They don't

>>20634599
They honestly don’t. You’re just a bad cook.

When I make a burger I use liberal amounts of whole grain mustard, really good quality vintage cheddar and a lot of red onion. Much better than the slop you get at fast food places.

>>20634599
fat and salt are the two reasons, 99% of the time, why restaurant food tastes better than homemade

>>20634658
I had McDonalds and it tasted like shit, but I had Hardee's today and it was really good. Maybe I was just drunk, but it was really good and even better than my homemade burgers

carls jr deals are fucking awful. they have tastes the jew oil
what used to be 2 for 6 is now 2 for 13 dollars in under 2 years
fuck carls/hardees

>>20634751
Just get the coupons. I get two famous stars for $7. They are like $5 each normally

>>20634599
Hardee's used to be superior back when they had the thickburgers, these current star burgers are shit. No where NEAR as good as they used to be like in the late 2000s or early 2010s.

>>20634684
Make better burgers. Grind brisket, chuck, short ribs (my preference, you may change as you like), form loosely into patties (dont make fucking meatballs), and cook them properly. Source your meat from a good quality butcher instead of your discount supermarket or farm and that alone will probably make a huge difference. The good thing about burgers is that even if you fuck this up they’ll generally still be tasty unless you like burn them to charcoal or something. But if you do the whole meatball patty thing with a bunch of binders like egg and shit you’re cutting back on beef flavor. Now you’re basically making a patty like the chains would except you don’t have a team of food scientists on your payroll to determine how exactly to consistently deliver maximal flavor for minimal cost (the secret is msg, they won’t use it directly but they will use shit like celery salt, which is basically the same thing, as well as just pumping it with ungodly amounts of salt). The other secrets are stuff like emuslifiers (lecithin mainly) which doesn’t impact flavor as much as texture/mouthfeel and then the shit they add for preservatives and conditioning, which is mostly to the bun (sodium stearoyl lactylate makes the bun fluffier/softer/larger and increases shelf life, calcium propionate inhibits mold growth, etc). There’s also some tricks, like adding calcium chloride to make you think it’s even saltier without adding even more salt than the already ridiculous amount of salt. (cont)

>>20634790
The final and biggest wonder here is “artificial and natural flavors”. These are essentially trade secret. If you look at all the burger chains they advertise their patties are 100% ground beef and this is (mostly) true, they get around this by adding the flavorings to the sauces and toppings. See ingredients for hardees small burger:
>beef patty: 100% Pure Ground Beef Patty
>oil: Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Contains 2% or less of Salt, Soy Lecithin, Artificial and Natural Butter Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate, Artificial Color, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Autolyzed Yeast Extract (Contains Barley, Milk, and Egg components).
>ketchup:Tomato Concentrate made from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Salt, Spice, Onion Powder, Natural Flavoring. mustard: Water, Distilled Vinegar, Mustard Seed, Salt, Turmeric (color), Paprika, Spice.
> dill pickles: Cucumbers, Water, Vinegar, Salt, Contains less than 1% of the following: Calcium Chloride, Alum, Sodium Benzoate (preservative), Natural Flavors, Polysorbate 80, Yellow #5, Celery Extract yellow onion.

etc. “spice” is another trade secret vagary.

>>20634796

>High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup
When corn syrup is not enough

Also why the hell do you need Yellow #5 in your pickles? Who looks at - no, studies - their pickles that this color correction is necessary?

>>20634599
Their lastest coupons got rid of the bogo deals. They can die.

>>20634900
You can still get 2 for $7. Not too bad of a deal

>>20634856
Literally food scientists lmao. Actual answer is that consumer research shows that people who regularly eat at chain restaurants highly value consistency in products. This is against the nature of produce obviously (and kind of just nature in general), sometimes things grow bigger, smaller, darker, lighter, spots, etc. it’s just how nature works with an incredible number of variables, an ever changing climate, and varying soil conditions. So to overcome this they do two main things: grind and reshape foods, and dye them for consistent coloring. To a lesser extent they bread and fry things. These things obscure natural textures and appearances of meat and produce and create the illusion of consistency. So my pickles always appear the same color to you even though the cucumbers may have been quite variable because I dunked them into a brine loaded with dyes. The chicken nuggets always seem the same because it’s macerated into a paste and extruded into the same familiar shapes. The things that don’t fall into these categories like tomato slices, raw jalapenos, potatoes, onions, etc end up having higher per unit cost because they end up having higher levels of waste bc “undesirable” looking produce ends up being far less marketable. It still has use but it’s value is much lower as it won’t be bought be grocery stores (people genuinely won’t buy it), many restaurants, etc. still gets used for stuff like purees, powders, etc but also often just gets wasted too. Our food supply chain is ridiculous and wasteful because we are primadonnas. “I won’t eat this good flavorful tomato my neighbor grew because it’s not perfectly round and has a bruise, I want that good looking flavorless mealy tomato that was picked green in mexico and stored for a month then artificially ripened with ethylene at a warehouse”

>>20634634
You sound like a pretentious faggot. kys

>>20635159
You sound like a shit cook. Cram a Big Mac up your arsehole.

>>20634939
nice copypasta you twat

>>20635167
Sorry you’re upset that your slop is loaded with bullshit so your pickles are just the right shade of green

>>20634599
chemicals

>>20634939
and yet fried chicken from fried chicken joints (even popeyes, chick fil a, KFC, Caines, etc) are highly variable, generally more expensive, better reviewed, and more popular than the uniform fried chicken from non fried chicken joints (McDonalds, Wendy's, Taco Bell...).

the actual answer is poor quality ingredients that need color and taste re-added to them. hardees pickles probably look grey without the food coloring because they are the worst quality pickles sold and customers would freak out if they saw grey pickles on their burger.

