Burger King is giving away $1,000,000 to whoever can make their next Whopper. Now, obviously, I've seen people all over YouTube trying to win this, showing off their entries, but I noticed that they're all going about it the wrong way. I've seen people use things like truffle, caviar, wagyu beef, all things that would make a Whopper worth a million dollars, but not win a million dollars. You see, Burger King is actually planning to put this on their menu, and I don't really see Burger King piling on truffles for burgers all over the country. So today, we're throwing our spatula into the kitchen and showing our three entries to win this competition, but if we want to do that, we're going to have to go about it the theorist way. See, with these three burgers, we're going to keep three things in mind. One, we have to keep costs down for Burger King so that they can make more of a profit. From there, we also have to make it cheap for consumers because, let's face it, no one wants to go to Burger King and spend $15 on a burger. And last but not least, it has to be delicious. So with those three things in mind, we're going to have ourselves a surefire winner that'll keep customers and the king's pockets full. Hello internet! Welcome to Food Theory, the food show that also builds bridges. What am I talking about? Well, we haven't been the kindest to dear old Burger King over the last couple of...ever. But that's all going to change today, because I'm going to not just make amends, but a menu item for them. So earlier in the year, Burger King announced their Million Dollar Whopper competition, an open call for the burger kingdom to submit any and every wild whopper topper combo to potentially earn a $1 million grand prize and a limited time only spot on BK menus nationwide. At the time of writing and filming this video, it's the last week of entries, so I hate to be the server of bad news, but by the time you're watching this, entries are closed. But just because it's too late to enter your own challenger into this BK beef off doesn't mean you're going to leave empty handed today. Because in addition to seeing the highs and lows of my journey to become the king maker, my goal is to provide you with a fresh whopper recipe. A recipe for the burger that I believe every fast food restaurant, not just BK, needs to add to their menu. But before we heat up the grill or start shopping for ingredients, we gotta steal Tom's shtick and do a bit of game theory. So Tom, stay over there, you don't have any lines in this one. Anyway, this is a competition, so if we're gonna win, we need to know what's allowed, how we're being graded, and try to read between the lines to sus out what Burger King is expecting from a winning burger. Only then will we be able to devise our unbeatable strategy. I painstakingly read through all of the fine print of the Million Dollar Whopper competition, and here's what we need to know. Starting with the whopper itself, each entry in the competition has to include either BK's Flame Grilled Beef Patty or a Vegan Impossible Patty. Additionally, we can only sandwich this between the standard BK buns, sorry but no pretty patties here. Where we are allowed to insert our creativity is with the three to eight toppings that'll make our whoppers unique. We mostly have free reign to put any ingredient we want into our burger, provided that the ingredients pass three criteria. Obviously, all the toppings chosen have to actually be edible. For safety reasons, we can't include common allergens like peanuts or shellfish. The King also specifies that we cannot add any kind of beverage to our burger, so crafting a Coke marinated whopper melt is a no-go, even though it would be right up our alley. The official rules also tell us exactly what the judging process will look like. After the contest submission period comes to a close, Burger King will have a panel of judges select three finalists based on three key categories, feasibility, popularity, and innovation. And here is where our strategy will spawn from. Feasibility is worth 40% of the final decision, and is the most heavily weighted of the three, making it the most important criteria for us to consider. This means we need to focus on the availability of ingredients, their cost, and whether it's something that restaurant kitchens can easily store, prep, and use. So, adding an expensive white truffle cheese to our whopper might taste delicious, but Burger King won't see it as cost effective or easy to source. Likewise, any item that takes too long to prep, can't be made with the kitchen's appliances, or even takes up too much space in the deep freezer will get the axe. Next, BK will assess popularity, worth 30% of a burger's total score. And this, theorists, is where you can come in. See, if you want to help our whopper get picked, there's a public voting period later on where you can actually vote for our entries. If you want to get updates for that, make sure you click the subscribe button below so that you can help the Food Theory Whopper be the winner. Aside from that, this score will also be based on the expected appeal of the whopper