The McRib Has Returned

The McRib had come and gone.  I started writting this blog post in the middle of this last temporary campaign of the product.  It has now returned to the hiding place where it is kept until the next teasingly short marketing promotion.  I'll cut this intro short and let you get to the body of my post, originally written in the present text and unchanged here for you to read unedited.

Ah, the McRib is back.  I have to try one.  Correction—I had to try one.  If you’ve been ignoring the Mickey Dee advertisements you might not know.  The McRib is back and it had me wondering.  Now that I have had one to remind me, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it was not the first one.  The first McRib I consumed was about two years ago.  It made such an insignificant impression on me that I had completely forgotten the experience.  It’s really an strange mixture of ingredients—McRib meat, pickles, onions, sandwich bread and a particularly bland sauce.  All are perfectly fine ingredients I suppose, but in combination it’s an odd flavor.  But hey, who was that first person to mix peanut butter and chocolate?  Just a guess here but I bet their last name was Reece’s.

The McRib meat is a real mystery to me.  It’s boneless, yet it has faux bone rib ridges.  I’ve spent some time thinking about how they are made.  Call it a hypothesis if you want.  How it works in this hypothesis I’ve developed requires the formation of a pork slurry.  If you prefer, you can think of it as a semi-gelatinous, colloidal mixture of pig parts.  No doubt they are the very best of the pig parts available.  Anyhoo, this gelatinous slurry mixture is then pumped into a hollow cavity, a mold, shaped just like a one tenth scale pork rib. It stays there for some indeterminate time until the shift between the semi-gelatinous state and the congealed state occurs.  My guess is that this time falls somewhere between thirty seconds and seven weeks.  Likely the latter.

From there I imagine the pork patties are packed by the dozens in a specially lined box for distribution to your local Mickey Dee franchise.  Specially lined, again I imagine, with a wax covered paper to keep the flavor rich juices that tend to seep out of the congealed pork patties inside the congealed pork patties.

I haven't considered the method for heating the McRib patty.  Honestly, does it really matter what approach is used?  Can the product become any less desirable if it were baked versus deep-fried?

The disappointing thing for me is that I had forgotten how much I disliked the McRib.  I had to try it a second time, and experience the disappointment all new again with the memories of the previous experience returning to my conscience thoughts.

If, in a couple of years, I tell you that I'm excited about trying out a McRib for the first time, please remind me about this post.