9 Amazing Fast Food Secrets We Learned in 2021

With the rise of TikTok over the past year, fast food employees have been giving never-seen-before insights into the secrets behind some of the biggest names.

Some of them we're grateful for and others we outright wish we'd never seen. These 11 secrets spilled this year are guaranteed to fuel your love-hate relationship with fast food.

Wendy's Lemonade in a Bucket

Fans of Wendy's will likely also be a fan of its famous lemonade, but it was revealed to be made in a very different way than many expected earlier this year.

A Wendy's worker shared a video direct from the chain's kitchen, purportedly showing how they make the drink.

Using a carton of Hubert's lemonade, she pours it into a bucket before simply filling it up with tap water. For the strawberry version, she added strawberry puree into the bucket.

The buckets of "all-natural" lemonade are then poured into a dispenser, which they then use to serve customers their drinks.

Newsweek reached out to Naay and Wendy's for a comment. The clip can be watched here.

Little Caesars' Marinara Sauce

TikToker @tye_pearson who claims to be a former Little Caesars employee hit the headlines in June for his now-deleted video making the sauce at work, using a power drill to mix it.

In a large plastic container placed on the floor, Tye used an extended mixing attachment on a power drill to mix the marinara sauce ingredients together, including the tomato paste, herbs and spices and water.

"They [the company] asked me to delete [the videos] and when I did they fired me," he told Newsweek.

"They said I wasn't supposed to record saying that it was in the terms but I never signed anything like that."

How McDonald's Makes McRibs

A video shared by a TikTok user called Isaiah, using the online name @zaezae1098, purported to show how the famous McRib sandwich is really made at the chain.

The user, who claimed to be a McDonald's worker, showed the boneless pork meat, which was surprisingly very pale pink in colour and pre-shaped into a rib-like structure.

After being cooked on the grill, it was then dipped into a barbecue sauce. The bun was then toasted before the meat was added along with onions and pickles.

The McRib, is sold in more than 10,000 restaurants across the States.

The clip can be watched here.

KFC's Cryptic Twitter Following

Everybody knows about KFC's secret 11 herbs and spices mixture, but no one knows what they are. Until now ...kind of.

KFC's official Twitter account only follows the five Spice Girls and six people called Herb; that's five spices and six herbs: 11 herbs and spices.

It was picked up by TikToker Mitchell Coombs, who shared it online. "I don't know who runs the KFC Twitter account but I want to be friends with them," he said.

McDonald's Had Branded Ashtrays in Restaurants

It was a different time. Those old enough will remember the days when smoking inside was the norm, and McDonald's was more than happy to oblige.

As shared by a viral tweet in August, the fast food chain even had their own branded glass ashtrays made from both foil and glass.

According to replies to the tweet, they certainly weren't the only chain to do so either, with rivals like Burger King and Del Taco having their own too.

Burger King's Chicken Isn't Cooked How You'd Expect

Most expected Burger King's chicken sandwich to be cooked straight from frozen, but employee Daquan James surprise everyone with his video on how it actually works.

"This is how Burger King chicken [is] cooked," he wrote as he filmed himself picking up chunks of meat, dipping them in flour, then batter, then back in the floure and then finally placing them in the fryer.

"This is the new chicken, the old one was frozen and all you had to do was put it in the fryer," he confirmed in a comment.

The clip can be watched here.

How Five Guys Fries Are Made Surprised Everyone

Five Guys is looked at as one of the healthier fast food restaurants around, but just like Subway, most were surprised by just how fresh the fries really are.

Worker @maezthegreat shared a behind-the-scenes video of how the fries are cooked from start to finish in August. "I was shocked I didn't expect them to be so fresh," he told Newsweek. "The last fast-food chain I worked at had theirs in a bag so I wasn't really expecting that."

Starting with whole potatoes, he washed them before playing them into the slicer. As shown by Maez next in the video, the cut potatoes are then aggravated in a three-minute power wash to remove the starch. They are then piled into a bucket, which is filled to the top with water.

Finally, they're fried in peanut oil. Five Guys' fries are always twice-fried, once to pre-cook for around two and a half minutes and then another to make them crispy after cooling between.

Newsweek contacted Five Guys for comment. The clip can be watched here.

McDonald's Fries Are Saltier, Oilier Than You Thought

Despite many opting for a small portion of fries alone in a bid to stay somewhat healthy while at McDonald's, a recent viral video has shown just how far from the truth that is.

"I'm trying to stay healthy, i'll just get the fries," wrote @maccaschick along with the clip. The worker showed the scraped up oil, salt and leftover potato into a goopy substance. "You sure about that?" they asked.

In a statement issued to Newsweek, McDonald's Australia said it uses the "highest quality potatoes to create our world-famous French fries, which are fried in a superior and healthier blend including canola and sunflower oils."

The clip can be watched here.

Thrown Away Food at Dunkin' Donuts

In January, a Dunkin' employee went viral after shocking viewers with the sheer amount of food thrown out every night.

The video shows worker Kathleen Dias throwing away 30 trays of donuts and donut holes into a bin.

Dias explained in a comment that throwing away the food at the end of each day is the company's rules. She also clarified that if she distributed it and someone got sick from it, she "could be fired or sued."