Behold the Big Mac in its ultimate form.

Back in 2016, McDonald’s added the Giga Big Mac to its menu, and ever since then it’s been making annual reappearances at the golden arches, always on sale for a limited time.

This year, the Giga Big Mac, which is said to be around three times the size of an ordinary Big Mac, returned for a limited time from 1 June, but this time, we decided to give it a custom overhaul, with a hack that not a lot of people know about — free toppings.

It’s a little-known fact that every burger at McDonald’s has ingredients you can add for free. The Giga Mac is no different, so when we stopped by to order ours earlier this month, we requested one ordinary version of the burger, and one with all the free toppings, to create the ultimate Giga Big Mac.

▼ Ultimate on the left, regular on the right

It can be difficult to know what additional toppings are free for each burger, so whenever we’re unsure, we simply request all of them to find out. And for this order, we requested three slices of tomatoes as well, seeing as the “tomato topping” option, introduced in 2015, allows you to add up to three slices burger, priced at 40 yen per slice.

So what does a Giga Big Mac with extra tomatoes and extra toppings look like?  Well, the first hint is on this sticker, pasted to the top of the box, which tells us the extra toppings we’ve received are onions, pickles and sauce.

▼ Plus tomatoes, of course.

How much of a difference do those toppings make to the actual burger? Quite a lot, as it turns out. As you can see in the photo below, the custom version is much thicker than the regular version on the right.

Lifting the top bun reveals there isn’t a lot of difference in the topmost layer of the burger.

However, removing the meat patties and progressing to the next level reveals one vital difference — a big juicy slice of tomato.

While it looks like the regular version has more pickles at first glance, don’t be fooled — there’s a treasure trove of pickles hiding under the tomato.

▼ The two next levels are meat patties, with no obvious difference between the burgers.

However, getting down to that final level shows there’s heaps of sauce with the two tomato slices on the left.

Taking a bite of each burger revealed the taste was noticeably different, with the ultimate delivering an overwhelming amount of flavour to the taste buds, thanks to the freshness of the tomatoes and the saltiness of the extra pickles. Plus, the sauce was fantastic, matching the abundance of meat in the burger and making it totally incomparable to the regular version.

The ultimate Giga Big Mac is far better in our opinion, so if you do stop by McDonald’s to try the beast, we highly recommend customising it by adding tomatoes and requesting all the toppings. You’ll be glad you did, and don’t forget to try the ultimate apple pie dessert hack while you’re there.

Photos © SoraNews24
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