Now, we’re making a nice meat paste. Meat Paste was my nickname in high school. ‘Cause in the locker room, you just, yeah I smelled like meat paste and I would get it, nevermind. Hey, welcome to Mythical kitchen where dreams become food. It’s the most wonderful time of year, McRib season. A time when carolers go door to door, singing, “Fa la la la la” loving it. A time when we adorn trees with little strings of strangely shapen meat. A time when we all sit around the fire with steaming mugs of barbecue sauce, reflecting on those whom we love. But, this McRib seasons got me a little extra inspired. It’s got me thinking outside the bun, because there’s a question I have to ask and I have to answer, and you have to sit there and go, “what the hell is he talking about?” And that question is, what if Taco Bell made a McRib? No, that’s not rhetorical. I’m asking you. I need you to answer. You’d probably be like, “Well, it’d probably be like in a little taco-y thing.” We’ve broken the recipe down into three easy steps. You can find the time codes right there. We also got a full-written recipe down in the description. Let’s make a run for the border. That was a racist slogan that Taco Bell had for like a couple of years. And I realize I shouldn’t– Just ’cause they had a racist slogan doesn’t mean I should repeat it. Let’s live mas. That also seems racist now though, you know? ‘Cause it’s really– It was a white guy that stole like a Mexican recipe. Let’s come up with the non-racist slogan for Taco Bell. Tacos Rule. Let’s get cooking. Alright, so what if Taco Bell made a McRib? We should probably go over the inspiration for this question, ’cause there’s a couple of factors at play here. One, McDonald’s basically answered the question, “What if the Big Mac was a taco?” when they did the Mac Snack Wrap. And, then, Taco Bell they got a little out of pocket, when they made the chicken sandwich taco. So, they took the chicken sandwich formula for multiple different fast food places, including McDonald’s, and they put a chicken strip with mayonnaise and pickles inside of a weird little taco bun. So, what would stop Taco Bell from taking the success of the McRib and putting that into their outside the bun formula, where they kind of crammed it back inside the bun. So, that’s what we’re gonna answer today. And I’m gonna answer that with a giant hunk of mystery pork. So, we’re just gonna add that to a stand mixer right now. Uh, oh. Uh, oh. Raw pork. No one touch me, I’m gonna give you, what’s it called? Trichinosis. I’m the Trichinosis man. So, what is actually in a McRib? If you look at the ingredients list on Taco Bell, there are only five ingredients in the pork patty. It’s literally pork, water, salt, dextrose, and Rosemary extract. However, what exactly is pork? So, pork is pig meat to some. But, what part of the pig is actually going into a McRib? According to NPR, it is a by-product of restructured meat technology, where they actually scald stomach, and heart, and other parts of the pig, and extract the proteins from it. However, in a video put out by McDonald’s, they show a whole pork butts being thrown into a giant grinder. Maybe they just missed the scalded stomachs and all that. That said, I got some mystery meat pork here we’re gonna blend this up with some spices to try and make it a little Taco Bell-y. We’re gonna take some signature Taco Bell flavors. First off, I’m just gonna add sugar to it, ’cause sugar makes pork taste good. And, then, we’re gonna drop in MSG, ’cause that’s just gonna sort of amp up the pork flavor in that. We’re gonna add some salt in there. It’s essentially like a sausage. If you bite into a McRib, it tastes like a sausage patty. And, so, that’s kind of what we’re going for. We’re adding in onion powder, a little bit of Chipotle chili powder to get some of that smoke. We’re adding some cumin because Taco Bell really does taste like cumin. We got garlic powder and then, oh yeah, bourbon. No, it’s liquid smoke. I’m just gonna add some liquid smoke in there, ’cause I’m gonna try and make this like kind of Chipotle barbecue theme. ‘Cause I feel like that is the direction that Taco Bell would go in. Now, we’re gonna spin up the pork. We’re gonna try and really mix all the seasonings in there, and get this into a nice, smooth pork paste to then stab into our McRib patties. Also, Taco Bell’s never really had pork on the menu, which is weird, because it’s such a cheap animal to produce. I mean they got bacon and sausage on