Burger King

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Re: Burger King

Post by DFWRetaileWatcher »

kr.abs.swy wrote: April 23rd, 2022, 9:26 pm To be clear, just about everything on sale at a Burger King has been frozen -- at least that was the case 20+ years ago when I worked at one. Whopper patties, chicken patties, fish patties -- all frozen. French fries, onion rings -- all frozen. Egg patties, sausage, bacon -- all frozen. Chicken Tenders -- frozen. Biscuits -- arrived in preformed frozen patties and were baked each morning. The apple pies -- frozen. We would pull a day or two worth, unthaw them, then warm them in the microwave when they were ordered.

Lettuce was pre-bagged and arrived in the store already shredded.

Cheese of course was not frozen.

Bread arrived from a local-ish bakery and wasn't frozen.

Tomatoes were sliced in store. I believe cucumbers for the salads were also.

At least then, technical procedures were that all beef patties had to be microwaved, even if it came directly out of the broiler and skipped the holding steamer. Ironically if you got a patty that was fresh out of the broiler, you could end up with a really soggy bun after it came out of the microwave because the juices from the patty would just annihilate the bun when it was microwaved.

The mayo had enough preservative that it did not require any refrigeration whatsoever. (It went back in the fridge overnight, but could sit out on the burger boards all day long). Same for the sauce for the Big King and the tartar sauce for the fish sandwich.

On occasion, we would run out of onion rings. It wasn't unheard of to take some money from petty cash, drive down to Albertsons, buy a few bags of their frozen onion rings, and toss them in the fryer. We really didn't sell that many onion rings. Maybe something like one order of onion rings for every 25 orders of fries.

DFWRetaileWatcher wrote: April 23rd, 2022, 5:47 pm
Alpha8472 wrote: April 23rd, 2022, 4:18 am I saw videos online about someone who had never tried Burger King before. His reaction was that the Burger tasted like a sauce burger. You could not taste much of the meat at all.

The mayo and sauces are out of control. They have lost the flavor of the meat. Perhaps it is to mask the frozen meat flavor or the microwave taste. When you microwave meat, the flavor is altered versus flame broiling.

The onion rings are so processed. They have a coating on them that is like a manufactured shell. It is too sweet and artificial. Other restaurants fry real fresh onions. Does Burger King get their onion rings prefrozen?
To answer your question about the Onion Rings, they are prefrozen, at least that was the case when I worked there over 10 years ago.
By the time I started working there, the tomatoes came pre-sliced.

As far as the meat, I understand the microwave thing is at the discretion of the individual store/franchise. Not all Burger King locations do it, and it's not a corporate directive. That said, at my Burger King location (also franchised) in Metro Detroit, we were also in fact trained to microwave the patties for about 30 seconds before finishing the sandwhich & serving it. This accomplished 2 things, that being to ensure the meat was fully cooked (without that spongy texture) and also to drain the juices so the burger isn't runny.

I'm almost positive the Burger King locations here in DFW do *NOT* microwave their patties, because I always get meat with a spongy texture and wet buns.

Everything else you say is spot on though.
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Re: Burger King

Post by veteran+ »

Yummy healthful food for sure!

;)
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Re: Burger King

Post by Super S »

Burger King has potential to be good if they paid more attention to the quality of their food. But as many have shifted more toward cook-to-order, Burger King has stuck to their old ways.

After the last two times I ordered breakfast sandwiches at Burger King, I am convinced that the entire sandwich was heated from frozen in the microwave, judging by how the outside was hot but the inside was cold.

Although I order burgers plain or just with cheese due to food allergies, the patties seem to me to be reheated.

Burger King can actually be very good on the rare occasion that something is actually cooked (not microwaved) fresh. But that is becoming increasingly rare. And their food is not any better than it was 20 years ago....in my opinion they have actually gotten worse.
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Re: Burger King

Post by kr.abs.swy »

Super S, my knowledge is 20+ years old. I can't speak to current procedures.

