McPlant Burger: We tried McDonald’s new vegan offering - here’s our verdict

It’s the fast food chain’s first plant-based burger, but how does it stack up?

Vegans, rejoice. McDonald’s has today released its first plant-based burger, aptly named the McPlant.

After a successful trial at its Coventry outpost, the vegan burger - which took three years to research and develop - is now available in 250 McDonald’s restaurants across the UK.

The burger has been accredited vegan by the Vegetarian Society and includes a plant-based patty, which was co-developed with Beyond Meat, and a vegan cheese slice based on pea protein.

It also includes a vegan sauce, vegan sesame bun, mustard, ketchup, onions, pickles, lettuce and tomatoes - so basically everything you can expect from your standard McDonald’s burger.

The McPlant burger is now available at 250 McDonald’s restaurants across the UK (McDonald’s)

Of course, as soon as we heard of it’s release we had to try it for ourselves. So what’s the verdict?

“The McPlant burger is long overdue - almost every fast food chain has released their own vegan options so I was intrigued to see what they had come up with,” Harriet Hall, The Independent’s Lifestyle Editor (who has been a vegetarian for 17 years) says.

“I’m a big fan of the Beyond Meat burgers already, so I wasn’t blown away by this one as the flavour of this patty was already so familiar to me. But with the vegan cheese, McDonald’s bun and mayo, it had those unmistakable Maccy D’s flavours. Having not eaten a meat McDonald’s for over 20 years, I am thrilled to be able to join the hungover burger club instead of having to settle for a lone pot of fries as a vegetarian.”

To find out what others are saying and join the conversation to give your verdict scroll down for the comments section or click here for our most commented on articles 

Our Travel Editor, Helen Coffey, who has been a pescatarian for five years thought the plant-based burger did a “stand-up job” of replicating a classic McDonald’s burger. “The vegan American cheese was particularly good. If you hadn’t told me it was vegan, I probably wouldn’t have known,” she adds.

“The texture of the patty in the McPlant had a pleasing bite, and the burger noticeably lacks the slightly nutty aftertaste that many vegan alternative burgers tend to have, which is good as that aftertaste can sometimes overpower the meal,” Lifestyle Writer, Kate Ng says.

Ng adds that while the vegan cheese is “an impressive feat” it doesn’t seem to have the same molten texture you would expect from a regular McDonald’s burger which “takes away” from the experience.

As for me (Laura Hampson, Deputy Lifestyle Editor here), I love a cheeky Maccas and this burger definitely gives the same post-McDonald’s satisfaction you’d get from eating any of its regular meat burgers. Would I order it again? Probably not - but make a Big Mac version and I’ll happily make the switch.