Avoid Soggy In-N-Out Animal Style Fries With A Simple Ordering Request

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Iconic West Coast burger chain In-N-Out is beloved by everyday people and celebrity chefs alike, with even late legendary French cooking chef Julia Child falling under its beefy spell. In-N-Out was also ahead of the curve with customers asking for "secret menu" twists to their orders, no more so than for its animal style burger and fries. The attention-grabbing name made them as well known as the regulars, until In-N-Out finally added a "Not So Secret Menu" section for it and other twists. And now it's so broken containment that you can find hacks to get animal style fries at McDonald's. The only drawback to the souped-up fried potatoes is that they can get soggy — a problem easily solved by ordering the sauce on the side.

The fries are topped with American cheese, grilled onions, and In-N-Out's spread. By ordering the spread on the side, you can pour it on a section at a time as you eat to avoid sogginess. Another possibility is ordering them well done, so they'll have more crispiness to hold up to the spread. One reason animal style is popular, and that underlines why you may want to separate the sauce, is that In-N-Out's fries have a controversial reputation of being too soft and lacking color, which some critics claim is because they don't fry them twice.

One other suggestion for better fries is asking for them cooked light-well, which gives them the extra crispness they need. A couple of other topping hacks are just getting them with cheese or ordering chopped chiles for regular or animal style fries, an underrated spicy topping that can also upgrade your burger.

Although you can order burgers or fries animal style, the components for the two aren't identical. For a burger, the beef patties are grilled in mustard and then topped with grilled onions, pickles, and extra spread, in addition to the usual tomato and lettuce. Onions are part of a regular burger, but they can be either raw or grilled. Other items on the Not So Secret Menu include double, triple, and quadruple patty orders, and a protein burger in a lettuce leaf wrap instead of a bun.

Animal style and its moniker began with the burgers in 1961, 13 years after the chain was founded as a drive-thru stand in Los Angeles. In-N-Out president and owner Lynsi Snyder, the granddaughter of the married founders, explained the origin story in her 2023 book, "The Ins-N-Outs of In-N-Out Burger." She wrote that there was a group of regular young customers at the time who were unruly and loud, so the workers nicknamed them animals. One of them saw a manager making a burger one day in the famous way we know today and asked if he could have one. He was blown away and began getting it all the time, but didn't know what he should ask for, so they told him to order it animal style.