It’s return of the Mac. And Cheetos! Mark Morrison 1996 classic, educate yourselves. – [Josh] In 2016, the nation experienced a massive craze for deep fried cheesy sticks. Today, Trevor and I will attempt to recreate the iconic Burger King Mac n’ Cheetos. Fried sticks of cheesy macaroni noodles that are heavily sprinkled with crispy Cheetos powder. Back in the day, they were an instant favorite. The limited edition snack sold out in just a few weeks. But, what if I told you that Burger King stole my recipe for Mac n’ Cheetos back in 2015? Yeah, you bet I’m gonna get into that. Even though the Burger King Mac n’ Cheetos were tragically phased out, today, we’re bringing them back. It’s time for Past Foods! Got em. One take. One try. I told you, dude. Self belief. Freaked that out, though. Spirit of will, man. Freaked this out, man. Just keep holding it. ((Intro Music)) I’ll intro it. I’ll intro it. ((Laughing)) Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo! Well, these are ingredients that you use to make Mac n’ Cheetos. We got cheese, we got mac, we got Cheetos. But that’s not what this is, this Trevor and his ability to play a tiny macaroni noodle filled with cheese as an instrument and then spit all over the place. And this is about David versus Goliath. Trevor, this is about the little guy taking on a multi national corporation, except the way this story ends is if Goliath just took a big old dump on David’s head. I posted a recipe on my now defunct food blog culinarybrodown.com, that yes at some point did get taken over by a Russian porn bot site. And I didn’t know how to get it back, so I kind of just killed the blog. Buy the cookbook at Amazon. But I posted a recipe for chicharrón crusted mac and cheese fries with Sriracha stout chili. Fast forward three months, the vulgar chef Kyle Marcoux on his YouTube channel posts a video for mac and cheese Cheeto fries that he specifically shouts me out in the description saying that Josh Scherer made these on his blog, Culinary Bro-down. Fast forward another nine months, Trevor. Burger King comes out in June 2016 with the Mac n’ Cheeto Fries. Nine months is more than enough to develop a very simple recipe and then get that spread out to your many thousands of locations. They never once credited Kyle, who credited me. They never gave him anything. Kyle is quoted. What the crap? Kyle is quoted in Fox News articles saying that they stole his recipe. And all he wanted was credit. Kyle didn’t even want money. I deserve better than the Burger King. Big, powerful monarch, Trevor. He’s coming down, he’s just, he’s crushing the little guy! I hate the Burger King! So now we make these, not, not in effigy, but in spite. Trevor, today we rage against the dying of the light in a fail state monarchy. By creating these Mac n’ Cheetos with our bare hands, the proletariat shall rise! Burger King, your bones will be ground to dust and people will forget your name! You ready to get cooking? Yeah, let’s do it. ((Music)) We’re trying to kind of mimic the industrial process that Burger King probably would have used for this. But before we do that, Trevor, tell them about the aprons. The aprons, this is, life’s too short to cook on medium. That’s what the rat from Ratatouille says. Ratatouille from Ratatouille. He says something like that. And now it’s on an apron. He doesn’t say something like that. He says exactly that, except he says it in French, which translates to Trevor, what? ((Broken French)) How do you say cook? How do you say? Beni, beni, beni. At mythical.com Go to Mythical.com and buy an apron. Speaking of which, we got a scorching hot pan. I hear the sizzle when the evaporated milk goes in. Oh my God, that just evaporated more, am I right? I got him. Okay, so we’re putting in the evaporated milk. We’re adding in some sort of processed cheese. We got this here Velveeta. You want a little nub of Velveeta to keep it going? God, no, I don’t. Why? Come on, dude. You just pack, dude you just take the. Check this out, what you do. Take this, and then you just go. Pack it right there. Ew! Gross! So we got the Velveeta going in there, we’re gonna put in a bunch of cheddar. This should all melt properly together, but while this is cold, I’m actually going to add a little bit of xanthan gum. Xanthan gum, common thickener you find in a lot of industrial foods. Foods? Foods? Gum? Foods? Okay, I have a question. How, so, how are we getting revenge on the Burger King through this? Like most revenge plots, not thought out too well, if we’re being honest. If we’re being honest, because ultimately you’ll find that in the process of getting revenge, you sort of healed yourself just by sort of ideating it and I think ultimately that’s what we’re doing right here. This is you know, conciliation. This is