20+ years ago, Burger King had breakfast croissan'wiches and breakfast biscuits, with either ham, bacon or sausage on them. So you basically had six sandwich choices (or the French toast sticks and Cinni-Minis) for breakfast.

The biscuits arrived in the store pre-formed and frozen. They were baked in a special oven daily.

The eggs arrived in frozen patty form (literally we never received fresh eggs -- we would have had no way to cook them).

The cheese arrived refrigerated.

The sausage arrived frozen. It was warmed in the fryers (yes, fried sausage).

The bacon arrived pre-cooked. The only in-restaurant cooking of the bacon was in the microwave.

I assume that the ham came in frozen and was thawed, but don't remember that for sure.

After the breakfast sandwiches were assembled and wrapped, the entire sandwich was microwaved. They didn't arrive in the restaurant already assembled like a c-store breakfast sandwich. We didn't have the option to order a pre-assembled Jimmy Dean-style sandwich.

I have no idea what may have changed since then ... what I suspect may have happened with your sandwich with the cold inside was that they may have put too many in the microwave at the same time. But that's just a wild guess. At the time, as I recall, our microwaves maxed out at three breakfast sandwiches. I could definitely imagine someone making six at a time and trying to microwave them all at once. That probably would have kept the egg and sausage from getting fully heated (depending on how long the sausage had been in holding). There wouldn't be any health risk -- everything was fully cooked already (albeit in a different state). You would just end up with a partially cold sandwich.

Super S wrote: April 24th, 2022, 2:23 pm Burger King has potential to be good if they paid more attention to the quality of their food. But as many have shifted more toward cook-to-order, Burger King has stuck to their old ways.

After the last two times I ordered breakfast sandwiches at Burger King, I am convinced that the entire sandwich was heated from frozen in the microwave, judging by how the outside was hot but the inside was cold.

Although I order burgers plain or just with cheese due to food allergies, the patties seem to me to be reheated.

Burger King can actually be very good on the rare occasion that something is actually cooked (not microwaved) fresh. But that is becoming increasingly rare. And their food is not any better than it was 20 years ago....in my opinion they have actually gotten worse.
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Re: Burger King

Post by cjd »

storewanderer wrote: April 21st, 2022, 11:15 pm I received some coupons again from Burger King this week. The back of the coupon page has a new $5 meal with a Double Whopper Jr., Small Fry, Small Drink, and 4 Chicken Nuggets for $5. That sounds very familiar to a Wendy's Biggie Bag with a Double Stack.
Interesting. I may have to try that, it sounds pretty similar to the meal they were offering 2+ years ago.
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Re: Burger King

Post by cjd »

All these posts about procedures and warming things up. I do have to wonder, is there any temperature checks done in these places? I know with cooking meats and even the french fries out of the fryer that these items are supposed to reach 165 degrees to be considered fully cooked and then hot held at 140 degrees or higher in the warmers. This is what the health department requirements are and what is being checked, but I have never noticed this ever being done in an establishment. And as quickly as things move I don't see how they would have time to check.

Most of the food I am served in any of these places does not seem to be at these temperatures, although I realize burgers will cool once the condiments and veggies are put on. I know places like school cafeterias and hospital cafeterias are often pretty strict about this and keep temperature logs, but restaurants I've never really seen it done.

It doesn't bother me, but I've just always wondered the procedure on this, or if this kind of food safety stuff is taught to employees. I've never worked in a restaurant.
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Re: Burger King

Post by storewanderer »

cjd wrote: April 24th, 2022, 8:34 pm

It doesn't bother me, but I've just always wondered the procedure on this, or if this kind of food safety stuff is taught to employees. I've never worked in a restaurant.
Typically there is an hourly checklist (similar to a restroom check log) where someone is supposed to ensure the holders are all holding these temperatures. You usually accomplish that by taking a temperature reading of food in the holder. But I think some places just measure the temperature inside the holder. Some of the more advanced chains like McDonalds have the holders set up in a way that they internally measure temperature based on the item that is in the bin (they are supposed to program the bin to the specific item) and if something goes wrong it will make non-stop noise until it is either addressed or shut off entirely. By the time the burger is removed from the holding bin warmer and put on the bun together with cold condiments the temperature will drop a lot based on the cold condiments.