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491 KB PNG

>>20634599
I don't normally get upset at false advertising because you never get fast food that looks like the photos.

But that pic is an outright LIE. The Big Carl is made with those shitty little mini patties, the ones you get on the shitty $1.99 shitburgers, they're like 2.5" diameter. The Famous Star is made with the large normal size patties, they're like 4" in diameter. That picture is making the Big Carl look as big or bigger than a Famous Star or Western Bacon Cheseburger and that's a FUCKING LIE. The Carls are TINY burgers.

This makes me so fucking mad because I fell for that shit once when they introduced the California Classic which is made with those same small budget pleb kid's meal patties and it cost as much as a Famous Star! Now they're doing it AGAIN with the Big Carl. THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!

>>20634599
Once you learn their secrets you can make their style at home but superior.

>use 80/20 finely ground chuck
>don't mix anything into the beef at all, season the patty in the skillet or on the grill
>don't go crazy with seasonings: salt, pepper, onion powder is good for beginners. Don't use garlic powder for a first go around. Use MSG if you wish, but it's not necessary.
>weigh out your patty, don't go too big, about 5 ounces is a good size
>use carbon steel or stainless steel to get an excellent sear, don't be afraid of the high heat
>smash the patty the first ten seconds its in the skillet (but don't follow the smash butter style, make out your patties)
>take your condiments out of the fridge and let them get up to room temp, cold condiments aren't good on a burger (except lettuce)
>use real american cheese from the deli, not american singles cheese product
>use a bun which is rich in a product called datem, it should be as close to the start of the ingredients list as possible, this is a substance that gives fast food buns their springy quality
>have some aluminum foil ready and wrap the burger when it is assembled, let it rest in the foil for a minute to let the aromas mingle, when you open it the savory steam will come out and set off your dopamine response
>sauces matter, whether it's making your own mcdonald's secret sauce or using a different recipe sauces are what separate a lot of fast specialty food burgers from your basic home burger with ketchup + mustard + mayo (note that most fast food mayo is not the same as supermarket mayo, it's got a little extra something mixed in it usually)
>toast your bun
>get practiced as the order of operations so you can get the burger and your potatoes (recommend tater tots for beginners) done at the same time and have everything good and hot and ready to eat
With practice you can easily beat the best burger places. But it can be dangerous because you can get addicted to your own cooking.

>>20634599
The Big Hardee is back?

>>20635312
The only, right answer.

>>20634900
It's basically the same thing. Two famous stars for $7.

>>20634599
The truth is they have spent thousands (if not millions) of man-hours in finetuning the taste of their food, much different from the average at-home "cook" like those you see in this thread. Sorry, but those minutes or hour or so of you "finetuning" your recipe pales in comparison to professional restaurants.

>>20635361
I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Do you think that chik fil a, kfc, popeyes, etc all don’t do the exact same thing? This is an issue of nationalized chain production of foodstuffs ultimately that have you eating poultry that was sourced from like arkansas, cucumbers that were sourced from mexico, etc even though you’re in washington state because it was the cheapest option.

Your second point is agreeing with what I was ultimately saying which is why I’m even more confused? Like I said they use mid grade produce and meat (the poorest quality they can get away with) and use dyes and techniques to mask the quality of said produce. I worked in food science for years, I know what they do. Are you retarded? Can you not process something if it’s longer than 3 sentences? I assume you must be if you think fucking kfc and popeyes are magically above these processes. They do the same shit to their pickles. They can’t get away with mechanically seperating their chicken but they still load the breading with msg. And kfc are sneaky shits about it, here’s the ingredients list for their pickles:

> Fresh cucumbers, Water, Sugar, Vinegar, Salt, Calcium chloride, Potassium sorbate (Preservative), Onion, Spices, Mustard seed, Celery seed, Tartrazine, Polysorbate 80

No dyes there right? Oh wait, what’s tartrazine? “Tartrazine, also known as FD&C Yellow #5, is an approved artificial food color”

SLOP

KFC also uses tert-butylhydroquinone (listed as tbhq) in all its chicken as a preservative to help alleviate the supply chain shit. This has well documented health issues, primarily vision disturbance but also shit like liver issues.

I genuinely can’t find an ingredients list for Popeyes pickles but their poultry batter is loaded with dyes:

> FD&C YELLOW #5 (MAY ALSO CONTAIN YELLOW #6, RED #40, RED #3, GRAPE COLOR EXTRACT, BLUE #1, BLUE #2, BEET COLOR EXTRACT, ANNATTO EXTRACT AND / OR TURMERIC

SLOP

>>20635452
while it is slop this is true. The frustrating reality is the food science part was part fun and part nightmare. The fun part was this: finding the best possible flavor and making it perfect. That was rare tho because new product launches aren’t super common. The rest of the time was refining and making up for increasing cost cutting measures. The food supply continually worsens but mcdonalds or whoever demands that the product appears as consistent as possible and it’s your job to figure out the right blend of shit to make it happen. So now you add tetrapotassium pyrophosphate to your blended meat product because the new meat supply is drier and stringier and the nuggets aren’t as moist. The npcs don’t give a fuck that they’re eating the shit they use to make toothpaste or that eating large quantities can cause health issues, they just want juicy nuggs