what these broiler is, you can put charcoal or lava rocks underneath to enhance the cooking and flavor of the burger as fat from the patty drips onto the rocks, the smoke that rises back up should be rich in flavor, getting infused into the meat. But considering Hardee's is probably trying to remain as cost efficient as possible with their process, the charcoal that they're using might not be the highest quality or might be use a little bit past

its prime, thereby giving the patties here the unfortunate flavor that we witnessed. Charbroiled Thick Burger. More like Charbroiled Ick Burger. Wow. I'll get better at these, I swear. So already you can see this guy is definitely hanging off the bun with its flavor. I'm getting actual flavor from the meat. Whoah. Shocking, everyone at this point, I can actually taste the burger, and it tastes like meat. This feels like something that I cooked on the grill and that I slapped onto a bun. And I ca

n taste the actual, like, realness of the meat and the cook of the meat. Like, that's cool. And last but certainly not least, is the local favorite Cook Out. I like onion. I don't like it that much. It is a lot of onion. This is the first burger that's out of the like charbroiled and fresh out of the charbroiled and flame grilled that the the meat itself is well-seasoned and you don't find that a lot with fast food burgers just because they just make 'em, sear 'em. And that's it. And they rely o

n the condiments and the other toppings. But this meat is actually well-seasoned. Yeah, it is. And and that makes it much more enjoyable. It makes it seem much more homemade than all the other ones. I tend not to get a whole lot of burgers from from Cook Out. This, though, it's changed my mind. I might be dipping into burgers more often there because this is solid. I like this. All right. So with our first wave of taste test and we've got eight burgers, give me your ranking as someone who has ne

ver tasted any of these before. Okay. Well, easy, easy, dead, last place Hardee's. Wow... Sonic. I will put. Sorry, second to last. I'm going to put Wendy's in that in that spot. So this is where it gets a little bit harder. Sure. I think Culver's will have to go here with Burger King. These were kind of middle of the road. I did. I did like Burger King more than I remembered. Yep. So I think I'm going to put Five Guys. Yeah. What ages you for me, it's the nostalgia of the Quarter Pounder. I was

going to say, I think you were letting your nostalgia you blind you to this one. But I do think the balance and kind of the sweetness of this just is in a different league than the other one. So I'm going to put a quarter pounder and I'm actually going to put Cook Out because of the meat and just because of that right there, a little bit too much onion. But I'm going to put Cook Out right above. Wow. Yeah, that is wild. Congratulations to Cook Out as the hometown hero. Right? So, yeah, I think

this is the ranking I feel most comfortable with. I feel sad about McDonald's. I don't think you have to feel sad about McDonald's at all. I think they're doing just fine. I feel like I've betrayed them. It's all right. You know what a way to support a hometown hero. Yeah, the local upstart. I got to say, though, In-N-Out, that has nothing on In-N-Out. I know. I'm that guy. We all he's been one of those California guys who stans in and out way too hard. It's just it's the truth. It's fine. The b

urgers are decent. The fries are terrible. That is not true. That is so definitively true. No, the... Fries let down that entire restaurant. The thing about In-N-Out is you have to get the fries well done. The fact that I... No, no, no, no. The fact that you're already saying that I have to do something special with the fries to make them palatable is not okay. It should not be on me as the consumer to make your product better. But that's the entire point of the place. You got to find your custo

mization for your burger. You got to find your customization for your fries. You like them well-done, extra toasty salted, no salt. You got to do all of that. And that's the great thing about In-N-Out. And that's why it's number one. As far as my rankings go, though, In-N-Out excepted. I have to agree with these four right here. As you were saying it, I'm like, yup, yup, yup, yup. 100% very clear division between the bottom half and the top half. For the top, I will say, you know, for me, McDona

ld's very solid standard burger. When I want a burger, though, I want it to be umami flavored. I don't want a whole lot of sweetness. So I feel like McDonald's safe middle option. As I said when I was ranking it, you know, that flame broiled flavoring that they put on there, I like that better. So I always up for Burger King if they were just a little bit faster. And then between Cook Out and Five Guys I really like the Cook Out. It stood out to me a lot more than I expected it to, but a little

bit too much onion and the condiments weren't really mixing in as well as I would have liked, which means that Five Guys, the definitive number one for my rankings. I'm out of it. But again, I love the fact that that we both agree there's a very strong division between the bottom four and the top four. And let's see if that holds true when we pick them apart. I look at this table and it makes me so happy because this this is what I've envisioned for this episode. Anyone can do a fast food taste