the breakfast menu, but, then, they like Del tacos does carnitas and stuff like that. Taco Bell’s never done it. And I feel like if they were to do it, they would do this as a massive PR stunt to just mess with McDonald’s. And honestly, if you’re trying to actually make a McRib at home, this would be a really good direction to go with it. Just mix a bunch of spices. I forgot to put this in it. We’re gonna add a little bit of flour just to solidify it up and absorb some of those juices, so we don’t like lose too much of that to the cooking process. There we go. Now we’re making a nice meat paste. Meat Paste was my nickname in high school. ‘Cause in the locker room, you just, yeah, I smelled like meat paste and I would get it, nevermind. There we go, now we’ve got a nice meat paste going. Take, oh wait, what are you supposed to do? You unhook this, and then you take it out. We’re learning. Alright, so, now we have to start forming. Did we get a new stand mixer? Dude, good for us. A little early Hanukkah gift for us. Alright, so, now we’re gonna form our little meat, which is right here. I’m trying to go with the chicken sandwich taco formula. And a lot of people would ask, “Hey, you have a podcast all about food debates. Is a chicken sandwich taco a chicken sandwich or taco?” And, I say, “Neither. It’s extinct from Taco Bell. It’s gone. They had like a two week run, and now it’s gone. It was just fine.” Alright, so, we’re gonna kind of go with that. So, I’m gonna try and make a slightly-elongated rib shape here. And, then, we’re gonna put the little bars on it. There is not a single rib that goes into an actual McDonald’s McRib, but I don’t think it’s a knock against it man. Like a lot of people don’t make like a boneless rib sandwich and be like Arby’s right now. They came out with this boneless rib sandwich, and they’re like, “You don’t want pressed and formed pork patties”. I was like, “You don’t know me Arby’s”. Yes, the hell, I do. I don’t want your gross cartilage sinew ribs in your freaking sandwich. Just give me a bucket of that cheese sauce, and let me wash it down with your warm mayonnaise. Arby’s has the best warm mayonnaise in the game. You get the sauce packets that have been warmed by everyone’s hands. It’s that little horseradish mayonnaise. Yeah, and then they got Arby’s sauce, because I don’t think they can legally call it barbecue sauce, ’cause there’s too much corn syrup by weight. That’s just ’cause, I mess with Arby’s. Alright, so, we’re going to form this into a perfect little rectangle. There we go, that’s nice. So, we need this long enough to sort of fit into a taco or like a foldy thing. And, I would like to see this on Taco Bell menus. I think I can be the official spokesperson for this new Taco Bell item. Call it the TacRib. Go down to taco bell, and just get yourself a TacRib, You’ll be like, “when’s the TacRib coming back?” You know, you got to say TacRib with a , like the TacRib We should make a commercial. We should make a TacRib commercial starring me and that way we can actually pitch this to Taco Bell. Starring me? Starring me, yeah. Oh, I’m sorry, does anyone else want to volunteer to be the TacRib spokesperson? No, Trevor, you’re too skinny. No one trusts you. Theo, Nicole you can be backup dancers. You’re gonna be in the background, “Eat the TacRib”. Alright, so, we’re forming little rib bars. Why? ‘Cause this is what ribs look like, so talk to McDonald’s and now Taco Bell. Neil, why do we mold so much meat in this kitchen? This is how my kids are going to grow up. Other kids are going to have like K’NEX and Roblox, and they’re gonna be playing in the meta-verse with Zuckerberg and we’re gonna be like, “My kid he plays and rolls around in raw meat”. Oh, I’m gonna be such a good dad. Alright, one more little meat bar. Alright, Yeah. Well, I don’t know what you all wanted it to look like, but this is what it looks like. We’re going to cook this till it’s like a nice grayish pink. Do you like it? Look, I made you a meat paste. All right. Well, I’m probably gonna make a couple more of these and throw them in the oven at 375 until it’s just nice and wet. So, we got our pork patty figured out. Now, we have to figure out what kind of bread, or tortilla, or vessel Taco Bell would put this on. If we know anything about their chicken sandwich taco, it’s gonna be a gordita, right? That’s basically what they did. They basically made a gordita dough, which is essentially a flatbread, similar to Panera bay for tacos