to the widest range of BK diners. So, although there are sure to be some unique, one-of-a-kind combinations, those aren't what they're looking for. The King actually wants to sell these burgers, and apparently, the B in BK stands for BASIC. Burger King will, however, take our whopper's innovation into consideration for the final 30%. They'll evaluate culinary creativity, including how well each topping captures an authentic flavor or highlights a particular culinary tradition. They're also looking for a new twist on classic combinations that combine toppings in a brand new way. Finally, this category will consider the overall visual appeal of the final product. If the whopper looks mouthwateringly good, it'll have an advantage against less appealing competitors. Every entry then had to be submitted through Grillium, an AI that not only approves the toppings, but spits out an image of what your burger may look like. After a few practice rounds of the least appetizing burgers I could dream up, a few things became clear about Grillium. First, ingredient order doesn't matter, which unfortunately means we're going to have to throw away the results from our previous burger food theories. Secondly, even though we're allowed 8 ingredients, sometimes the AI image just prints out a select few. Not to be that guy, but this breakfast burger is actually supposed to have waffles and lettuce on it. Grillium only shows me strawberries, pancakes, whipped cream, and chocolate. Literally inedible. Luckily, after checking, the AI images are purely for marketing. The judges will be making their decisions off the full recipe submitted, and not the fever dream food that Grillium cooks up. So, we can just disregard these digital burgers altogether and focus on the fixes. So, with all of that squared away, we're going to get started with our first burger. And to make sure that it's popular among the consumers, we decided to look for inspiration at none other than the most popular burger on the market, the Big Mac. Plus, I figured it would give me a couple of troll points, not going to lie. And luckily, with that idea, we're going to be using ingredients that Burger King already has readily available in their kitchens. So, their supply chain should be ready for this. While I get to cooking, let's explore exactly what's considered feasible for burger royalty. Obviously, BK's supply chain is a huge factor in what they deem reasonable to serve. A restaurant's supply chain is the network a product goes through from farm to table. Not only does this include the farmers that provide the meat and vegetables, as well as the line cooks that do the cooking, but also the truckers that deliver ingredients and the managers that take care of the logistics. A lot of restaurants might deal with third-party distributors, but BK is established enough to have its own supply chain company, Restaurant Services Inc., dedicated solely to their needs. That actually makes any common ingredient sourcing cheaper for them than if they had to negotiate contracts with some unaffiliated supply chain company. Now, if we choose to source something rare, like say, white tiger meat, that might be a costly challenge for BK and RSI, but for the most part, standard burger toppings should be easy peasy. As for what the fast food joints can actually keep fresh, we're dealing with an environment that wants to minimize prep time and maximize efficiency. So, we want to prioritize ingredients that can be pre-made and that will keep for weeks in the restaurant's walk-in refrigerator slash freezer. We also want to minimize the amount of space our ingredients take up in that storage, so the less single-item ingredients, the better. Double-dipping recipes with other menu items can go a long way in keeping our burger's feasibility high. So, sticking to the tried and true lettuce, onion, tomato, pickle combo is a sure bet. The tricky part was what would be the mac sauce. See, AI would only allow a total of 8 ingredients like I established, and big mac sauce wasn't a valid option. So, I had to stick with boring old Thousand Island, but I'll let you in on a big secret, folks. Big mac sauce, Thousand Island. Now, this moment right here is really important to me. Back in our Frankenburger episode, I dropped the truth bomb that big mac sauce does not contain ketchup. Some of you reached out and were like, what? It doesn't? Yeah, no, it doesn't. Listen to me, it doesn't. The red hue in big mac sauce comes from none other than paprika. That is where that comes from. If I see you putting ketchup in your big mac sauce, I will dump you in your pantry. I swear. I gotta say, this is a huge pet peeve of mine. And I know what you're thinking, Santi, that's ridiculous. Well, so is ketchup in your big mac sauce. With that squared away, and the patties nice and cooked, it was time to assemble the mac daddy burger. And, uh, one burger in and I was already starting to lose my mind a bit. Not a good omen of things to come. One final cheese. But Santi, the big mac only has one slice of cheese. Yes, we're improving it. We're trying to make this a winner, people. No matter