test and rank their burgers. Not everyone is going to break it down by the component and tell you which is best based on each individual ingredient. This is type A to the max, which satisfies my little control ridden heart. So much so since we've already tasted all these, we can speed through most of that. I feel like. But because we also have to do this like four times around the around the block. But I think the best way to do this and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the best way to do th

is is to tackle each individual component down the line one at a time. So we get back to back to back to back to back. Yeah, I'm fully agreed. Sam, Yes? Did you write it as Wen nuts? I did. Yes. You did. You did get them. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm glad our team so professional at all. All of the time. That is bread. Totally fine. Which brings us to BK. Oh, that's fascinating. When these nuts. There you go. And not a really pleasant flavor. No. Oh, okay. There's five guys. Five Guys. Oka

y. Five Guys. It's not as like bready. It's more full of a flavor, I would say, than the Burger King one. Next up, Sonic. He can really move. He's got an attitude, but does he have the buttons? Does he have the buttons or is this just cheeks? This bun is a nothing burger. It really is. Oh, well, welcome. Welcome, Hardee's. Here. Let me just break this cracker in two. Wow. Wow. Oh, my God. It's like jerky. It's bread jerky. This is so bad. Follow me up with some Culver's, please. The butter isn't

making as big of a difference as I would expect, but I can get it. Cook Out a top performer in our collective burger assessment. I mean, it's a bun. Looking at the patty. I'm very intrigued about how all the patties look and feel. Yeah, this is really weird, but it tastes very like pickly, like it's been brined. Hmm. All right, let's go into BK. Oh. That's a good patty. It's a. Good patty. Next up, Wendy's. Wow criminal, how unseasoned this is. There's nothing on this. Okay. Next up, Five Guys.

Okay. It's a better version of Wendy's. Yes, it is better seasoned. I can taste that meat. It Sonic. Is that cow? No, no, no, it's not. It's a it's gamey. It's gamey. That is not. It's not beef. It's not beef. No that is weird, man. Mm hmm. It's so fundamentally different from everything else. This one was a surprise, to say the least. Thanks to Sam behind the camera and his lightning fingers, we figured out that since 2018, Sonic's been implementing mushrooms into their beef blend. Sonic says

that this move was to increase the flavor of the patty, mixing the umami of the mushrooms with the umami of the beef. They also said that this was to remain more eco friendly since using less beef would lead to less cows and overall less greenhouse gas production. Is that true or is it just a bunch of marketing spin to cover up a cheaper patty? It's probably the latter, but without knowing their actual production pipeline and the costs associated with that, we can't really make the judgment call

. Regardless, this blend gave the patty an overall gaminess that was not our favorite. So we've done the major components of the burger so far. We've done the patties, we've done the buns. Now I think we just do collectively, the toppings like pickles and condiments and onions. Let's do it all in one fell swoop. So without any further ado, let's start with the McDonald's, which has the smooth pickle. It is so sweet. The pickles are not that like briny flavor that you expect to pickle. It is swee

t. BK whoa. Yeah that is so weird. Is that so salty? It is unbelievably salty. Wendy's. I like the onion, which is mild. It's so mild. Onion here. Kind of a middle ground between the Wendy's and the McDonald's. Sonic. The unexpected child of this. It's a very young pickle. It's not. Yeah. You can taste the age of that pickle. Oh, yeah. It's figuring itself out. It's not a phase, Mom. It's a lifestyle. Wooh, with all of that out of the way, we now have the best and worst of all, your fast food bu

rgers. We have our top contenders. When combined, we have your best individual elements across the board, hands down we've solved it. But what if you merge them all into one? What if you took all eight of these restaurants and fused them together, super saiyan style to create one massive mega burger that represented them all. The Lord above all burgers but actually just like mid-tier burger because again, you're taking an average of everything. The median burger. That's what we've got. Santi, ar

e you ready? I wish I could say I was, but I have to be. Oh, it's time. It's time to make a Frankenburger. Santi, I liked you doing the Dragon Ball thing. I Oh, wait. Did you do the Dragon Ball thing? Oh I missed it - when you said Dragon Ball Z I was like... Man, here I'll fuse with you. Yeah. Where is it? Where is it? It's hard to find. That's what they had to practice like we did it. I don't know if the kids get that anymore. I'm sure. Dragon Ball Z is old school. FrankenBurger final taste te