base which is a fascinating history, go Google it, go do some googling. So, I’m gonna take a typical flatbread dough, basically a bread dough without some of the yeast added. And, there’s still yeast in there, I’m just going to punch it out. And, then, my plan here, I want to actually chalupafy this thing. ‘Cause I feel like what better to set off a nice squishy pork patty and spicy barbecue sauce, than some delicious, crispy deep fried dough. And, so, we’re gonna make a really pale flatbread, and, then, we’re gonna go ahead and deep fry that. ‘Cause like, welcome to Taco Bell, baby, we’re deep frying things. So, I’m gonna get this here. I’m gonna roll it out really, really thin, and then punch it into circles, and then kind of hand toss this like pizza dough. I feel like I want to. Yeah, my kids are gonna be slopping around in raw meat and dough. I’m just gonna make a little dumpling factory out of my kids. Alright, There we go. That did nothing. Now, I’m gonna roll it out, alright. We’re trying to roll this really, really thin. We shouldn’t get too much rise on it. Dude, rolling next to a hot griddles tough. Okay. There we go, there we go, there we go. I’ve sort of shot myself in the foot here by playing with so many hot things with my bare hand on the show, ’cause now people think I’m impervious to pain. So, in a video recently, I really burned myself. And, I went “Ow!”, and, people were like, “That’s not Josh, that’s an imposter, he doesn’t feel pain.” I’m like, “I’m a human being.” Now, we’re gonna punch out nice little rounds here. I don’t know why I did. I don’t normally. We got a lot of dough. Alright, now, throw the rest of it in the trash. We’ll say the hey family meal. Nicole, can you make challah out of this? No. We’ll make challah. We’ll make a challah, we’ll make it work. Now, we’ve got these perfectly round. What the hell happened? How did that happen? I’m just gonna roll these out a little bit more to make them nice and circular. Jesus Christ. It’ll work, no it’ll work. Just give me, god dang it. Listen, Taco Bell’s got a whole factory. They got the machines and the matrix, right? They’re making it at the Taco Bell. Okay, it’s just me. You know, just a single dad out here trying his best. Trying not to have his kids slop around in raw meat. You know, just make them happy, thinking outside of the bun. I’m trying to take ’em McRib caroling whenever I can, you know, you string up the ribs on the tinsel. You know, it’s nice, right? We’re just like a family. Trevor, stop laughing at me. Yeah, this is good. Man, alright, hold on. No, this one’s gonna do better. We’re just gonna do better. It’s cause the dough comes, whenever we shoot, the dough comes out of the fridge and it’s hard. Alright, that’s good. Ah damn it! Alright, here just press it. There we go, that’s it here. That’s nice. That seems good. That seems good. Alright, there we go. So, what we’re doing now, we only need two, we can throw this one away. Oh god, it’s getting burnt here. That’s cooked enough. Alright, so, we’re gonna take that, and, then, we’re just going to pop these into this here, thing. And, then, we’re gonna deep fry it to make it a Chalupa. Sound good! Sound good. There we go. I mean actually, shockingly, that’s what I wanted. We got a lot of dough leftover. I mean, I’ll eat it. I’ll eat it raw. I’ll eat it raw to apologize. I thought someone was gonna stop me. May I get up on a soap box for a second? Not only do I want Taco Bello to make McRib, bring back the damn Baja Chalupa. Can we all agree that they should bring? Nobody really knows what made it different, but there was like a pinkish sauce on it they call it Baja sauce. And, it probably tastes like all their other pink sauces. They probably just renamed it to like creamy jalapeno sauce. But I want it back. Why? Because all things from my childhood were better than what I actually remember them being, like Ghostbusters. Hey, that’s a good movie. It’s just fine. So, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take these here flatbeds. Right now, Taco Bell will call these gordita, but then when taco bell deep fries a gordita, it becomes a chalupa. So, presto change-o, we’re gonna dunk it in the oil until it’s a chalupa. Took my grandma, you see the pic of my grandma? I went to pick up my grandma and I was like, “Grandma, you want to go to that nice fish place, get some barramundi?” She goes, “oh no, give me a Supreme Crunch.” I’m like, “it’s called a Crunchwrap Supreme, grandma.” Look, Taco