maybe one should just throw one of them ON the bbq’s grid and one UNDER the grid into the fire to get that meat-smoke 
… sounds not very healthy btw.
158 - 172 F are not very much, but as the patties are frozen, and it takes 1,5 mins … what do you think how hot it is inside the broiler? maybe that is also an important thing.
I recently saw a news report that said McDonald’s and Burger King get their beef from Argentina. The report said that the restaurant claims of 100% pure beef is true, it is 100% beef but very low quality beef. The report went on to state that one burger could have meat from up to 100 cows, and so your chances of getting meat from a sick or diseased cow were much greater than from a burger made from domestic beef.
I can get a similar char-broiled flavor in my Weber Gas Grill. Below the grate and above the gas flames are stainless steel strips about 2-inches wide and 2-feet long with gaps between them. The gas flames heat up the metal strips. Juices from the meat drip down and are vaporized on the hot metal, smoke comes back up and helps to flavor the meat. Any un-vaporized juice/grease drips on through to a drip pan. The metal strips are called “flavorizer bars” by Weber. They also make them in porcelain over steel.
This is about 100% all beef or whatever they call 100%. By law all the meat that is in the burger has to be 100% beef. But you can still add whatever filler is needed. It will still be called 100% beef. Loopholes in wording. Both McDonalds and Burger King use fillers. Cut a patty in half and you will see. From the way it looks Burger King uses some type of oatmeal, not sure about McDonalds though. Look at some orange juice. They claim, “100% Florida Orange Juice”, small print,“made from concentrate.” OK now they use 100% Florida oranges but they also add water because its from concentrate. And I know some of you will probably say well they only took out the water so they are just adding it back. Well sort of true. They do take out the water but a lot of the chemicals(flavouring) are also taken out. Some of the companies even add sugar and vitamins to their juice and they are still able to call it 100% orange juice.
KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken - Beef Hamburger from the 1960’s
In the mid to late 1960’s The Colonel sold beef hamburgers.
I remember buying them at KFC’s in northern and southern California.
It was a single patty burger between griddle toasted hamburger buns.
Condiments included slices of fresh tomato, white onions sliced into thin rings,
a leaf of iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island dressing. You could order french
fries on the side.
Ingredients:
1 pound lean ground beef
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
6 plain hamburger buns - toasted on the griddle
1/3 to 1/2 cup of Thousand Island Dressing (recipe below)
2 medium tomatoes, sliced
6 leaves of iceberg lettuce, large pieces torn to fit bun (not chopped)
1 medium white onion, sliced into thin separated rings
Directions:
Preheat a frying pan over medium heat on stove top.
Divide the 1 pound of ground beef into six even portions. Form into patties the size of the bun.
Lightly salt and pepper each patty and cook for 2 or 3 minutes on the first side.
Flip the patties over and cook for an additional 2 or 3 minutes until a meat
thermometer reads 165 degrees F in the center of each hamburger patty.
After cooking the hamburgers, remove excess fat from pan and lightly toast the top and bottom buns on the skillet.
Here’s how to assemble a KFC Burger:
-Spread a tablespoon or two of Thousand Island dressing on bottom toasted bun.
-Place a tomato slice or two on bottom bun.
-Add iceberg lettuce leaves on top of tomato slices.
-Place cooked hamburger patty on lettuce leaves.
-Top with a couple of rings of sliced white onions.
-Cover with toasted top bun.
Repeat 5 more times.
Makes 6 KFC Hamburgers.
Thousand Island Dressing
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbsp ketchup
1 1/2 tsp distilled white vinegar
2 tsp Confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp Sweet Pickle Relish
1 tsp finely minced white onion
dash of salt and black pepper to taste
Stir all ingrediants together. Mix well.
Makes about 1/3 cup of Thousand Island Dressing.
I think this is a step in the right direction for figuring out this smoky taste.
I have been to Burger King many times in my life and only one of those times did I get a burger that was way over-smoked in flavor. I’ve always loved the regular smokiness of the patties but this one time it tasted nu-naturely strong.
