Restructuring meat: the McRib and friends

For the most part, store-bought sandwiches don’t carry much meaning for me, except the McRib. I don’t really like it (the sauce is too sweet), but the McRib makes me think of my mother. She loved it, and when it would ‘come back’ we had to go to McDonalds and get one. Now, every time it resurfaces, I smile and think of my mom and the joy she got out of a sweet BBQ pork sandwich.

Mom with Wyn at a
Meat Conference
 in Nebraska

The McRib is actually a fun, meat science success story. In the 1970’s, a meat scientist at the University of Nebraska named Dr. Roger Mandigo worked with the National Pork Board to develop a product that could be sold in McDonalds. He developed what we call a restructured product. It’s really a simple sausage made with pork, water, and salt, but rather than being shaped in a cylinder by a sausage casing, it’s formed into a shape that looks like ribs.

Sausages are made by using salt to extract the proteins in the meat. Salt literally reshapes the proteins at a molecular level, turning them inside out, and causing them to stick together. When the sausages are cooked, the texture of the final product changes. Think about how the texture of a hamburger patty is different from a sausage or hotdog. How much the proteins are extracted affects the texture changes and that will differ based on how much salt or other ingredients are used and how much they are mixed.

Dr. Mandigo is a giant in
meat science. Working with
 him at Nebraska would be
the equivalent to being
coached by Lou Holtz or
learning Physics from
Dr. Sheldon Cooper.

When salt is mixed with ground meat, the result is actually called a batter and can be poured or injected into trays or casings that will create any shape. It’s like the way cakes take the shape of the pan when you cook them.  It was actually the folks at McDonalds that settled on the rib shape.

If you look at the ingredients of the McRib on McDonald’s website, you’ll see the ingredients are pork, water, salt, dextrose and rosemary extract. Pork is trimmings only from skeletal muscles, like the ones that move bones around. When salt is added to the pork, the extracted proteins will absorb water, making the patty juicier.  The dextrose is just sugar that’s added to counter-act the saltiness, and rosemary extract is an antioxidant that helps prevent rancidity and improve flavor.

Slather the patty in sweet sauce, add onion, pickle and a sesame seed bun and… BOOM! Iconic Sandwich!

Poultry scientists have used similar methods to develop chicken nuggets in all sorts of fun shapes. We had Dino-nuggets for lunch just the other day. The McChicken sandwich is another restructured product. So are chicken fries, fish sticks, Salisbury steak, and some chicken-fried steaks.