Lot of supposed tos in my above paragraph... let's center the above paragraph to say that is how it is supposed to work (there I go again) in the US.

If I were writing how it works in Asia I would remove "supposed to" from every spot in the above paragraph... because it actually happens that way there at these US-based chains.
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Re: Burger King

Post by kr.abs.swy »

Caveat that my info is 20+ years old ... we had a "HAACP" checklist that each shift manager was supposed to run through. It was a written sheet of paper where we recorded a temperature from a burger that had come off the broiler, in the steamers, of the friers, in the fry bin, etc., that we took with a digital thermometer.

It was on paper, so there was nothing really to stop someone from "pencil-whipping" it and just making up numbers. I tried to be diligent (food safety, obviously) but absolutely saw managers pencil-whipping the HAACP checklist.

This was something like once per shift (I don't remember exactly -- maybe morning, lunch, afternoon and evening) -- definitely not hourly. We did not test every burger patty, although that was arguably unnecessary because they are in the broiler for a fixed amount of time and there is no way to accidentally pull them out early.

Once upon a time, I was taking a temperature at the broiler at around 2 in the afternoon and a customer who was too antsy for his sandwich got inpatient and told me I wasn't a manager, I was a "stander-arounder." I was just trying to keep everyone's food safe. It was one of my earlier life lessons to be careful when you judge things you don't understand.
storewanderer wrote: April 24th, 2022, 9:44 pm
cjd wrote: April 24th, 2022, 8:34 pm

It doesn't bother me, but I've just always wondered the procedure on this, or if this kind of food safety stuff is taught to employees. I've never worked in a restaurant.
Typically there is an hourly checklist (similar to a restroom check log) where someone is supposed to ensure the holders are all holding these temperatures. You usually accomplish that by taking a temperature reading of food in the holder. But I think some places just measure the temperature inside the holder. Some of the more advanced chains like McDonalds have the holders set up in a way that they internally measure temperature based on the item that is in the bin (they are supposed to program the bin to the specific item) and if something goes wrong it will make non-stop noise until it is either addressed or shut off entirely. By the time the burger is removed from the holding bin warmer and put on the bun together with cold condiments the temperature will drop a lot based on the cold condiments.

Lot of supposed tos in my above paragraph... let's center the above paragraph to say that is how it is supposed to work (there I go again) in the US.

If I were writing how it works in Asia I would remove "supposed to" from every spot in the above paragraph... because it actually happens that way there at these US-based chains.
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Re: Burger King

Post by Brian Lutz »

I don't know how well these procedures are being followed now, but from what I've heard a lot of this was done in response to the fallout from the Jack In The Box E. coli poisoning outbreak in 1993, and the adoption of strict food safety protocols is considered to be one of the major reasons that JITB was able to recover from the incident.
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Re: Burger King

Post by Romr123 »

exactly--JITB poisoned people b/c they relied on their "operations manual" rather than taking actual readings.

I was a mystery shopper at KFC 35 years ago and there were temperature standards for each product (we had 5 mins past leaving the store to record temperatures). Cole slaw needed to be at or below 45 degrees--we were instructed to use the lid to pack the slaw in the cup around the thermometer in case it missed (which it could do if it were just made/chopped with not-very-cold heads of cabbage and room-temperature dressing....they have since moved to commissary-chopped vegetables at a minimum). From time to time they would get it too cold (range needed to be 30 to 45 degrees) and it would be frozen and would get soggy and unpleasant.
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