healing. I started therapy. I’ve done one session now. Nice. And I’ve learned so much. That’s really awesome. You have childhood trauma and I’m like, you must listen to the podcast. Check out A Hot Dog is a Sandwich wherever you get podcast. Okay, how, how can I get revenge on the Burger King then? That’s it, what I mean. Have you seen The Count of Monte Cristo? Yeah, well I. Or read it cause it’s a book. Yeah, it’s a long book too and I have read it. Reading is for losers. I really like reading. Okay, I’m gonna twerk on it. What are you currently reading? Because it’s like maybe that’s, it’s like disrespectful so it’s like, this is, bet owned, Burger King. Alright, so the Velveeta and the cheddar cheese, these are melting in there. We’re doing a pretty basic mac and cheese, but then this is gonna go through several, several more processes. Xanthan gum’s getting it nice and thick, because we need this to hold up in the fryer. So true. Boom, cheddar cheese powder, because these things were unnaturally cheesy. I ate the Mac n’ Cheeto fries, you eat them? Uh, no. They came out when Burger King was making everything into fries. By everything I mean, chicken and these. They were perfectly good, but like, do you really want to go to a fast food restaurant and, eat deep fried mac and cheese? No. Turns out most people kind of said no, but again, they didn’t sell out at the time. I’m gonna add onion powder, garlic powder, some white pepper in there. That’s good. There it comes. Dude, I love. And then MSG, MSG. Trevor, bless it. Bless, bless our cheese with MSG. Bless you. Now you got to blow it in there. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So now we have a bunch of MSG. And Trevor’s air. And Trevor’s air in there. Special lung air from Trevor. Look at that goopy, goopy cheese. I love not cooking. Put that on your, put that on your head as a hat. Oh, you’re going to make me cook now? No, put that on your head as a hat. Thank you so much. And now we’re going to add our macaroni noodles to here. Ah! Sorry. It popped while it was on my head. It really scared me. It probably wasn’t as loud for everyone else, but it was really loud for me! Trevor, give me some milk! I added too much xanthan gum! I shouldn’t have added xanthan gum! Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk! The cheese is the xanthan gum! the pan is scorching hot, so I can’t, just milk! Like normal! Cow! Cow! Cow milk! ((Laughing)) He’s got like all of them. I didn’t know which one! This is, what do you mean you didn’t know which one? This is apple cider. Now the macaroni’s working now the macaroni’s working here we go, this is the exact texture, I wanted. It’s gonna be nice and gooey when it comes out of the fryer. You see that? – Yeah, I see it. – That’s it, baby. Wow. You wanna give it a taste? Wow! Don’t act impressed if you’re not actually impressed. The people can tell. Yeah, I’ll give it a taste, can you give me? I don’t have a thing and I don’t want that on my body. Why not? Just eat it off of this. Why did you get the apple cider? You think, you reasonably thought that this could be milk? It’s gonna be hot dude. It’s gonna be hot. That’s a lovely temperature. – Oh, it is. – That’s very nice. Oh, that’s. That’s a lovely flavor. That’s a little. I thought it was gonna. ((Music)) I really thought blogs were the future man. I thought, I thought that was gonna really take me to new heights I thought blogs were God, you can really rocket ship me up there. Well, hey, you’re here now. We’re here now. We’re in, we’re in the same place somehow. Alright, so we’re making the roasted jalapeño barbecue sauce. This was, to me, not necessarily for the Mac n’ Cheeto fries, but for the Chicken Fries. The roasted jalapeño barbecue sauce was the single greatest condiment, and now I want to fully recreate a memory that I’ve never had by dipping that in that. The single greatest condiment? What do you think the single greatest condiment is? Wingstop Ranch. Ranch! Oh! Got him! That was good, that was good. Oh man, not only are we in sync, but. But. – But. – But. Wait, wait, wait, wait, they don’t know what’s coming, they don’t even know what’s coming! – But. – But. But, cause here’s the thing, cause who are, well and who. Because we’re also the Backstreet Boys! Oh, God! Oh, gosh! I thought you were gonna hit the phrase every. Okay, okay, okay, okay, run it again! But then this, okay, okay. Not only are we completely in sync, and we’re also not the Backstreet Boys, but I’m Josh. And I’m Trevor. And we’re Wicked Smaaa! I couldn’t cheat. Oh, that’s too many. We’re making barbecue sauce. Most barbecue sauces are some sort of combination, ooh, some sort of combination of ketchup, vinegar, spices, and a whole lot of sugar. This is a roasted jalapeño barbecue sauce, so