Bell might have the best commercials in the game, but I think we can give them a run for their money, ’cause we do videos good. You know Taco Bell does videos good. I think we can, sort of, show them what we’re made of with our own Taco Bell commercial, right? And the touchstone is the Carl’s Jr. commercials. So, maybe add that in there too. But, we don’t have the budget they do, so we gotta go like old school. We gotta go like those old school Carl’s Jr. commercials where it’s just like a schlubby dude in a T-shirt eating a burger, you know, being a little bit ashamed of himself. And it was just like, “Don’t touch me. I got a hamburger.” Or whatever the slogan was. Yeah, but starring you. I’ll be that schlubby guy, except there’ll be like a cross between the sexy Paris Hilton commercial and the schlubby guy commercial. But, all I know is I’ll be doing some sort of manual labor covered in barbecue sauce. Alright, we got our delicious fried bread, chalupa TacRib shell coming out. We’re gonna– Ow! God, it’s hot. Ow! It’s nice and wet, oil. You know, we got. Looks like an Eggo waffle. It is, it is an Eggo waffle. It’s gonna be good. It’s crispy. It’s nice and crispy. And it’s gonna be good. And it’s something. TacRib’s gonna work. All you naysayers out here, you never believed in the TacRib. You didn’t believe my TacSalad shaker either, where you put a taco salad into a half a cup of Baja blast, and shake it up, and drink with a straw. You don’t believe in that. Let me throw up a little bit my mouth, but once the mayonnaise mixes with the Baja anyways, we’re done. Now, what kind of barbecue sauce does Taco Bell put on the TacRib? Well one, it would probably attack the masculinity of McDonald’s. That’s my theory. That’s why we’re putting some smoked ghost chili in there. ‘Cause Taco Bell’s been doing that lately. They’ll be like, “Rattlesnake fries with scorpion sauce.” As like, a skosh of Trinidad Scorpion in there. And they’re like, “You don’t want any of those sissy fries”. They don’t say that, but that’s the implication. That’s what the commercial has to have too, toxic masculinity. That’s what, that’s how we’re gonna sell the TacRib. So, we’re gonna try and make a pretty true to form barbecue sauce here. Which, if you look at the first three ingredients on any fast food barbecue sauce, it’s gonna be water. It’s gonna be corn syrup. I’m just gonna a whole, yeah. We’re just gonna just drain the bottle in there. Just gonna let that go. I’m gonna rattle it around and get all that corn syrup in there, which honestly, it’s gonna give it a nice, thick body. You know, like me a thick booty sauce. And, then, tomato paste is always going to be found in there. Not a lot of like fresh ingredients per se, but it’s gonna be delicious. And, then, a whole lot of chipotles and adobo. Taco Bell will definitely go with a Chipotle barbecue sauce on this. They had, . I’m sorry, I was eating some of that chalupa dough on the side, and, now, I got the chalupa burps. You know the chalupa burps. They’re some of the most delicious fast food burps, top five at least. Ah geez! We’re gonna add some of that there chipotle is an adobo, which is a really fantastic product you should be cooking with. And, then, natural spices that are caked to the inside of these little bowls, garlic, onion. Gotta finger it out sometimes. And, then, our smoke goes chili don’t breathe. And, then, a little bit of paprika. And now, we’re gonna– Oh, vinegar. I always miss it, ’cause it’s clear. Vinegar, we’re gonna pop that in there. And, then, we’re just gonna blend this up. We’re gonna strain it off right into the pan. Let’s get that heatin’. Alright. No, stop it. Stop. Okay. Now, we’re gonna take this, nice and thick, and we’re just gonna press it through our little sieve right here into the pot. We’re gonna heat that up, and we’re going to reduce it till all the sugars are nice and tight. This is a nice color. This is a color that’s evocative of McDonald’s sauce. It’s got that like bright red hue to it where you’re like, “Hmm, that’s not what most barbecue sauce looks like, but I’m gonna run with it, ’cause it’s not normal barbecue sauce, it’s a McRib barbecue sauce.” So, this is the TacRib barbecue sauce. Yeah, nice and smooth and real syrupy. That’s pretty good. It’s gonna punch you right in the face. Well, alright, we’re just gonna leave it there. Alright, we’re just gonna let this reduce, and, then, we’re gonna sauce up those ribs. We’re gonna put them right in the