how you feel about that extra slice of cheese or the tomatoes, you have to admit it looks delicious. Oh my goodness. Look at, look at this. Do you see this right now? That is amazing. But the taste is what we're here for. All right. Moment of truth. Let's see how it all comes together. Look at this bad boy. I don't even know if I can fit this entire thing in my mouth. I see the trouble Matt had on food theory with being, you know, not put out of context. Oh my God. Wow. I need, I need a napkin. Oh boy. I should've, I should've seen this coming. Let me go in for another bite. Yeah, that was amazing. I needed a minute. The combination of all the flavors just worked so well. There's nothing groundbreaking about it. Like I mentioned, it's all ingredients that any location would already be stocked with, which will keep BK's accountants happy. Unfortunately, there may be one glaring issue with this entry. As it turns out, Burger King has tried to rip off Mickey D's crown jewel plenty of times in the past. The Big King, the Double Supreme, the King Supreme, all BK's attempts at Hamburgling the Hamburgler. My mistake here is that this recipe isn't currently in rotation. Partially because McDonald's has been suing Australia's Burger King, AKA Hungry Jack, over it for the past few years. Hungry Jack actually recently won that lawsuit, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a return of the Big King soon. But yeah, might be an uphill battle with this Whopper. So instead of looking at their competitor for inspiration, in the second entry, I decided to look at Burger King just a little bit closer. I wanted to keep with the goal of sticking to ingredients we know Burger King has no issue sourcing. But now that I've certainly committed their menu items to memory, I came up with the idea of combining some of their more popular, limited edition Whoppers together. The thought here is that not only are we nailing the feasibility and popularity categories with tried and true Burger King ingredients, we're also getting innovation points by throwing together a Whopper that is wholly unique. So how'd I come up with this monstrosity? Well, the first stage was surveying all of the promotional burgers BK has previously showcased, from Red Spider-Man burgers to Black Bund Halloween Whoppers. It's a shame that Grilliam doesn't allow colored buns because clearly it's a marketing hit. But besides that, the first thing that immediately jumped at me was that a substantial number of these burgers were built around heat. This made it easy to keep a workable flavor palette. We'd take the Jalapenos from the 2006 Texas Whopper, add the Pepper Jack Cheese from the Indiana Jones Crystal Skull Whopper, and the Spicy Queso from the 2022 Ghost Pepper Whopper. To build out even more contrast, I pulled out the Crispy Bacon from the California Whopper and took the Smoky A1 sauce from their Halloween version. For my last ingredient, I wanted to honor some of BK's more bizarre promotions. Apparently, in 2022, a single Berlin BK was serving up pregnancy craving burgers exclusively for expected mothers-to-be. These disgusting combos are bad, but they also provide plenty of variety. I know how many of you are secretly hoping I'd add ice cream or fish to my recipe, but I'm nabbing those fries and not looking back. Not because I'm afraid of those ingredients, but because we have a popularity score to worry about. Which, after tasting, definitely needed to worry about it. Hmm. This was a mistake. Let me go for another bite. No, no. Why? Seriously, nothing about this burger worked. There's a reason why these ingredients were used on separate Whoppers, but even then, I feel like it wouldn't have worked in their own respective burgers. Is it logical from a practical standpoint for Burger King? Absolutely. Is it going to win the popularity category? Most definitely not. So, for the final entry, I decided to shift focus slightly. See, the first two burgers focused more heavily on the two categories I've been referring back to, feasibility for Burger King and popularity. But there's one final category in the competition that I want to highlight with this last entry, culinary creativity, or how well we highlight a particular cultural tradition. That meant getting a little more personal this time around. We're going to be taking a classic Argentinian sandwich or appetizer or whatever you want to call it, the chorpian, which is essentially just chorizo and pan (bread) mashed together. You put it together, it's delicious. Some people put tomato on top. And some people put chimichurri. It feels wrong. It just feels wrong to say like that. It's like saying Argentina instead of like Argentina. You know, it's weird for me. Anyway! For those of you not familiar with chimichurri, it's a sauce or condiment that Argentinians often put on our meat. In fact, it's the only thing other than salt that's even allowed on there. It's composed of a lot of oil, parsley, oregano, garlic, and vinegar. There's also some variety from person to person in some other things, like red pepper flakes or chilies to add heat. The exact origins of it are a little