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This episode of Weird History Food Is taking you back - WAY back to the beginnings of the every elusive McRib. Here today, gone tomorrow, with only the fading memories of hat sweet sweet taste etched into the brain. Maybe you were the biggest fan? Maybe not, but, we all have memories of seeing the ads, and many hoping for the return...
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Unsurprisingly, the beloved McRib sandwich has had a long and strange journey from creation to consumption
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So today, we're painting grill marks onto the history of the McRib
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In the 1970s, the American public became allergic to red meat after the feds stepped in and cautioned against eating large quantities of delicious, cholesterol-filled, fast-food beef
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Wendy's and Burger King managed to offer alternatives to the standard bovine options
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But McDonald's Filet-O-Fish wasn't exactly a huge catch. The company sought to find a beef alternative
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In the late 60s and early 70s, both McDonald's and the United States military had a meat budgeting
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crisis. To solve that problem, both military brass and Mayor McCheese turned to animal scientists
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to find a way to make edible meat less expensive. This equation used restructured meat, which was
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an invention of scientist Roger Mandigo. After nearly a decade of trial and error, Mandigo found
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a way to use cheaper cuts of meat. They used ts, a word you've probably read on a hot
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dog label, which is all the bits like skin, hearts, and stomachs that are viewed as throwaway
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organs and not as food. But if you just smash all of them together, delicious magic can happen
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Two people contributed to the success of the McRib, assuming the millions of ride-or-die
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McRib fans are to be ignored Roger Mandigo our food Dr Frankenstein from earlier and gourmet chef Rene Arendt who transformed that science experiment into a craveable edible sandwich
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Despite its uneventful rollout in 1981, the McRib kept pitter-pattering along. McDonald's served their sloppy, succulent slab sandwich for four years before suddenly deleting it in 1985
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But this is where barbecue plot sauce thickens. thickens. Whether this was due to poor sale numbers, an increase in costs of pork meat
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ts, or a marketing ploy to create a demand due to lack of supply is undetermined
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Those pork-poor patriotic patrons were particularly perturbed. Hearing the rumble of millions of
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tummies, McDonald's threw the McRib back into the menu for a limited time, making the McRib
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the first-ever limited-run fast food item. In 1994, McDonald's was done playing games
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with America's most divorced sandwich. They finally pulled the trigger and made the McRib a year-round fast food staple
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For 10 years, America lived a blissful existence. There was a McRib in every pot
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and a car in every driveway in case you need to go pick up more McRibs
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But as we've learned the hard way over the years, the McRib wasn't here for a long time
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It was only here for a good time. In 2005, McDonald's turned 50
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and to celebrate, they pulled the McRib off of the menu. Uh, happy birthday
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The sandwich extended its fake farewell tour for a few years into 2006 and 2007
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creating even more product scarcity and increasing the demand for the McRib sandwich
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