sauce. And, then, we’re gonna get them into our fried bread. And, then, we’re gonna shoot the world’s greatest commercial. Right? We gotta do it now. We said it, we gotta do it. Why do I feel like we’ve been working so hard cooking, but all we have in front of us is like, I don’t know, a little microwave strip of meat that looks like you got it from a pack at 7-Eleven by the cashier? Well, either way. So, we got our delicious ribwhich patty here. We got our chipotle ghost chili barbecue sauce. That is assaulting the nostrils right now. Imagine this is a drawer at Taco Bell, that’s just kind of underneath the sour cream gun, and they’re just putting it in the sauce. I’m going to take it out of a drawer eventually and pop it in there. Hold on, I got to kind of flip it around to get it nice and wet, ’cause that’s the key to this. There we go, yeah, that’s beautiful. Nice and wet. And, now, we’ve got our chalupa inspired flatbread bun, right here. Hold on, we’re just going to wet this up a little bit more. You don’t want it to be nice and wet. That’s the thing about a McRib, is it’s sopping. I want to ask them to dunk my McRib like French dip style, where they take the whole sandwich and submerge it in the barbecue sauce before adding it to the little box. That’s how I’m going to ask it. Seriously, if you go to McDonald’s and you ask for a double dip, they’ll do it, I think. Alright, so now we’re gonna take that and we’re gonna gently place it into. Hold on. It’s not done yet, You got to get some of the sauce on it. Yeah, there we go. I didn’t make it look fundamentally different, that’s okay. And, now, we’re gonna take– So, what else? Get out of there. What would we adorn this with? Well, I think they’re going to stick to traditional McRib toppings, which is something pickled and then fresh white onion. What we’ve done is we’ve pickled some red jalapenos here, not green ’cause it’s kind of red looking. I don’t know. We’re trying. We’re trying to put ourselves in the minds of Taco Bell here. You know, they gotta do something different. They’re always trying something different. You know, they did that Taco Bell hotel, where like people got married and what not, and it was wild. I’m gonna put some nice little onion shards right there. Not sharts, not onion sharts, but you might get the onion sharts after eating this, fantastic. The onion sharts, they’re a real disease, that affects millions of Americans every day. Now, we’re just gonna put a couple pickled red jalapenos on there, and that’s it. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. This is the TacRib. We got that chipotle ghost chili barbecue sauce. We got our spiced pork patty. We got this delicious chalupa bun. And, honestly, I don’t know if this looks really good to you, but from my angle, this looks really fantastic. I wanna take a bite. I wanna get myself in the mindset. I’m sitting in my car. It’s about 116 degrees in there. I got just Slipknot blaring. I’m so, “Don’t touch me.” Alright, let’s dig in. Double dip. We got to double dip. I just took a really big bite, and it’s really spicy. That’s punching you right in the mouth. That’s giving you a scorpion kick to the temple, like Georges St-Pierre. He still around? He still doing stuff? It’s so funny how much this tastes like a McRib, but it’s actually better. If you never just taken a deep fried dough product and wrap that around a McRib, you are absolutely missing out. Or, you just make those thing at home. This is an improvement on the McRib. It’s an improvement on the chicken sandwich taco that Taco Bell came out with. Now that I eat this, this is actually turning me into a believer that this should be a real thing. This is tasty. It’s like nothing Taco Bell’s ever had. You know how we can show them, Ben, that they need this? World’s greatest commercial right now, I’m all jacked up on ghost chili and processed pork meat, man. We gotta do this. If we don’t do this, I quit. If it doesn’t get matte in your chest hair, you don’t deserve to be there. Stop looking at me. I’m sucking down a TacRib. Thank you so much for stopping by Mythical Kitchen. We got new episodes for you every week. We got new episodes of our podcast, “A Hot Dog is a Sandwich”, every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Hit us up on Instagram, @MYTHICALKITCHEN, with pictures of your mythical dishes under #dreamsbecomefood. See ya’ll next time. Hey, cook up your own feast while wearing the Mythical Kitchen apron, available now at MYTHICAL.COM.