Burger King's vast selection is a crucial part of choosing the best meal to sate your hunger,
but being spoiled for choice can easily become a problem. In order to help you,
let's take a look at some of the most popular Burger King menu items, ranked worst to best.
Look, Burger King's onion rings are fine when you want a quick fix of deep-fried,
greasy crunch to go with the rest of your meal. However, there's a reason they come
dead last in our ranking. All told, they're only onion rings in the sense that they're
ring-shaped and filled with something vaguely onion-like. Onion rings should be,
well, rings of onion, battered and deep-fried to crispy perfection. It's right there in the name.
Yet, the Burger King take on this classic side dish means that they avoid the whole "actual
onion ring" component. Instead, the ring is essentially all about that crispy breading,
with the onion component coming in the form of a paste with a vaguely artificial flavor. That said,
Burger King's onion rings come across as circles of decent,
vaguely onion-tasting batter and little more. We're not saying this is a wholly bad thing.
There's certainly a time and a place for the Burger King Onion Rings experience,
but even then, the chain has far more delicious sides on the menu.
Everyone wants to at least try to eat healthy on occasion. However,
when you walk through the doors of a Burger King, you've already made a dietary decision. Sure,
you can still try to correct course and order the Burger King Crispy Chicken Garden Salad,
but that might actually be an even worse decision than going all-in with that delicious burger.
The Crispy Chicken Garden Salad actually manages to disappoint on two fronts.
Not only is it a salad when you could be enjoying a burger, but there's a decent
chance that it actually packs more calories than said burger. Dietician Sue Heikkinen told Mashed,
"This 870-calorie salad will eat into your calorie budget more than a Whopper. And a
salad with 71 grams of fat in is a far cry from a light meal option."
That Whopper, by the way, carries an average of 657 calories. Sorry, Crispy Chicken Garden
Salad. You taste decent as far as fast food chain salads go, but as long as you insist on
depriving us of a delicious burger while still bombarding us with all those calories and fat,
your rightful place is always going to be near the bottom of the list.
Burger King's all white meat Chicken Nuggets seem like a bit of an afterthought,
to the point where it can be easy to forget that the chain sells them in the first place.
They're not awful, but they're still on the lower end of the fast food chicken nugget spectrum.
Knowing this, it's easy to see them as little more than an attempt to counter
McDonald's famous chicken McNuggets in a "look, people, we can do this, too" kind of way.
The main issue with Burger King's nuggets are their taste and texture.
They're pretty dry and the breading can be unpleasantly sturdy and crunchy,
so the general softness of the nugget isn't adequately counterbalanced. Though
the nuggets are surprisingly well seasoned, the texture trouble takes away from the experience.
You may very well find yourself relying heavily on your dipping sauce of choice,
which, unfortunately, does very little to solve the textural issues.
The Whopper Jr. isn't a bad-tasting burger by any means. It's just very, very difficult
to place it anywhere higher on this list, simply because it's so derivative. Per Reader's Digest,
one of the chain's best-known burgers was hardly the product of careful market research.
Instead, franchisee Luis Arenaz-Pérez created the burger as a last-minute improvisation when
he was opening up a new location in 1963 and realized he was all out of large Whopper buns.
The Whopper Jr. proved popular and earned its creator all sorts of acclaim,
but at the end of the day, it's still a Whopper — only,
there's less of it. Plus, it tends to look far less appetizing than its larger sibling.
"Are you out of your mind?"
"Only one whopper gets busy in this house."
On paper, the Sourdough King seems like such a good idea:
Take everything that's great about Burger King's burgers, and stick all that goodness between
two slices of delicious, toasted sourdough. That's virtually gourmet. What's not to like?
"I'm a fan of the king's sourdough buns."
Quite a lot, in fact. Both TheImpulsiveBuy and Brand Eating have pointed out that the
2018 version of the Sourdough King wasn't all that mind-blowing. The outlets also
went on to state that the "sourdough" was more like thoroughly unimpressive toast.
