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Ever since its debut on McDonald’s menus in 1981, the McRib has been a popular Golden Arches staple. Throughout its sticky existence, the McRib has garnered adoration from fans so strong that they’ll drive hundreds of miles for their favorite sandwich. The “McFib” has also earned its share of revulsion, confusion, and most of all, curiosity.
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Very few fast food culinary creations have quite the lore around them as McDonald's the McRib
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A creation of both an animal scientist and a fine dining chef, the McRib is the fast food white whale
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appearing seemingly at random and disappearing just as quickly. The beloved McRib sandwich had a long journey from creation to consumption
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Today we'll dive deeper into the weird history of the McRib. In the 1970s, the American public became all weird to red meat
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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 yummy cow
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But McDonald's fish dish, the Filet-O-Fish, wasn't exactly a huge catch. How can you not love square fish in tartar sauce
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The company sought out to find a beef alternative, And while most would think chicken as the most obvious next step, McDonald's crossed a different road
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The National Pork Producers Council comes into this story when they partnered with McDonald's to produce the other white meat, pork
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In the late 1960s and early 70s, McDonald's and the United States military both had a meat budgeting crisis
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To solve that problem, both Military Brass and Mayor McCheese turned to the not-scary-at-all-sounding animal scientists
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to remove the expensive out of the expensive edible meat. This equation used restructured meat
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which was an invention of animal scientist Roger Mandigo. After nearly a decade of trial and error
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in which the errors are best not to think about, Mandigo found a way to use cheaper cuts of meat
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Adorably, they were labeled ts, But in reality, these ts included skin, hearts, and stomachs
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normally viewed in American culture as throwaway organs and not as food
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They reduced the size of the rejected animal organs using a mechanical process called comminution
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This process would flake, chunk, grind, chop, or slice the waste items into uniform pieces
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that allowed them to be engineered into a palpable patty. After that, the inclusion of salt and water would trigger an extraction of proteins
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that allowed the meats to adhere together and become one big, happy, meaty slab
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Though this sounds like not ideal food, it's perfectly safe to eat
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And this technique changed the game for many meat products, including military MREs, meals ready to eat
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and frozen chicken nuggets, some even shaped like little dinosaurs. This process was so revolutionary
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it was inducted into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame, which exists, and I want to go there
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two people contributed to the success of the McRib assuming the millions of humans who purchased and consumed one are to be
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ignored Roger Mandigo our food doctor Frankenstein from earlier who created boneless pork from scratch since most pigs found in nature have bones and gourmet chef Rene Arendt who made that science experiment
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a craveable edible sandwich. Chef Arendt was first in his class at the College Technique
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de Strasbourg and the head chef of the fancy Chicago restaurant Whitehall Club, before being recruited over to the Golden Arches
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by Ray Kroc himself. His mission? Research and develop for the fast food empire
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Today that would be like if celebrity chef Jose Andres were to suddenly start hawking Taco Bell's Doritos Loco Taco
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McDonald's felt their new lab created meat, but still real meat needed its own PR spin to get people on board
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But I mean, who can't get on board with a smushed meatish party smothered in barbecue sauce
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I'm on board. Arendt's legacy at McDonald's goes beyond the McRib. his contributions to our fast food history can't be understated
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For starters, he developed the legendary original three McDonald's dipping sauces. That's barbecue, hot mustard, and sweet and sour
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Legend. Hard to imagine eating a chicken McNugget without that tiny vat of sweet and sour sauce
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and then slowly feeling disappointed by life minutes later when it's gone
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He's also the man responsible for assuring the public that they were eating ribs by designing
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the restructured meat patty to be in the shape of a rack of ribs, because it's much more acceptable
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to eat a rack of ribs between two pieces of bread as a meal than it would be for a regular non-rib-shaped patty
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If Mandigo had his way, it would have been a pork chop. But Arend, Arend thought outside the bun
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A real master of his craft, he knew the correct conduit to communicate the sweet and smoky southern barbecue profile
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he was aiming for. He completed his magnum opus with the addition of pickles
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sliced white onions, additional barbecue sauce, all sandwiched in a French roll
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Genius! Arend and Mandigo had done their part and created a dish worthy of a spooky clown
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After that, the question became, would the public get on board? Arend and Mandigo's baby, a McRib sandwich
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was shot out to various McDonald's locations in 1981. With bated breath, the food scientist
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and the fine dining chef awaited to see how the public would react to their scientific food creation
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Would there be overturned cars in the parking lots of McDonald's as patrons took to the streets in protest of this horrid culinary beast
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Or would there be barbecue tears of sticky joy oozing down their faces with lines circling around blocks for the chance to get a taste of that sweet, sweet frankenmeat
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Nope, there was no riots or deaths. The McRib entered into our cultural zeitgeist to mostly tepid applause