This leads me to believe that flavoring is added to the meat to achieve the smoky taste and that one time I happened to get a batch of meat that something somehow went wrong.
I’ve been all over the internet and have seen testimonies of people that have worked at Burger Kings restaurants that all say the same thing… It’s 100% beef and it gets run through the conveyor belt… yada yada. What everyone is overlooking here is that NONE of the people that have worked at the restaurant locations that have given testimony have worked at Burger King’s meat patty producing plant.
So. What goes on at Burger King’s meat producing plant??? Yes all of the box’s of patties delivered to the store locations say 100% beef… but they are talking about the meat, NOT the spices or artificial flavorings. The meat itself is 100% the byproduct of a cow, and that’s all that 100% means. If someone can communicate with someone who has worked in the BK meat plant, then we could maybe find our answer. I believe this is also done in the plant to keep the smoky flavoring more of a corporate secret, which is smart and makes sense.
And who knows??? Maybe the artificial flavoring that is added to the meat in the processing plant is manufactured and combined with many ingredients somewhere else, so when the “spice” arrives at the meat plant even the workers there don’t know what exactly is in that “spice”. The workers just add it to the raw meat. It’s mixed in and pattied, frozen, and shipped to the store locations.
This has to be close to the answer because of the experience I spoke of at the beginning of my post here. The smoky flavor I had that one time was unnaturally smoky and I’ve been cooking for 20 years in restaurants and have never tasted something like that without some kind of flavor enhancer going on. And that over smoky flavor most surely did not come from a machine with a conveyor belt flame alone.
I worked for a Food Company…and did testing for the Government labeling.
I tested fast food restraunts and most hi-class restraunts food products for 18 years.
On you descussion about McD’s and BK…my observation (and their meats were bought in the USA not Argentina…then anyway).
BK always ordered the cream of the crop…best of the meats (wheather it was chicken, beef or pork products).
McD’s orders the crud left over after all other restraunt have ordered their meats (wheather it be chicken or beef or pork)…cheap, cheap, cheap.
Man, I was really hoping someone would have the answer(s) to this.
Hey Guys,
all we got to do is find the flavour right?
So be creative. What I can certainly say is that
just charring whatever grade of beef doesnt
produce that flavour. If so, you could use some really really cheap patties from walmart and you would -at least- taste something like that flavour.
But thats not the case. They all taste not only unsmoky but also … very bad. Like cheap meat. The whopper doesnt. So it must be something else.
So we gotta find a mixture of grade, sweetener, salt and a liquid smoke, or even a traditional smoking technique. Its not about how they invented the flavour in their labs… its how we can achieve something similar. So be creative!
yes we are aware that in the restaurants nothing else is done to the meat. To find out if the flavour is IN the meat or in the broiling process… the only way would be to get some frozen patties and cook them at home.
but back to being creative in finding a solution: as important… if you reached any progress in any way, post it here. together we can be mich more efficient.
just btw: I still also habe no way in producing the exact same pickles as on the whopper. They have a salty taste like salt dill pickles but also a distinct sweetness … 
lots of work ahead lets go!
Hey guys!
I just wanted to check (few years later) if anyone got lucky getting a little step closer to the sweet smoky BK-Meat taste??
Mike
I also thought about this… the only thing that stands against that is:
IF the broiler is cleaned at all from times to times … the coming batches would taste absolutely
different. I am not sure if this is something BK would risk then. After all, all they do is taking care
to maintain this particular flavour worldwide every day…
“…Burger King wanted to add a smoked flavor to some of their food, so Red Arrow came up with a way to do that by burning sawdust, capturing the smell and and bottled it in water…”(cite Eric Schlosser, Why McDonald’s French Fries Taste So Good)…
…in 1956, Dr. Clifford Hollenbock created and later patented the process of producing smoke flavoring by burning hardwood …
…in 1957 the Whopper was introduced.
So the only question is: which Water Soluble Condensed Natural Smoke Red Arrow is selling to BK:
anyone tried their products? Here should be the answer, unless Red Arrow is selling the BK smoke exclusively to BK.