Mashed's Exclusive Survey Uncovered Which McDonald's Dipping Sauce People Could Live Without
Back in the olden days when McDonald's was primarily known for its burgers and fries, the chain's sauce selection may have been limited to ketchup and mustard — but that all changed the day it added McNuggets to the menu. What is a McNugget, after all, without an accompanying dip? Still, all Mickey D's dipping sauces are not created equal. Few of them, we imagine, could ever expect to attain the cult classic status of Szechuan sauce, but of the ones on the regular menu, some surely must be more popular than others.
Since it may be difficult for McNugget fans to pick one favorite sauce — it's possible that some may even mix them up to create a custom dip — Mashed decided to tackle the issue from the opposite end: We posted a poll posing the question, "Which McDonald's dipping sauce could you live without?" 25,000 McDonald's customers answered the call, and the results, as you might imagine, were a pretty mixed bag. When the final vote was tallied, however, the biggest loser was the chain's Buffalo sauce.
A quarter of those polled would give Buffalo sauce the boot
So what's wrong with the Buffalo sauce? Not too much, really — after all, 75% of our pollees didn't vote it off Dipping Sauce Island. There are those, however, who find that it's not as spicy as Buffalo sauce ought to be, and one YouTube reviewer even rated it a 1 out of 10 on the heat-o-meter. Still, the internet is awash in copycat recipes attempting to duplicate this dipper, so obviously it has plenty of fans.
Coming in a close second in this unpopularity contest was ranch dressing, with 23% of the vote, while sweet and sour sauce was third with 21%. Honey mustard, a classic mashup, was something that only 17% felt they could dispense with. In last place was barbecue, a sauce that most people would prefer to see stick around. Only 14% of our poll respondents wouldn't mind if it left the Mickey D's lineup, but that checks out. Barbecue sauce, after all, can pull double duty as a topping for burgers or even a ketchup alternative for fries.