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However, regionally, it was a huge success Especially in the Midwest where not many of those patriots say no to meat After the uneventful McRibs rollout of 1981 What you say this was again
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McDonald's chugged the McRib along, serving their slab sandwich for four years
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before suddenly removing it in 1985. The barbecue pot sauce thickens. Whether this was due to poor sales numbers
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increases in the cost of pork meat ts, or a marketing ploy to create a demand due to lack of supply
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is undetermined. Whatever it was, the masses were not happy. I love the McRib
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I love it. And as humans, we often want what we can't have
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With the McRib no longer an option for pork-hungry patrons, those pork-pore patrons were particularly unhappy
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I want the McRib. Hearing the rumbling of millions of hungry tummies
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McDonald's threw the McRib back onto the menu for a limited time, distinguishing itself
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as the first limited-run fast food menu item. The return of the McRib caused a spike in the pork and hog futures
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as it does most of the time when McDonald's rolls out its popular meaty treat
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The mutual interests of the National Pork Producers Council and McDonald's resulted in a happy marriage between the two
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The McRib and McDonald's, will they or won't they, here one minute, gone the next, might feel a lot like a marketing ploy
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but it was really out of necessity. The manufactured pork delicacy made another comeback in 1989
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and this beefy beauty was a bonafide boomer nationwide. But a shaken public trust found itself uncomfortable with the idea of driving through the local McDonald's
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for a barbecue snack and it not being there. After all, the item was pulled and reintroduced from the menu several times for five years
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It was perceived to be random and possibly on the whims of the shadowy Ronald McDonald
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that goddamn clown. But unlike the Hamburglar, Ronald wasn't trying to pull a fast one over on the American people
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The price of pork is in constant flux, meaning sometimes it doesn't make economical sense
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to continue serving the restructured pork meat due to rising costs. Others, let's call them McRib truthers
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denied that the removal of the precious, succulent Frankenwich was due to costs
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and believed McDonald's was guilty of arbitrage. Or only selling the meat when the prices were at their lowest
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to make money off both the raw product and the completed sandwich at the same time
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Ask those same people what shape the earth is and get ready to be very disappointed by their responses
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In 1994, McDonald's was done playing games with America's partially clogged hearts
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They finally pulled the trigger and put a ring on the McRib, making it a year-round fast food staple
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Though as love stories often go it took an unlikely third party to finally push McDonald into commitment 1994 was also the same year the live film Flintstones slid off a brontosaurus and into movie theaters nationwide
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McDonald's sensed a marketing cross-promotion like a New York City rat senses a piece of pizza
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McDonald's pork patty was shaped like a slab of ribs. The family car was tipped over with a rack
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of ribs. For crying out loud, it's obvious, everybody. McDonald's leaned way into this
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cross-promotional deal with Universal Pictures. Welcome to Rock Donald's. May I chisel your order
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Pulling genius moves, such as changing the name to Rock Donald's, changing the interior of the
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restaurants into a Stone Age theme, and creating special Flintstones merch like glasses, mugs
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and toys. The marketing was a hit for McDonald's, and it allowed the sandwich to remain on the menu
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throughout the years, regardless if there was currently a Stone Age-based movie in the theaters
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And for 10 years, America lived a blissful existence of never going into a McDonald's for a McRib sandwich and leaving disappointed
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But as we've learned the hard way over the years, what was made up must come down
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And the McRib wasn't here for a long time. It was only here for a good time
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In 2005, McDonald's turned 50, and to celebrate, they pulled the McRib off of the menu, but not before sending it off on a farewell tour
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The tour was meant to replicate that of a rock band, who also throws in the towel in order to retire to a quiet life in Branson, Missouri
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Give me the f***ing knife! Only in this case, it was a sandwich being temporarily removed from the menu with a lot of fanfare
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Some locations offered McRib and General Pork trivia, as well as a petition to sign
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to keep McDonald's from ruining their lives by removing the sandwich from their menus, like monsters
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The sandwich, like Brett Favre, continued its fake farewell tour for the next two years in 2006 and 2007, creating even more product scarcity and increasing the demand for the McRib sandwich
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They might have made a fake advocacy group for boneless pork as a marketing ploy
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And that would really hurt boneless pig farmers everywhere. But when it came to the actual conditions of boneful pigs, McDonald's put its money where its barbecued stained mouth was
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In 2012, the company made history when they announced they would no longer purchase pork from companies that used pig gestation crates
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Pigs kept in tiny gestation crates are confined in spaces literally too small to move in and were considered to be grossly inhumane
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Factory farmers still treat their pigs this way, but the Fry Guys have no interest in dealing with a farm that does
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Since McDonald's is one of the largest purchasers of pork, buying over 250 million pounds of pork each year
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thanks in large part to the booming success of the McRib, this was a very big deal
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