Kyl Haselbauer has 20 years of experience working in fine-dining and modernist kitchens, including Bar Cotto and Anchovies &amp; Olives in Seattle. He is also the owner of Bright Spot, a café and coffee shop in Seattle.

Kyl Haselbauer

It’s back! Or, wait … is it gone? I don’t know, and you don’t either. No one ever knows if you can get a McRib at McDonald’s at any moment in time.Since you can never trust that it’ll be there when you crave it, we made our own version of the pork patty shaped like a mini rack of ribs, slathered in barbecue sauce and nestled in a soft bun with tart pickles and raw onions. Of course, made with our own <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/rib-rub">barbecue rub</a> and <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/kansas-city-style-barbecue-sauce">sauce</a>, it’s better than the one you can’t ever seem to order. The process is foolproof so you can make it whenever you want. We’ve even got a beautifully soft and fluffy <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/milk-bread-sandwich-rolls">milk bread roll recipe</a> for you, if you want to go all out. (Go all out. It’s worth it!)When you take a bite out of a McRib, the first thing that hits you is its texture: snappy, not quite like sausage, but close. To get that texture, you have to draw out the protein myosin from the meat with salt and distribute it evenly throughout the meat mixture, which is often referred to as “developing” the myosin. When cooked, myosin creates a cohesive gel that can trap moisture and fat. Limiting myosin development is crucial for making tender sausages, but for a McRib clone, the opposite is true. You want to develop the myosin a lot, which means you want to knead the salted ground meat mixture a lot. Once you really get that myosin developed, you can spread the meat mixture out into an evenly sized block, sous vide it, and portion the snappy, cooked meat into little riblets. Sauce those riblets with some good barbecue sauce, slap ’em into some light and fluffy milk bread buns along with a few tart pickles, and you’ve got a sandwich that looks a whole lot like the elusive McRib but tastes way better, especially since you made it yourself.

Ultimate McRib