McDonald's Burger Patties Aren't Cooked To Order

One of the major trade-offs of fast food is that while you should get your order a lot faster than at a sit-down restaurant, it doesn't necessarily mean that your meal is the freshest. Chains like McDonald's, with its 40,000-plus locations around the world, deal in high volumes of food, and to handle the millions of burgers sold each day, the chain has many processes in place to aid employees in its fast-paced kitchens. One of these concerns the burger patties, specifically the 10:1s, which aren't actually cooked to order. Instead, they are precooked on the grill and then kept in a warmer so that they're ready to go whenever you order.

The 10:1 designation for burgers at McDonald's means that for every pound of beef, there are 10 small patties. These are the thinnest patties, which are used for hamburgers and cheeseburgers, as well as the lofty Big Mac. But if you're now worried about pulling up to the drive-thru, placing your order, and getting a cold, old cheeseburger, you shouldn't be. According to McDonald's itself, the longest that the patties can sit in the warmer is 10 minutes. However, as one former employee on Reddit said, "Normally they're gone in [five]." To that end, but when the 10 minutes are up, any unsold patties reportedly get logged as waste and tossed in the garbage.

If the thought of getting even a 10-minute-old burger patty is unappetizing to you, no worries. There are several ways to get your slice of beef fresh off the grill. The first method: Just ask for a fresh burger patty. While you can't stand back in the kitchen and watch the employees as they make your food, it's a pretty sure thing that if you behave kindly and ask politely at the drive-thru for a fresh cheeseburger, they will likely honor your request. After all, it only takes 42 seconds for the meat to cook through on the clamshell grills, so while it might be slightly disruptive to the kitchen's flow, you shouldn't have to wait too long.

A second way, which you may be able to do in the app, is to request no salt on your patty. Yes, it does mean a little bit less flavor, but because the patties automatically receive a shake of salt and pepper seasoning, asking for one without seasoning means a fresh patty will have to be made to your specifications.

Finally, the type of burger you get matters. The 10:1 patties might not be made to order, but if you want to ensure a burger whose meat hasn't sat for up to 10 minutes in a warmer, request the heftier Quarter Pounder, which is McDonald's only burger made with never-frozen beef that's cooked to order and placed directly on the bun every time.