A "Generic Samurai Mac" Made with Sliced Bread: Recreating Both the Sauced and Sauceless Versions at Home

The burger itself takes four ingredients: thick-cut sliced bread (six slices per loaf), mixed ground beef and pork, onion, and cheddar cheese. Soy sauce, mirin, garlic, and a few other things are also used, but those are for the sauce. In the video, one burger is made with sauce and one without for a side-by-side tasting, but the speaker says viewers only need to make one or the other.

The onion is finely chopped to match what goes into the Samurai Mac. This is the only thing that needs a knife. The onion is not cooked and is used raw. According to the speaker, the Samurai Mac also contains raw onion.

Each patty is 100 g, made by dividing the mixed ground meat in two. The speaker acknowledges that the original McDonald's patty is 100% beef. Even so, the speaker's view is that with mixed ground meat it's "so delicious you can't tell the difference at all."

No binder or seasoning is used in shaping. Rather than kneading, the meat is pressed together and flattened. When a staff member asked whether it would be better to bring the meat to room temperature, the speaker replied, "Please don't bring it to room temperature." The meat should be used cold, straight from the fridge. The explanation was that bringing it to room temperature causes the fat to render out, so cooking it cold is best.

As for the sauce, the speaker explains that the Samurai Mac sauce is "basically McPork," made slightly sweeter. The speaker's take is that McDonald's often reuses the same sauce across different products. A staff member also mentioned a seared-soy-sauce-style item McDonald's once had.

The proportions are as follows.

• Sugar: 1 tsp
• Soy sauce: 1 1/2 tbsp
• Mirin: 2 tbsp
• Water: 1 tbsp (added because it gets very thick)
• Grated garlic: 5 g
• Grated ginger: initially said 5 g, then reduced to 3 g partway through
• Potato starch: 1/2 tsp
• Ajinomoto: 6 shakes ("absolutely necessary because it's the foundation of McDonald's flavor," says the speaker)
• Black pepper: a generous amount

On black pepper, the speaker says the original definitely contains it too, and that adding plenty makes it taste right. The mixed sauce was heated in the microwave. The speaker first said 1 1/2 minutes, but later corrected that to about 2 1/2 minutes being best. Showing off the finished sauce, the speaker emphasized that its thickness was just like the original's.

What the speaker called "the next important thing" is seasoning the patties, using nothing but Aji-Shio. It's sprinkled on both sides of the patties in an amount that made a staff member exclaim, "Isn't that a lot?" The speaker explains that McDonald's patties are salted this heavily, which is why people say the Samurai Mac is delicious even without sauce.

The bread used was Chojuku, but any thick-cut sliced bread (six slices per loaf) will do. No butter or anything else is spread on it; it's simply toasted in a toaster oven.

Oil is added to a frying pan and the patties are cooked. Pressing them flat while they cook makes them "basically McDonald's patties," according to the speaker.

Partway through cooking, quite a lot of fat came out. Looking back, the speaker said the meat should have been chilled ice-cold. According to the speaker, this happens if you use meat that isn't straight from the fridge or poor-quality ground meat, and handling it too much also makes the fat come out. However, the speaker added that it's still plenty delicious even like this.

A staff member checked whether there was any special technique, such as cooking it in beef tallow. The speaker's answer was "no"—this alone gives you McDonald's flavor. The speaker went so far as to say that people who like the sauceless Samurai Mac "never need to buy it again." The speaker also noted that because you get to eat it fresh off the pan, it might even taste better than the original.

Once the patties are browned, a slice of cheddar cheese goes on top. The sliced cheese the speaker bought was 20 g per slice. According to the speaker, a thickness of around 18–20 g is close to McDonald's, with 18 g being best. If only thin cheese is available (around 14 g by the speaker's estimate), just use more.

After adding the cheese, the patties are steamed over low heat to cook the meat all the way through. Here the speaker repeated a point made in the previous video. Some say the sauceless Samurai Mac lets you enjoy the flavor of the ingredients. But if you want to enjoy the flavor of the ingredients, you're better off making it yourself than going to McDonald's, because you can eat the meat fresh off the pan—that's the speaker's argument.

Nothing is spread on the toasted bread. The cheese-topped patty goes on it, followed by the raw onion.

For the sauced version, the sauce goes on at this point. You can use as much as you like, but the speaker says using all of it might be too salty. The other slice of bread goes on top, and it's pressed down firmly and wrapped before the sauce can run out. The speaker stressed that this "pressing down" step is "really important."

The sauceless version is called the "Omotesando version," and the speaker personally prefers it "by far." Eaten as is, it's Omotesando-style, but since the speaker isn't too fond of the Omotesando Mac (the Samurai Mac without sauce), the speaker thinks it's tastier with mustard added. It also gets a sprinkle of salt, ideally Aji-Shio. The burger was finished by wrapping it while folding in the bread crusts.

As for portion size, the speaker figures it's bigger than the original Samurai Mac. The speaker also touched on the cost per burger (the subtitles render it as "3,400 yen") and praised the original's price, saying, "McDonald's is still amazing, though."

Cutting into the sauceless one first, juices came pouring out. The speaker said, "Juicier than McDonald's," and described it as "total Omotesando." A light finishing touch of salt brings out the McDonald's feel, according to the speaker.

A staff member who tried it said, "It's better than McDonald's," to which the speaker laughed and replied, "You're going to hurt their business." Another staff member responded, "I get what you mean—it's McDonald's."

The sauced version drew the reaction, "The sauce is good." That said, someone also suggested the original might be a little sweeter. The speaker responded that maybe it would be fine to spread on all of the sauce. Someone also said they liked the patty made simply by pressing together supermarket mixed ground meat.

Of the sauceless version (with mustard, salt, and pepper), the speaker says it tastes of the meat and feels like Omotesando. Some of the staff who compared the two chose this one.

Throughout the tasting, the speaker kept returning to a personal theory about what really makes McDonald's delicious: "cheddar cheese, the patty, and mustard." If you want it closer to a Double Cheeseburger, the speaker says, just add ketchup.

A staff member also said that adding mustard made it feel "more like McDonald's," suggesting that mustard might account for a big part of what makes it taste like McDonald's. However, the conclusion was that which version is better comes down to preference and can't be decided. The speaker added that they "totally get" how people who like the sauced version feel.

One staff member said that while eating, they had the illusion that there was lettuce in it. The conversation turned to whether the raw onion was playing that role, and the speaker responded that you could add lettuce too, and that it can be customized in lots of ways.

Finally, having shown how to make both the sauced and sauceless versions, the speaker urged viewers to give it a try since it's easy. The speaker wrapped up the cooking segment by encouraging viewers to compare it with the original Samurai Mac.