McDonald's Workers Don't Scramble Freshly Cracked Eggs

The breakfast hours at a McDonald's restaurant tend to be quite busy, as commuters stop on their way to work for a specialty McCafé coffee or a McMuffin with its perfectly steamed (not fried) egg. And speaking of eggs, we know that McDonald's uses a freshly cracked egg in its McMuffins — but if employees aren't breaking open shells and dropping yolks for its scrambled eggs, what can they possibly be using instead for its Big Breakfasts? The answer is still eggs, but in another form.

For its breakfast platters, McDonald's employees use a liquid egg product from food supplier Cargill. That might sound kind of murky, but the only two ingredients in the liquid are actual eggs (from cage-free hens) and citric acid, the latter of which helps keep the color stable during cooking.

As for why McDonald's uses a liquid egg product for its scrambled eggs when there are actual fresh eggs right there, it could come down to volume, pace, and consistency. It does appear that there is more than one egg's worth in a portion of scrambled eggs, and it might just be quicker for employees to pour the liquid product onto the griddle. Using a liquid product also ensures the eggs look uniform after being cooked on the grill, which fresh eggs might not, as may have been the case with the folded eggs before they started arriving frozen.

If you were to step inside a busy McDonald's restaurant's kitchen at breakfast time, you would likely find a lot of organized chaos. Because while employees might be moving frantically to keep up with demand, many of the preparation and cooking processes tend to be automated and/or timed, like the gloriously greasy fries, making the work predictable, at least. And that is certainly the case with the scrambled eggs, which are made in a somewhat surprising fashion. Employees aren't actually scrambling the liquid egg product on an open flat-top using a turner; instead, the eggs are cooked in batches of up to four using a metal template called a scrambler.

The liquid egg gets poured into a ladle-like spoon that ensures equal amounts, and then those spoonfuls get deposited into the grid-like template, which is separated into four sections and sits on the grill. There is a plastic knob at the center, which the cook uses to manually agitate the template and create the scramble. And when the eggs are done cooking, the scrambler gets set aside, and the cook goes in with a spatula to remove the scrambled eggs and place them in a warming tray. All in all, the process takes an impressive 30 seconds or less.