Cooking McDonald's at home, and what its menu costs

What McDonald's food actually tastes of

The flavour signature is sweetness plus acid, everywhere. Almost every savoury McDonald's item carries more sugar than a home cook expects and more vinegar behind it. The Big Mac sauce is a sweet pickle relish base, not a thousand island; the bun is enriched and lightly sweet; even the pickle slices are sweet-cured dill rather than sour. If your copy tastes flat, it is almost always missing sugar, not salt.

The patty is thin, salted late and smashed on contact. A 1.6 oz patty pressed onto a hot flat-top gives an enormous crust-to-meat ratio, which is the whole point. Season after the smash, never before - salt drawn into the surface before it hits the pan stops the crust forming.

Onions are rehydrated, not fresh. The dried minced onion in a Big Mac or a hamburger is rehydrated in cold water for ten minutes. Fresh onion in its place tastes correct but wrong, which is the most frustrating kind of near miss.

What McDonald's charges, from the menu we hold

102 priced options across 115 menu sections, as last recorded in United States. Prices move and vary by outlet, so treat these as a reference point rather than a quote.

Half the menu sits between $2.85 and $5.29. Here is the whole spread:

What McDonald's charges in 11 countries

The same item, priced from each country’s own menu and converted to one currency so the columns can be read against each other. McDonald's sets prices per market, so a gap here is the chain’s pricing rather than an exchange rate artefact – and the widest gap on this list is Quarter Pounder®* with Cheese, which costs $7.17 in the dearest market and $2.75 in the cheapest.