McDonald's Double Big Mac is back. So, obviously, we did a taste test. Here's how it went

How good is McDonald’s Double Big Mac, available for a limited time, as they say, starting Wednesday, Jan. 24?

It depends on your capacity for gluttony.

Mine is evidently limitless. Not only did I taste test the Double Big Mac — “review” seems too grand a word for such a thing — but I liked it. Quite a bit, in fact.

It all has to do with the ratio. And the Double Big Mac gets it right. The traditional one, not so much.

I should say up front that the Big Mac is like my 10th favorite thing on the McDonald’s menu, way down below the Spicy McChicken, the Quarter Pounder, the regular cheeseburger (like everyone, I like the diced onions, and it is without question the best burger to eat while you’re driving, if you’re into that sort of thing), the McFlurry, pretty much the McAnything.

A moment here to praise the French fries, the best of any fast-food joint, a declaration upon which I will take no argument.

What does a Double Big Mac taste like?

Anyway, the Big Mac is one of those things that’s OK once every six months or so. Any more than that and it’s just too much.

Like any kid who grew up in the 1970s, I can of course recite the jingle by heart: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. But what the jingle leaves out is the third piece of bun placed in the middle of the two all-beef patties. (Are they really all beef? I’m not complaining. Just wondering.)

It screws up the ratio of bread to beef. You feel like you’re eating a burger-flavored bun — a big slice of bland right in the middle of the hot juicy fat you came for. I’ve never understood why it’s even there, unless it’s to distinguish it from the superior Quarter Pounder.

But when it’s four all-beef patties and all the other stuff? That balances out the ratio just right. Sometimes more is more, and the Double Big Mac is an example.

Is it ever.

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Will a Double Big Mac fit in your mouth?

Of course, there is the challenge of eating it. Stack all those burgers and you’ve got something about the size of a softball that you have to stuff into your mouth. You could probably squeeze it down a little, but where’s the fun in that? Plus, all the special sauce would run out of the sides of the buns.

Not to worry. You don’t have to be one of those snakes that can unhinge its jaws to fit it into your mouth. I had no trouble with the first couple of bites, and of course from there you’re home free. I also had no trouble finishing it, though for context I also have a brother who once ate three Quarter Pounders at lunch one time.

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How much is the Double Big Mac?

The Double Big Mac pairs nicely with a Diet Coke. But really, what doesn’t? I chose not to order the fries, so as not to dilute the experience. (Plus, it was 10:30 in the frigging morning. Even I have my limits.)

I ate at a McDonald’s in Chandler, and the Double Big Mac cost $7.69 before tax, a figure I cannot wait to enter into an expense account. (“Reason for expense: professional overeating.”)

How many calories are in a Double Big Mac?

Now, it is true that this is not exactly health food. I mean, it’s McDonald’s, duh. It’s not like they have a health club in the back. But it is not the full-on artery-clogger you might expect it to be.

The McDonald’s Canada website lists the Double Big Mac at 740 calories; 44 grams of fat, 16 of which are saturated fat; and 48 grams of carbohydrates.

Probably not recommended by your better cardiologists, true, but according to the Burger King website, a Whopper with cheese also has 740 calories, 46 grams of fat (16 saturated) and 50 grams of carbohydrates.

The Whopper is, for my money, worth the extra couple of grams of fat and carbohydrates, but that’s another story. And who are we kidding here? You don’t eat gigantic fast-food burgers for their healthy properties. You eat them because they are gloriously dripping with forbidden flavor. Everybody’s got a little Homer Simpson in them.

But only a little. This was fun once. Which is how I recommend it.

The bottom line? The Double Big Mac is better than you probably think it is. Live a little. Or, this one time, a lot.

And then take a nap.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Double Big Mac review: Burger proves that at McDonald's, more is more