The highlight back then was a creamy "secret sauce," which isn't present in
the current incarnation of the menu item, which relies on ketchup and mayo instead.
What's more, user experience alleges that the bread problem hasn't exactly corrected itself.
Twitter users have posted images of what appears to be Sourdough King burgers that look an
awful lot like they're made with none other than untoasted white bread. That's not necessarily
a bad thing — it actually sounds kind of delicious in some contexts — but it also
sounds like a 2 a.m. novelty sandwich, instead of something that you'd market as Sourdough King.
The Hand-Breaded Crispy Chicken Sandwich is Burger King's hyped-up entry in the chicken
sandwich wars, which is fine and all if you forget that this is a hamburger chain dipping
its toe in what was originally a tug-of-war between Chick-fil-A and Popeyes. This means
that it risks being a little bit of a novelty product for a fast food burger chain — unless,
that is, it turns out to be way more delicious than its chicken sandwich war competitors.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case. The Hand-Breaded
Crispy Chicken Sandwich is a nice addition to the Burger King menu,
and in other circumstances, it might rank considerably higher on this list. However,
the very fact that it's posited as the chain's answer to Chick-fil-A and Popeyes means that our
taste buds end up comparing it to the competition, instead of its fellow Burger King products.
That's a tall order for what's essentially a burger chain's side hustle. Though the crisp,
crunchy Burger King sandwich doesn't surrender to its competitors without a fight,
it ends up losing by a noticeable margin.
We'd really, really love to like the Impossible Whopper more. Almost every omnivore could probably
do with a little less red meat in their lives, and a delicious, plant-based patty
in an otherwise classic Whopper sure seems like the ticket to do this in an easy and tasty way.
"Tastes like a whopper."
"Tastes like a beef burger."
As such, the idea behind the burger is solid. There's just one little problem: As it stands,
the Impossible Whopper is a confusing and underwhelming product. Per Impossible Foods, the
burger's a little problematic if you like to keep things fully vegetarian — let alone vegan — due to
the fact that, according to the fine print on the promotional page, the patty is, quote, "cooked in
the same oil as meat and cheese products." This wouldn't be such a huge problem if the patty
tasted so great that meat eaters could casually switch allegiances to the impossible side.
Unfortunately, when it comes to taste and texture, the Impossible Whopper ranks dead
last among popular fast food meatless burgers. This is because the patty's dry consistency joins
forces with the moister parts of the burger to create a comparatively underwhelming experience.
Burger King's breakfast menu is pretty sizable, though it's far from the greatest fast food
breakfast out there. There's also the fact that the chain's signature breakfast item
is arguably the Croissan'Wich, while the pancake platters and Egg-Normous
Burritos and whatnot are largely the kinds of fare you can get elsewhere.
So, where does this leave the Bacon, Sausage, Egg & Cheese Biscuit, then?
In a pretty decent place, actually. Burger King's bacon isn't all that super,
but together with the ample amount of cheese stacked between the components,
they manage to elevate the sausage, egg, and buttermilk biscuit into more than the sum of
its parts. It's not the greatest thing on the breakfast menu and can't hold a torch
to the majority of the burgers, but it's a pretty decent way to stock up on calories in the morning.
Yes, another Whopper fails to make the Top Ten, but for a very different reason than the
Whopper Jr. The Triple Whopper With Cheese is a meal all unto itself. It's also solid proof
that there can indeed be too much of a good thing. The Whopper usually benefits from its
comparatively generous layer of vegetation, but when you stack three of those delicious,
flame-grilled quarter-pound patties on top of each other, the lettuce, pickles, onions,
and tomato are reduced to a tiny oasis in the lawless, multi-layered meat wilderness.
Burger King's flame-grilled beef is great, but at the end of the day,
we're still talking about fast food burger patties instead of steak. As such,
when they completely overshadow the rest of the burger, the balance of the Whopper
experience is thrown off. No amount of condiments can fully salvage the whole.
