You Can't Order A Medium-Rare Burger At McDonald's And There's A Reason

If there's one thing you can count on when ordering a burger from McDonald's, it's consistency. Whether you're grabbing a bite in New York or one of the locations in California without golden arches, you can expect it to look and taste the same every time. That's a feature many people appreciate about the chain, but some folks like to see a bit more color in their beef patties. Unfortunately for anyone who prefers to eat medium-rare burgers, asking a McDonald's employee to prepare your order that way is likely going to result in that person looking at you like you have pickles coming out of your ears before denying the request.

McDonald's utilizes grills that cook the top and bottom of a beef patty simultaneously for a precise amount of time. For instance, a regular hamburger is cooked for exactly 42 seconds, while quarter-pound patties are grilled for 112 seconds. That results in juicy, well-done meat that's safe to consume.

Now, could an employee theoretically just stop the cooking process early so your beef comes out medium-rare? Probably, but don't count on it happening. Were the staff to make a special, mid-rare burger just for you, they would be in flagrant violation of safety standards. Anything under well-done is too rare for a burger because it's made with ground meat, which needs to be cooked to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the USDA. As much as the chain is interested in making customers happy, risking a patron contracting a foodborne illness from an undercooked burger patty is very much not in the best interests of the business.

When people visit their favorite fast food restaurant, they can rest assured that employees are trained to follow rigorous safety standards outlined by the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points guidelines (HACCP), but that wasn't always the case. These scrupulous food safety measures became the benchmark of the industry only after a fast food chain that once had its own boy band, Jack In The Box, made hundreds of West Coast customers sick (and caused four deaths) due to burgers tainted with E. coli.

Following the outbreak, it was revealed the chain was only cooking burgers to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn't hot enough to eliminate E. coli. The tragic mistake led the food industry as a whole to adopt HACCP safety procedures, which include carefully observing food temperatures from the time it is received from a distributor to the moment it is served to a customer. Because McDonald's burgers consist of 100% ground beef formed into patties before being frozen at a factory, they must be cooked to 160 degrees to ensure they're safe to eat.

Even with rigorous safety protocols in place, mistakes still occasionally happen, but throwing caution to the wind to honor a customer's petition for a medium-rare burger isn't a risk McDonald's (or any other fast food chain, for that matter) is going to get excited about. Folks can make sure they're getting a fresh burger by requesting one without seasoning, but if you're the type of person who wants to see some red inside your beef patty, McDonald's just isn't the place for you.