hazy. Some say that it has roots in Basque settlers in Argentina, while others say it comes from an Irishman who signed up to fight for Argentine independence, and that the name, chimichurri, actually comes from the English name Jimmy McCurry. Yeah. No matter what the origin though, the sauce is now forever linked to the country's cultural identity. So we're set and ready to go, but there's actually one final thing I have to do. A quick wardrobe change. What do you want from me? I have a flair for the dramatic. And before I sizzle some patties, I want to point out just one more thing. Chorizo is an ingredient that's popping up more and more around the country. You may see it now in breakfast burritos and Mexican dishes, but this is not that kind of chorizo. Mexican chorizo, the more popular kind in the U.S., is made primarily with vinegar and chilies, which makes it spicier and gives it a reddish hue. And Argentinian chorizo is made primarily with red wine, oregano, and garlic, which gives it a full-bodied, earthy flavor that pairs perfectly with chimichurri. Speaking of which, with my chimichurri ready to go, it was time to finish off the patty and assemble this bad boy. Is that a serious question? No, Jason. The sizzling pan was surprisingly brisk. Ridiculous questions aside, the choripati was actually looking delicious and I couldn't wait to dig in. This is looking way better than the Burger King Whopper, just right off the top. The Whopper Whopper had nothing on this. Wow. Oh man. Am I a little biased? Sure. But it was good. I even had to get Jason to come in to try it. Unfortunately, his palate is clearly not refined enough for this burger. I think it might be a little bit too on the earthy side for Burger King. I might like mix the chorizo with the beef for one patty rather than two separate ones. That's blasphemy. You know what? Here, I'm gonna take another bite. Oh, okay. See, he can't stop. He can't stop himself. That's what you want, Burger King. It is good. I also haven't eaten in like three days because I've been working on this set. We didn't need the caveat. They don't feed us at all. And I will continue to not feed you after this. But the takeaway here is that for curmudgeonly Jason, that was a glowing review. But how will it stack up to the competition's three criteria? Let's start with feasibility. Luckily, most of the ingredients on this burger are already well known to the King's Kitchen, so it won't be difficult to acquire and store the cheese, vegetables, and condiments used for the choripan burger. Really, it's the chorizo patty and the chimichurri that's going to be novel for BK Kitchens. Thankfully, a pre-made chorizo patty is just as easy to find fridge space for as beef or impossible burger patties. And raw chorizo can last unopened in the freezer for up to six months or in the refrigerator for about a week. Technically, raw chorizo lasts longer when stored than beef patties, which should be used within four to six months of freezing or three to four days of refrigeration. Chorizo is also less expensive than beef. A 12-pound bulk supply of raw beef patties costs roughly $78 total, while the same amount of raw chorizo patties costs about $64. Likewise, the chimichurri sauce should be easy enough to make. In a traditional kitchen, prep time usually only takes a few minutes for a fresh batch, but Burger King can also ship the sauce in bulk. Frozen chimichurri can last up to three months and refrigerated it can last for at least five days. I know for a fact that these ingredients are feasible for any Burger King to incorporate because several Latin American BK menus already cycle in seasonal choripan burgers and the UK recently introduced smoky chimichurri burgers to their menu as well, which means we're also checking off our next category, popularity. There's already a proven market for these particular whopper combinations internationally, so it stands to reason that BK will inevitably want to test these flavors with American consumers. My Whopper is that opportunity. Finally, let's talk criteria three, innovation. By its very nature, my choripan whopper is already a spin on a cultural classic. Growing up, I used to eat these all the time, whether it was birthday parties or family gatherings, you name it. And not only does it carry the Argentinian seal of approval, its iconic taste profile is criminally untapped by American fast food chains. And this may be the King's golden opportunity. Don't just take my word for it. Take Jason's and Burger King. You got to look past our rocky history. I know that we've had our opinions about your food in the past and we haven't been the kind. I mean, I know that I started my journey as host bashing your spicy chicken sandwich into the ground repeatedly where it belongs. But I think this could be the start of something new, something great. Please give our Whopper a shot. And for the rest of you, we'll make sure to keep you updated because there will be a public voting stage where you can help us get our Whopper onto Burger King's menu. That's it for now. And remember, that's just a theory. A food theory. Bon Appetit.
