Où est le boeuf?

One of the weird consequences a publicly-known fast food obsession housed in a tiny body is that friends keep sending me tasty things like turbaconducken and This Is Why You’re Fat.

A friend e-mailed this gem from Canada.

Double Big Mac in Canada

The Double Big Mac in McDonald’s Canada

Yum!!!

Three things leap to mind on seeing this image. First, the Big Mac and me were born in the same city.

The second is that my French teacher used to like to joke, “Où est le boeuf?” I might have thought it quite funny if I wasn’t almost failing French I. Then again, he also liked to play a song about “La Lindbergh” in language lab, so his humor is probably best described as authentic.

The third is that Canadian McDonald’s is one of the few places left that has french fries that are still pre-fried in lard. With the health kick in the 80’s, the United States McDonald’s switched to vegetable oil for both the pre-fry and frying stages. 🙁 A fact you can confirm by reading Fast Food Nation.

I once did a blind taste test comparing sugar-cane (Mexican) coca-cola with normal coke classic. I barely managed to guess the difference. I wonder how I’d fare at a lard-fry to vegetable oil fry comparison and how one would do that.

6 thoughts on “Où est le boeuf?

  1. The mcdonalds fries might not be pre-fried in lard anymore but unfortunately they are still not vegetarian. They contain some kind of “Natural Beef Flavor” additive.

  2. @Lucas Yes the existence of that was broken in the first edition of Fast Food Nation which caused an outcry. Apparently McDonald’s in India substitutes the “natural” flavoring with artificial ones which are identical. In the U.S. adding “artificial flavoring” to the ingredient list is considered a bigger deal killer than extracting those same flavorings from cows.

    Weird, but true.

  3. Ironically, we’ve since found that hydrogenated vegetable oil is probably less healthy for you then lard.

  4. Yes, but hydrogenated vegetable oil is not frying oil. The reason it’s hydrogenated, IIRC, is so that it’s solid at room temperature—so that stuff is margarine.

    I’m curious if you could make a better french fry if you fried it in an oil with a higher smoke point, like peanut oil. If the oil is soapy enough, it wouldn’t burn but maybe it’d come out slightly crispier on the outside.

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