Objectively speaking, the Original Chicken Sandwich has no business ranking above its cool,
modern, hand-breaded crispy counterpart. However, fast food doesn't really have anything to do with
objectivity, does it? This long, relatively soggy combination of a chicken patty,
lettuce, and mayo in a bun has been around for a long time
and judging by the fact that it survived Burger King's recent chicken sandwich cull,
it's pretty clear that the company recognizes the menu item's elusive "it factor."
At the end of the day, the Original Chicken Sandwich is a classic for a reason: It's simply
a very comforting thing to eat. Taste-wise, the Original Chicken Sandwich is a simple affair,
unburdened with the need to surf the waves of fast food trends. Looks-wise,
it can be downright unappealing. Still, don't let its relatively low ranking on this list fool you.
This is simple fast food for the times you want nothing but simple fast food,
and it doesn't pretend to be anything else.
When it comes to fast food fries, Burger King's Classic Fries are almost aggressively
alright. They may not be able to hold a torch to the criminally delicious McDonald's fries,
but then again, they most certainly have nothing to fear from the limp crinkle cuts you might get
from White Castle. If you're looking for a thick, hand-cut style fry with the exact right amount of
crunch, just waiting to be enjoyed with ketchup and dipping sauce, Burger King has your back.
On the other hand, fans of fries that actually taste like something before you add
a ton of condiments and spices in the mix may be disappointed by these. Fries are a side by nature,
so even if they're not particularly tasty, they usually work well with a solid burger or sandwich,
as long as their texture is on point.
Fortunately, Burger King has that part of their fry game down to a tee.
These fries have a very satisfying fluff underneath the awesome crisp. While a food item
as relatively bland as this would normally have no business being anywhere close to this high,
this expert texture game makes Burger King's French fries a natural midway point on this list.
Burger King's French Fries may be somewhat lacking in flavor,
but that doesn't mean the chain doesn't know its way around a deliciously unhealthy potato.
Consider, for instance, the humble Cheesy Tot. As the company's website puts it, these delicious
little balls are nothing more or less than "melted cheesy potato bites covered in a
crunchy bread crumb coating." The amazing taste explosion that this
description magically conjures in your mouth? They taste exactly like that, and it's awesome.
If there is a downside to the Cheesy Tots, it's that you have a very short window of opportunity
to consume them while they're still at that optimal stage of crispy meltiness.
So, either you focus entirely on them while neglecting the rest of your order,
or risk diminishing your Tot experience considerably after that window closes.
When Burger King lets its proverbial hair down, all sorts of hamburger magic can happen — only,
sometimes it's dark magic. We've told you before that you should probably avoid the Bacon King
because, let's face it, anything called the Bacon King isn't going to do your arteries any favors.
The King's answer to Wendy's signature Baconator doesn't mess around. The Bacon
King is 1,313 calories' worth of happiness that comes in the shape of two flame-grilled patties,
a whole bunch of cheese, "a hearty portion" of smoked bacon, and some mayo and ketchup.
Does it look as good live as it does in the ads? Of course not. Does it always contain an
absurd amount of bacon? Hard to say, seeing as "a hearty portion" can mean a whole lot of things.
Is it as good as the Baconator? The jury is out. Still, one thing is certain:
A well-made Bacon King is one of the more pleasant ways to keep things unhealthy.
Many items on Burger King's breakfast menu skew toward decent rather than truly delicious.
However, there's no denying that their Croissan'wich
is pretty amazing. And since we're talking about fast food breakfast,
the wandering eye gazes naturally toward the meatier options, like the Bacon, Sausage,
Egg and Cheese Croissan'wich. This Fully Loaded Croissan'wich hits the palate like a tasty,
flaky brick, allowing you to savor every single one of its 577 calories.