not only do we have the green jalapeño powder, ooh, try that, I bet this is so good. Green jalapeño powder on a Cheeto. Oh no, fudge now. Why are you being a hater? Oh, God, that’s, oh my God. Is it good? Okay, well now I want one. Okay, here. I’ll get a fresh one. Okay. So we’re mixing green jalapeño powder, try it, it’s great. And red jalapeño powder that we just ordered from some sketchy website. I don’t know why it looks like it’s industrial cleaning chemicals. But we’re putting that in there. Along with ketchup and vinegar. I’m gonna drop a little bit of tomato paste in there. We’re just freestyling this barbecue sauce. We’re kinda cooking like jazz right now. We’re gonna add a little bit of caramel coloring because sometimes molasses don’t go far enough. Oh, I got some of that on me. Boom, this was the darkest barbecue sauce you’ve ever seen. Oh, we got cheese in the thing. Dark-becue sauce. Dude, that was awesome. That wasn’t awesome at all, don’t lie. Molasses, molasses makes it nice and dark. Brown sugar, of course, is just molasses plus sugar. And now we’re gonna add a little bit of corn syrup. I look like I don’t know what I’m doing, but I feel like I’m crushing it. I look like I know what I’m doing, dog. You know what you’re doing. Tell them what you’re doing. Ooh. I didn’t think I was gonna get put on the spot. What did you think you were doing? I’m making a little, a little coating. I’m making a little, we’re gonna, we’re gonna roll our little cheese balls in this. What is the voice that you’re doing? Why do you always, I’m telling you, you’re always asking me questions. I literally just don’t know what it is. Josh is like, oh, Trevor did something? Better ask him about it. Yeah, I guess I’m trying to like form a connection with you, trying to understand your people. I’m adding some of the green jalapeño batter. I want a lot of the green, I really want to feel the jalapeño in this, dude. Okay. I really want to feel the jalapeño in this. It’s your creation, literally, okay? Do you have any more Cheetos? No. We don’t have any more Cheetos. We’re doing a whole episode about Cheetos and we don’t have them. What is the voice? What is the voice? It’s infuriating. I hate it! I hate it! I can say that now! You know? I, before I was, I was like, is Trevor expressing himself? People seem to like it. I hate it! I don’t know what it is! And the things that I don’t like, I don’t understand! Don’t care. Alright, cool. So, we have the red jalapeño batter. This is also going in there. Now, we’re just adding a bunch of powders, a bunch of aromatics to that. We’re gonna go, the holy trinity, except one of them died, and now it’s just onion powder and garlic powder. Which one died? What? Oh, you don’t want to know, man. I do. I’m very interested. Marjoram. All of it’s on the whisk and not in the thing. No, but you whisk. Lift that whisk up to camera. Check that out. Yeah. Well, I like to slowly introduce my Yeah, introduce it. Yeah. That’s a sign that it’s good. Oh, that is brutal. I feel like I need more corn syrup. This is brutal. That tastes awesome, just don’t inhale the. I know, definitely needs more corn syrup though. If we’re being honest, this barbecue sauce is 80 percent corn syrup, 3 percent jalapeño. Toss a whole lot more corn syrup in there. How are you feeling about your, Cheetos? Well, I’m seeing large chunks. That’s not what we want. Yeah, but there’s also small pieces. Yeah, but I feel like we only want the small pieces. I don’t know. I feel like you can buzz it up all the more. No, no, no. Keep micromanaging me. I’m just trying to express myself through cooking. ((Laughing)) I’m sorry. I’m messing with you. Alright. Here we go. This is coating a spoon very nicely now. In French cookery, they call this a nappe. This is nappeing on the spoon. We feel good about this? I feel great about the barbecue sauce. The extra sugar really helped it. I might drop a little bit more salt in there. But this barbecue sauce is singing, baby. Yeah, I kinda own this. You got to, yo, yo. God, dang it. ((Music)) In 2004, the creepy Burger King with the mask that looks like he’s from The Purge makes his commercial debut. 