The McRib McMuffin (and the MaccaRib)

get ready to be tiktok famous, dickholes

Hi, clowns!

I got my inspiration for this week’s edition of the newsletter from Instagram, of all places.

I was mindlessly clicking through my Instagram Stories, when I stumbled upon a post from my food pal, Bill Oakley. If you’re not familiar with him, you should follow him there—he’s a TV writer and producer, most famous for a show you might have seen called The Simpsons.

His other show, Mission Hill, is great too. Also, if you’re a fan of his, consider joining his online food club, the Steamed Hams Society, where you can engage in Simpsons conversation and obsess over food. No, he did not pay me to write this, though Bill, if you’re reading, COUGH UP THE SIMOLEANS.

He and I are both into learning about fast food, and he recently shared a post from someone showing a curious McDonald’s sandwich—from Australia. It was of a McRib, but not just any McRib.

This was the McRib Deluxe.

Apparently our friends Down Under have their own variant of the weird stamped-out barbecue pork patty sandwich. (Calling it a “variant” sort of makes it sound like a McRib is a disease, which it very well might be.)

It starts with a regular McRib, that seasonal spongy pork patty dunked in barbecue sauce, which is then topped with raw onions and pickles before it gets tucked into a mini sub bun. But then it goes…deluxe. And at McDonald’s, when you call something “deluxe,” that means, get this, there’s vegetables on it. Jesus fuck!

This international sibling of the McRib is also dressed with American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and what they call McChicken sauce, which I think is just mayonnaise (though I’m getting rumbles that it might be something slightly different). My first thought was, “Man, people in different countries get all the cool fast food shit. Why can’t we get that here?”

Then I realized that, wait, we have all of those ingredients here too. Couldn’t I just go walk into McDonald’s and custom-order a McRib Deluxe for myself? And why don’t you ever hear about people messing around with the McRib in general? There’s mindless TikTok videos hacking practically every other item on McDonald’s menu, but for some reason, social media influencers seem to have generally left the McRib alone.

Until today.

The gears in my head started turning slowly. Then I thought to myself: Of all the things I could mash up with a McRib, why couldn’t it be breakfast-related? Who said I couldn’t fix myself a McRib, say, McMuffin?

If this was going to work, it would all come down to timing.