st. Oh, look at it. Look at this monstrosity. Oh, it is a thing of beauty and also a thing to be feared, my friends. Eight fast food burger all combined into this. What I'm curious about is what layer to me will be the most overpowering, whether it's the bun or the condiments or the patty. I'm very curious to dig into this. I don't want to look at it straight on. It's kind of like an eclipse. And we did our best with the bun. Obviously, you can't re bake a bun. You can't re bake bread. So here i

t is. Yeah, I feel like it's like a Thanksgiving turkey right here. Oh, look at that. Oh, it is a thing of beauty. Yeah. Keep it together. I'm trying to keep it together, Matt. I'm really trying. Oh, buddy, that is a hefty boy. Wrapping my mouth around this is going to be a mission. Yeah, I know. I heard it. I heard it. I heard it just now. Wrapping your mouth around it. So here we go. I should have meditated before this. Here we go. Well, we got it. So bear with me. Somehow it got so much sweet

er. It is. Unbelievably sweet. Shocking how sweet this is. Yeah. Once you're done with the sweetness of the bread, the sauces, the condiments have all gotten sweeter. The pickle sweet, the patty sweet It's very odd. I'm not sure why that's the thing that's cutting through. And I think the when you mix everything together, especially the condiments, there's the stronger flavors get drowned out by the mayonnaise. Mustard get lost completely. Yeah, I can taste more than anything the Culver's red on

ion, which is the sweetest of the ones that we had. I think you're right. The mayonnaise is doing a lot here to cancel out any of the stronger flavors. Is that sweet pickle? Is that sweet bun? Is that sweet meat, I guess? This was far and away the biggest surprise of the day. Neither one of us could have expected so much sweetness to cut through this abomination of a burger. After doing some research, though, the answer became perfectly clear. Working our way from the top, the buns themselves we

re all varying levels of sweet. McDonald's, for instance, admits that they add a small amount of sugar to their buns. Wendy's falls into a similar boat. They changed their bun recipe back in 2016 and have also leaned into the sweetness to balance out the savory flavors of the rest of the burger. Most of the buns that we tried out here follow the same profile, so it makes sense that thinly slicing and mashing together nine separate sweetbreads would give us an overall sweeter flavor. The meat, me

anwhile, seems to fall into a sort of circle of life situation where the cow ends up tasting exactly like what it was fed. See, commodity beef or the beef that's quickly produced and distributed at a massive scale doesn't tend to be fed the tippy top of luxury ingredients. This stuff is no Wagyu, my friends. There's no classical music or massages for these cows. Instead they're fed things like soy sugars, corn, which, when processed, gives the cows meat a sweeter flavor than grass fed beef. Taki

ng a look at the ingredients for the burgers we used, none of them claimed to use grass fed beef. Sure, there's a lot of 100% Angus or 100% beef or 100% all natural. But that's 100% meaningless when it comes to what they're actually feeding the cows. So in the process of deconstructing and reconstructing the patties, we were left with a sub optimally fed. Sweet beef underneath. Really makes you think twice about what me and Santi just shoveled into our mouths for the better part of 3 hours. But

if I can say one thing is that despite the monstrosity, despite the layers of bread and everything else, this is still better than Hardee's burger as a whole. Here's the thing. Looking at this, I would place this as a solid five. Right? Which is exactly where it needed to be because it's the average burger. We did it. Well done, sir. Oh, this is great. I think Mission accomplished. The Frankenburger. If you truly want to understand what the median burger is in the fast food landscape, it is just

a very sweet, neutral burger. That's it? Yeah. I did not anticipate that. And again, that's one of those fascinating things about food and flavor science that, you know, we continue to explore and investigate here in Food Theory. And I look forward to doing something like this again. Heck yeah. What do you think, average chicken sandwich next time? Oh I mean, we were saying there's so many ways to go and I'd love to hear what everybody wants because we could do fries, we could get a fryer, we c

ould do chicken nuggets, we could do the whole Happy Meal. You know, there's a lot of different directions we can take. Wow. So let us know down in the comments below. Santi, congratulations on this one. This is a definite win. This has been a joy to go on this little ride with you. So in the meantime, my friends, remember, that's just the theory. A Food Theory. Bon appetit. Speaking of mixing and blending products into something great, I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor for today's vi

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s always, I'll see you all next week.