Bulgogi Burger
Korea’s signature twist on the menu borrows the country’s most famous marinade. The patty in Korea is pork, glazed in sweet soy and garlic bulgogi sauce that soaks into the bun, with lettuce and mayo to cool it. It is sticky, sweet and messy, nothing like an American burger. My version swaps the pork for beef, so treat it as a take rather than a replica.
The story
McDonald’s opened its first Korean restaurant in Apgujeong, Seoul, in 1988, the year of the Seoul Olympics, and the Bulgogi Burger became its longest-running local item. The sauce is the point: bulgogi is Korea’s best-known way of cooking meat, soy and sugar cut with garlic, sesame and grated pear, and the marinade caramelises on a griddle the way it does over charcoal. Putting it on a patty was the most obvious way to make a burger read as Korean, and it has outlasted almost everything else the menu has tried there.
What’s inside
- pork patty
- bulgogi sauce
- shredded lettuce
- mayonnaise
- bun
Make it at home
My copycat first, then everything I built on top of it.- My copycat
McDonald's Bulgogi Burger (Copycat)
Similar burgers at other chains
Built around the same things as the Bulgogi Burger.- Zip's Drive-In · pork
Papa Joe - Fergburger · pork
Chief Wiggum - Q Burger · pork
Pork Loin Cutlet Burger (里肌豬排堡) - Lucky Pierrot · pork
Tonkatsu Burger (トンカツバーガー)
More from McDonald's
About McDonald's
Nobody sells more burgers. McDonald’s began as a single drive-in run by Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California, and became a burger machine in 1948, when the brothers threw out most of the menu and rebuilt the kitchen like a production line. Ray Kroc, a salesman who sold them milkshake mixers, started franchising it in 1955 and later bought the brothers out.
More than 40,000 restaurants in over 100 countries.
Not affiliated with McDonald's. Trademarks belong to their owners.