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Ex-chef reveals the 'magic' McDonald's seasoning with just two common ingredients

Home> Lifestyle> Food & Drink

Published 20:31 30 May 2025 GMT+1

Ex-chef reveals the 'magic' McDonald's seasoning with just two common ingredients

Former Maccies chef Mike Haracz said no one believed him when he told them

Joe Harker

Joe Harker

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A former chef has claimed he knows what the 'magic' McDonald's seasoning is, and that it's made up of just two pretty basic things you'd find in your kitchen.

Mike Haracz says he was a McDonald's chef until 2019, and in a recent video on TikTok he answered a fan question about the 'magical seasoning' which goes on its burgers.

The chef agreed that the seasoning was indeed 'magic' and claimed that nobody ever believed him when he told them the truth, noting that this seasoning was used for 'the tender ones' which meant that a lot of the burgers you could order from the fast food giant had it.

"It's just salt and pepper, there's literally no other things in it," the former McDonald's chef explained of what goes into the chain's burger seasoning.

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He encouraged anyone who thought he wasn't being honest to go and get the answer out of McDonald's through legal means or by buying one of its burgers and getting it tested as a sample.

They call it 'Grill Seasoning', it's actually just two standard ingredients (Getty Stock Photo)
They call it 'Grill Seasoning', it's actually just two standard ingredients (Getty Stock Photo)

Haracz said that to get the mixture right you'd use 86 percent salt and 14 percent pepper, and that if you were trying to measure it out then it came out at about a teaspoon each since salt was much heavier than pepper.

To be honest, it's not like McDonald's is keeping this a secret that you would need to ask one of their chefs about, it's all very publicly available information.

If you look on the ingredients list for one of its burgers it will tell you 'a little salt and pepper is added to season after cooking'.

Meanwhile, over on the chain's US website it calls this 'Grill Seasoning', and lists only salt and black pepper as the ingredients for it.

Haracz pointed out that McDonald's is legally required to make available the list of ingredients that makes up its food, so it's not some deeply buried corporate secret.

86 percent salt, 14 percent pepper, or so the chef says (Getty Stock Photo/VV Shots)
86 percent salt, 14 percent pepper, or so the chef says (Getty Stock Photo/VV Shots)

Even that lot over at KFC with its blend of 11 herbs and spices can't actually keep it a total secret, either in terms of the ingredients used or the amount you're supposed to put together to mix it properly.

It does help give fried chicken a certain mystique.

As for some other not-so-secret secrets, McDonald's once sold a 'McPloughman's' back in 1991 which didn't turn out to be all that much of a success.

LADbible has contacted McDonald's for comment.

Featured Image Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Topics: McDonalds, Food And Drink

Joe Harker
Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

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@MrJoeHarker

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