McDonald's Menu Adds a Burger King Side Dish (There's a Catch)

When you have the best french fries in the fast food business, it's easy to rest on those laurels. And while Wendy's (WEN) - Get Free Report wants people to believe that it has better fries than McDonald's, few people actually agree with that.

There's simply something magical about McDonald's (MCD) - Get Free Report fries that other chains simply can't match. That's partly because the fast-food giant has been relentless in controlling its french fry experience to make sure it's the same from location to location.

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If you order McDonald's fries in Los Angeles or Tokyo, London, or Lisbon, you get the same experience. That's really valuable, and it has helped make the company the nearly unquestioned king of fast-food fries.

Its fry dominance, however, has caused McDonald's, at least in the United States, to mostly ignore the potential of adding other side dishes. While Restaurant Brands International's (QSR) - Get Free Report Burger King has offered mozzarella sticks, Mac 'n' Cheetos, jalapeno cheddar bites, cheesy tots, and a variety of other side dishes, McDonald's has basically stuck with fries.

Perhaps most surprisingly U.S. McDonald's locations do not offer a fast food/burger chain staple that goes with its core menu nearly as well as french fries -- onion rings. Burger King has long offered onion rings as a core menu offering, and now, in a very small way, McDonald's is bringing onion rings to the United States.

McDonald's Once Offered Onion Nuggets  

Before the Chicken McNugget, McDonald's tried to make Onion Nuggets a thing. In 1978 and 1979, the chain added the nugget, made from a mixture that included onions to some locations.

"McDonald's first executive chef Rene Arend came up with the recipe to supplement the burgers and fries the chain was famous for at the time. He had previously cooked for Queen Elizabeth II and would later develop the fabled McRib. The Onion Nugget could have been another feather in his cap, but the side dish wasn't meant to be," Mental Floss reported.

Onion Nuggets were a failure, but McDonald's has offered onion rings in select markets around the world. It seems like a pretty small step to bring the popular side dish to the U.S. and the chain has done that, but only at a single location.

McDonald's Onion Rings Hits the U.S.

"The 'McDonald's Headquarters' restaurant in Chicago features a rotating menu of international offerings and just added onion rings that are currently available in Australia," reported the popular Snackolator Instagram account.

The fast-food chain regularly introduces global favorites at its test restaurant. Doing so has never been an indication that the chain is considering offering any particular item in its home country.

Onion rings, while easy to produce, do represent a logistics problem for the chain. McDonald's uses dedicated fryers for each of its fried items. Chicken McNuggets and the Filet O' Fish are not made in the same fryer. In fact, the only overlap in frying is that the french fries fryers are used to make hash browns (essentially a morning french fry).

Adding onion rings would likely involve using the same fryer as the Filet O' Fish, and that comes with allergy and taste concerns. It's not practical to change the oil between making each product, so while onion rings would likely be a popular addition to McDonald's U.S. menu, it seems unlikely that it will happen.