Chef makes gourmet pasta dish out of McDonald’s ‘Happy Meal’

Ah, McDonald’s. It’s beloved, but nobody would say the fast food chain is gourmet.

That is, not until cook, Amy Brandwein, got her hands on it, anyway.

In a now viral video on TikTok, US content creator Danny Kim tasked Amy with turning a few of the chain’s staple dishes into a bowl of Italian tortelloni you could find in any of the finest eateries around the world.

Seems impossible, right?

Well, watch and learn: 

@dannygrubs

McDonalds Happy Meal turned gourmet✨ #McDonalds #FoodTok #FoodHacks

♬ original sound – Danny Kim

In the video, Danny hands James Beard foundation’s best Mid-Atlantic chef Amy a Happy Meal – which, in truth, is slightly bigger than a Happy Meal, but packed full of all the same stuff.

The clip, which now has over 1.5 million views, shows what can be done with the ingredients in all the respective dishes, and it’s quite mind-blowing, to be honest.

Amy can be seen whizzing fries, sweet and sour sauce, chicken nuggets and two apple pies into a proper plate of folded pasta.

How do those come together to make a pasta, you might ask? Well, let us break it down for you.

Reckon you could turn a Maccies into something fancy? (Credit: Pexels)

First, Amy blends the fries with parmesan cheese and flour, water, milk, salt, butter and eggs, which have been turned into a paste.

Then, she mixes the chicken nuggets to a pulp and combines them with the apple filling from the apple pies, to make the tortelloni filling.

By this point, Amy’s potatoes have been turned into a pommes dauphine, which is essentially mashed potato and choux combined and fried to make dough balls.

To plate, she decorates the pasta with chives, sweet and sour sauce and slices of lemon marinated apples, and garnishes with the apple pie crumb.

McDonald’s happy meal was turned into tortellini (Credit: TikTok/ @dannygrubs)

Reacting to the video, there was no denying that people thought the dish was impressive.

“It’s amazing how creative people can get,” wrote one person in the comments.

Meanwhile, another said: “Now that’s a chef”.

“She took a subpar Happy Meal and transformed it to a sweet and savory pasta dish. It’s brilliant,” penned somebody else.

There were some that were slightly more dubious, though. 

Not everyone was into the flavour combos (Credit: TikTok)

“I just feel like a crime has been committed against my chicken nuggets, not the apples going in there,” said one person in the comments. 

Whilst another wrote: “Bro all that food turned into 3 pieces of pasta”.

“My inner Italian is raging,” joked a third. 

You guys sure are tough critics.

We thought we’d recruit one of the experts at Twisted to share their thoughts on the dish, so we called on Food Producer Spencer to give her verdict.

“I think with what she was given she did a great job,” she said. “Nothing wrong with the flavours  always like a contrast of sweet, salty, sour, and savoury.”

There’s no denying chef Amy’s creativity (Credit: TikTok/ @dannygrubs)

Whilst she added that she probably would have moistened the chicken and apple tortelloni filling a bit, she acknowledged that the outcome seemed positive.

“It’s probably not what I would’ve done with the nuggets personally but it seemed to work. My fave part was the apple pie crumbs,” she concluded.

Whatever you think of Amy’s creation, there’s no denying it’s a fascinating watch.

TikToker, Danny, has recruited tons more chefs to fast food meals into fancy plates, from Dunkin Donuts to Wendy’s. You can check out his page here.