No Need For A McDouble With Our Extra Meaty Copycat McDonald's Hamburger Recipe

While copycat recipes are obviously intended to mimic a certain restaurant menu item, when it comes to fast food, there's generally room for a little improvement. This is certainly the case when it comes to DIY McDonald's hamburgers — it's not likely you'll be making them out of necessity, as most Americans are within just a few miles of one of the chain's billions and billions of locations. (Okay, there aren't nearly that many, but they are pretty ubiquitous.) It won't necessarily be cheaper to make them at home, either. What you can do, however, is control what goes into your burger as well as the size of the finished product.

Developer Angela Latimer says her McDonald's hamburger copycat is pretty close to the original, flavor-wise, calling it "a good blind taste test winner." She does note, however, that her recipe results in "a slightly larger burger patty," which she says is "more filling" than McDonald's single-patty burgers. Still, she only uses 2 ounces of meat for this burger, so she suggests you make more than one burger at a time if you want a more substantial meal. Another option is to augment the amount of meat to build an even bigger burger.

As long as you're going to the trouble of recreating a McDonald's-style burger in your own kitchen, you might as well make it exactly how you like, which includes experimenting with different ingredients and toppings. If you're looking to include more lean meat in your diet, you can swap out the ground beef for turkey or chicken, while you can also swap in a plant-based burger substitute to recreate the McPlant — a menu item no longer available at McDonald's in the U.S. (with the exception of select locations in California and Texas).

Another way to change up your copycat(ish) Mickey D's burger is to swap out the toppings to suit your preferences. You could, for example, use red onion in place of white or sauteed onion instead of raw. If you'd like to turn this plain burger into a cheeseburger, you can forego the McDonald 's-style slice of processed cheese and opt for melted cheddar instead. If you add a few slices of bacon and some pickled jalapeños, you'll have an upgraded version of the cheesy jalapeño bacon burger that has also disappeared from the chain's menu after being added as an all-too-short limited-time offer. You might also want to duplicate some of McDonald's overseas offerings that aren't unavailable in the U.S., such as Japan's teriyaki-sauced patty made with ground pork or the Antipodean Big Brekkie topped with bacon, cheese, egg, hash browns, and barbecue sauce.