Cheapism; Wilder Shaw
When you leave a drive-thru, the sauces you've got in your bag can be just as important as the food you're pairing them with. Nuggets, tenders, fries, or even sandwiches can change based on the sauce.
But you know about honey mustard and BBQ sauce. You're well aware of Chick-fil-A sauce. What about the dark horses? The underrated sauces? Take a look at these seven sauces to keep in mind.
You can put whatever you want on your roast beef sandwich. It's your world.
But there's still one choice more correct than all the others, and that choice is Arby's Horsey Sauce. Horseradish mayo is what roast beef deserves, it's what roast beef needs. Don't settle for anything else. Grab them by the hundreds. Stockpile them. Save them for every roast beef sandwich you eat for the rest of your life.
Do you like the idea of ranch dressing mixed with paprika? Does plain old ranch make you long for more? Do you wish you could find a sauce that mixes smoky, spicy ranch with the flavors of garlic, onion, red pepper, and green onion? Get your hands on some blackened ranch, stat.
This was only recently released for a limited time, but McDonald's has been known to bring beloved favorites back. A nod to DC's mumbo sauce, this is a nice sticky barbecue-adjacent sauce with tons of Tabasco-esque notes. Like real mumbo sauce, you can taste tomato and Worcestershire too. Like barbecue sauce and sweet-and-sour sauce combined.
If the golden arches bring this back, don't sleep on it.
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Spicy, garlicky, creamy, and shimmering with burnt orange the color of peri-peri, KFC's Buffalo Ranch is delicious. If classic ranch is too plain for you, here’s your answer. And if it's too hot for you? Mix in a little bit of the plain KFC honey sauce and cool it down, all while increasing the stickiness. Bingo.
Related: How to Make 24 Fast Food Sauces with Copycat Recipes
Burger King’s Zesty Sauce is super weird, but that’s the kind of thing I like to see when it comes to fast-food innovation. There are many unique flavors happening here, the heaviest of which is pickle juice. Horseradish, too; kind of like a brinier Thousand Island dressing. It’s wacky as can be, and though it works for most menu items, you probably want to spread this on your chicken sandwich.
Related: Fast Food Sauces We Loved (and Loathed) That Have Been Discontinued
A sweet chili glaze works wonders with chicken tenders. Zaxby's has a tasty one available; sweet as honey, spicy enough to even it out, and threaded together by a healthy dose of sesame oil. Umami all around. I'd dip just about anything in here.
This is kind of cheating, but more people need to know about this. The difference between this sauce and Chick-fil-A sauce is negligible. The story behind this, if it's true, is pretty interesting.
Though Chick-fil-A Sauce was created by Hugh Fleming in the 1980s, according to somebody on Reddit, CFA sauce was “originally made by a store operator and sold at only his store, but he would not sell the right to the sauce to CFA, so they tried to make their own. Eventually they got the rights and now we have both sauces.”
Is it the same? Is it different? Who cares. It's fantastic.