2005, the movie V for Vendetta featuring the Guy Fawkes mask drops, meaning they were in production during 2004. Burger King spies not only stole the Mac n’ Cheetos recipes from Kyle Marcoux, they stole the Guy Fawkes mask, turned it into a symbol for the monarchy, completely antithetical to what Guy Fawkes would have actually believed, then used that for a marketing campaign to sell Chicken Fries and something called a Tender Crisp Sandwich. What haven’t you stole, Burger King? That’s literally crazy. I’m not, I’m not going until you tell me what the voice is from. I just need to know. Okay, so are you familiar with the concept of children? Yeah, I’ve heard of them, I don’t like them. And you’re familiar with Fortnite? Yeah. Yeah, so basically it’s this thing where like kids, you know how kids sometimes like, they like kind of talk like this, like they don’t, they don’t really. You’re making fun of children with speech impediments, yeah. No, it’s. ((Booing)) Yeah. Well, when you say it like that, it makes me sound like a bad person. Oh, that’s it, that’s the end of it? We’ve taken the macaroni and we’ve frozen it into little, somewhat Cheeto shaped logs. And all of the marketing materials, they show these perfect Cheeto shaped, mac and cheese filled fried logs. They did not look like that in stores. No, they’re misshapen little lumps because that’s how they came out of the factory. So today, Trevor, we are the factory. Okay, we’re the factory. You wanna dip those in the egg, get it all coated. I’m a factory. I’m gonna drop them. I’m a factory that turns. Cheeto, Mac n’ Cheetos, into poop. I could’ve, I could’ve made thousand of dollar off this. Had they just paid me. I’m gonna try and kinda like mash these together. Yeah, that’s awesome. And I think, just let them sit in the Cheeto dust and then we’re just gonna drop them in the fryer? Dude, I haven’t done anything today. This is awesome! Do you wanna do something? Do you want a job? No. These are shaped pretty good. Yeah, man, look like a little turds. Look like little turds, but I mean, a lot of the best foods look like turds. Okay, name some. Uh, turds. Alright, I’m just gonna drop these in and see what happens. Yeah, dude, frick it. Okay, okay, okay. I have a question. Yeah, what’s up? Fryer. Yeah. Handle’s over there. We’re here. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know. In what world does that make sense? Well, so, no, you got me there. I got. You got me there. Okay, okay, Trevor. Yeah. Mac n’ Cheetos, they’re done. They’re frying. They’re getting burnt. I need you to put some cheddar cheese into that little sifter right there. I’m going to pop these out because we want them to be extra, extra orange. And so you’re going to sift some of that Sift some of that cheddar cheese powder onto the Mac n’ Cheetos. These are perfect Mac n’ Cheetos. God, no, not on the hand. Wait, wait, hold on. Make a hand print. Okay. Dude! Sick! Awesome! ((Laughing)) That was awesome. Now I got a little snack for later. Oh God, it’s gonna cause, it’s gonna give me a rash. Oh, it’s sticking to my soft palate. These are pretty good though. Yeah dude, yeah dude. These are pretty good. We got some perfect Mac n’ Cheetos here. Dude, yeah. Now I guess all we gotta do is back to the past! I forgot when we yell that. When do we? Wait. No, no. Trevor! Cheesy, gross cheesy hands! What if we, like LeBron James it? No, I don’t think we should do that with cheddar cheese. Here’s the thing, I like being sticky for short periods of time, but I don’t like when it gets into places that I can’t do it. I’m a little sweaty, so that’s gonna turn right into queso. It’s just gonna be with sweat. Trevor, what are Mac n’ Cheetos? without a, like a box. They came in a box for sure. It’s like the Chicken Fries. I never ate them. You invented them. What’d you put them in? Well, I put them on like a plate. I took pictures of it for my blog and again, I thought the blog was my future. I thought it was my ticket out. Then it turns out I didn’t know how to use Google AdSense. Then it turns out, I didn’t know how to stop a Russian campsite. Let’s! Cut to the packaging! ((Dramatic Music)) Josh, we’ve made it, okay? And this isn’t about the Burger King. No. Even though we’ve talked a lot about him, this isn’t about him. This is about Josh. And us, celebrating culinarybrodown.com which is arguably a top five food blog turned Russian porn bot site of all time. We’ve got our Burger King Mac n’ Cheetos right here with the roasted jalapeño barbecue sauce. And if I, listen, we did make this graphic ourselves, but we checked the original Burger King graphic and it is the same. The shape of these two peppers, if we can do a little zoomy zoom on it. This is a green jalapeño, you see it somewhat bulbous at the end. Then the red jalapeño, suspiciously, is very curved, invoking either, Trevor, a cayenne pepper or possibly a Fresno chili. Many people confuse Fresnos for red jalapeños, but red jalapeños are, in fact, a green jalapeño that has just been ripened on the vine, making their shape the same. What else is the Burger King lying to us about? So many things! The grain tariffs last year were unfair! Oh mama. That’s a good looking sauce though. It’s dark and syrupy. Beautiful looking sauce. We made a very good sauce by just dumpy dumpy. Yeah, no, you crushed that. God, that’s so good. You really owned that. It’s spicy too. Let’s check out