On paper, there's no point in Chicken Fries, which are basically just long nuggets. Yet,
therein lies the thrill. The chain's nugget breading game might be a bit weak,
but the Chicken Fries' breading is on point — which is great, seeing as they offer a pretty
impressive breading-to-chicken ratio. They're also a delight to dip, thanks to the long shape.
Also, let's face it, that container is hilarious. All in all, the Chicken Fries are perfect proof
that sometimes food can just be fun, and it's enough to land it at a good spot on this list.
Remember what we said about the Sourdough King earlier? Turns out, all that goes right out
the window when a second beef patty enters the fray. As the Triple Whopper taught us,
the art of the Burger King hamburger is a delicate one, and the beef-to-everything
else ratio needs to be balanced just so in order to provide optimal fast food enjoyment.
The Double Sourdough King manages to do exactly this, courtesy of the
extra patty and the accompanying second slice of American cheese.
This simple addition manages to magically turn a mildly disappointing menu item into
fast food royalty. Granted, there are caveats when it comes to selecting this menu item.
The bread still tastes a lot more like plain white toast than artisanal sourdough,
and you might want to triple-check that the toaster is working in your location before
you place the order. Even so, there's something to be said about great hamburger ingredients between
two slices of toasted bread. A perfectly-toasted Double Sourdough King is just a very old-school
hamburger with delicious Burger King fillings and the absolute optimal amount of beef.
Burger King's signature hamburger has attained its status for a very good reason — it's
incredibly good. Like almost any fast food item out there, the Whopper has a tendency
to look far less impressive in your hand than it does in the product images, but fortunately,
this doesn't affect the taste. The flame-grilled patty is exactly what you expect and hope for, and
the interplay between its taste and the freshness of the lettuce and tomatoes works like a dream.
"You see Eddy, it takes two hands to handle a whopper."
The texture game is on point, too, thanks to the much-needed crunch from the pickles and onions.
Meanwhile, the ketchup and mayo tie a neat little flavor bow around the package.
It's so good that you don't even need to add cheese, bacon, or any of the usual
suspects — though none of them take away from the taste of the original, only add to it.
Granted, a Whopper will never fool you to believe that you're eating anything other
than a fast food chain burger. Then again, it doesn't have to. Like all good dishes,
the Whopper knows exactly what it is and what it needs to be, and Burger King has calibrated it to
be just about as satisfying as a burger can be at this level. In fact, the only reason it doesn't
top our list is that the company has managed to fine-tune a couple of other burgers even better.
Three burger patties are way too much. Then again, one patty is great, but not quite the greatest.
Two patties, on the other hand, are nothing short of perfection.
The Double Whopper takes everything that's good in the Whopper and doubles down on
the flame-grilled stuff to elevate the experience even further. Incidentally,
it also marks a watershed moment in the Burger King menu. This is the heftiest and most opulent
thing that you can order while still barely staying on the side of a "normal" order.
But that's not to say that the Double Whopper isn't a huge calorie bomb
on its own. Depending on your order, it can pack anywhere from 897 to 1,393 calories.
As such, while the Double Whopper is superior to its smaller brother, it might still be wise to err
to the side of a regular, one-patty Whopper, at least from time to time. Just be prepared
to hear the siren call of that second patty ringing in your ears as you make the order.
Burger King's famed XL offering is notorious for its 1/2 pound of meat and a beefy 1,006 calories.
But it's also known for the fact that, apart from its great protein content,
its build-up seems awfully similar to a certain little-known burger called the Big Mac.
The Big King XL even has a secret sauce, known as the Stacker Sauce, a mainstay of
the Stacker line of burgers. This, ultimately, is what sets it apart from the Whopper line.
Everything you love from Burger King is present and accounted for in the Big King XL,
and the presence of the Stacker Sauce brings a delicious, unexpected hint of rosemary and celery
to typical "secret sauce" fare. You might not want to make this big boy your everyday lunch, but when
you're really hungry and want the absolute best the King has to offer, look no further.
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