the Mac n’ Cheetos. I’m gonna be honest, you did most of this. They are, this is very similar to how they looked. Again, nothing like the marketing materials whatsoever, but boy is this a cheese crusted turd filled with carbs. Wow. Yeah, love it. Look at that. Wow! That’s awesome. Cheers? Cheers. That’s a little touch of heaven right there. No, that’s not pleasurable at all. Isn’t what? What? How’s this not pleasurable? I don’t know. That’s just gross cheese goo, man. What do you mean gross cheese goo? There’s such a fine line between gross cheese goo and pleasant cheese goo. What makes this gross? I think this is incredible. I don’t know, man. Did you dip your gross cheese goo in the ranch yet? For any non american, that’s all American food. Did you dip the gross cheese goo in the ranch yet? Oh, man. I don’t know. I don’t know, man. I just don’t enjoy, I’m not having fun. There is a heavy, heavy artificial cheese flavor. Yeah. That, of course, I do remember from the original. The Cheetos get a little burnt and caramelized when you drop them in the fryer. Yeah. But, I don’t know, the whole milieu, the whole shebang is just working for me right here. Really? Well, I think that the mac and cheese is a little bit too wet, and it kind of makes the outside too wet, so you’re not getting any crunch, and it’s just kind of wet outside, greasy outside, with wet inside. And then you’re putting more wet on it, and I’m going to try ranch and barbecue. Fight fire with fire, fight wet with wet. That’s what I always say. That’s a good barbecue though. So what I originally made, I crusted them with chicharrones, and then I made a Sriracha stout chili, because my whole thing was I made like these kind of weird half gross mashups, but I would try and make them gourmet and really delicious. Yeah. And so I fully stand by that. I remember eating that plate of slop. I would have been like a 270 pound college student at the time, and I had a really great time. I remember eating these when I believe I would have, that was about the time when I was transitioning to being an adult in the workforce, you know, and, the magic was really sort of lost on me once it became commercialized. I think this tastes subjectively delicious, this is not something that I would ever want to eat again. ((Belch)) It’s a beautiful moment, it’s a beautiful moment in time that I think we can leave there. Roasted jalapeño barbecue sauce, so spicy barbecue sauce is where it’s at. Burger King gotta bring that back. Yeah. Let me dip some chicky chicky nug nugs in there. Oh yeah! But. Overall, Trevor, do you think that Burger King should bring these back from the past? No, I’d actually personally like to have a conversation with the Burger King, and address a lot of issues, a lot of concerns within the Burger King-dom. Josh, I need you to, I need you to look beautiful for a moment, cause I’m gonna take a photo of you, and it’s gonna, not me, you, okay? I’m eating my Mac n’ Cheetos. Okay, look prettier. Well, I want to keep eating my Mac n’ Cheetos. I don’t know, just look prettier. Okay. That’s really good. Okay. That was really beautiful. I’m gonna tweet at Burger King right now because you deserve an apology. Because I want to believe in my heart that what you made was delicious and good. And I think that they stole it and they made an abomination of it and they commercialized it and they ruined it and I hate the Burger King. Excuse me. At Mr. Burger King, apologize to my friend Josh, and also the Vulgar Chef, for stealing their recipe, you rat bastard. That’s a good one. Challenge him to an honor duel. And fight me in the parking lot of the Burbank Burger King. Well, I think that about settles that, Burger King, you rat bastard, you’ve been officially challenged to an honor duel against Trevor, fighting on my behalf, and if we’re being honest, this was 90 percent Kyle Marcoux. the Vulgar Chef, you’ve been doing great work for years. Mac n’ Cheetos, I’ve been enjoying them, I got the moss film on my mouth and the Cheeto grease stained fingers to prove it, but ultimately, no, no, these should not come back, they should stay a relic of the past. Yeah, no, I do like the sauce, but yeah, this can’t. Dude, alright, we’re done. This guy’s being weird. Who me? Can we wrap? Are you done? You’ve been being weird though. I’m done with him. Like literally, like literally, Trevor. Oh, you’re literally gonna talk to me like that? You’re literally gonna come to me and you’re gonna be like, hey, Trevor, you’re literally being weird. You’re like slurping. You’re like slurping and now you’re literally trying to tell me that I’m being weird? Freaking I’m champion at Fortnite. – [Josh] Life’s too short to cook on medium, or whatever Ratatouille said. Shop the new Hot Stuff Apron now at Mythical.com