We’ve ranked dozens of McDonald’s menu items, delving deep into the ingredients behind what makes their chicken nuggets so good, and have even come up with an order hack to get the crispiest McDonald’s fries. But fries, nuggets, and burgers aren’t complete without a dipping sauce. So we also ranked 8 McDonald’s dipping sauces to find the options worthy of pairing with fries, nuggets, and sandwiches. Which one achieved the highest gold-standard rating from us? Spicy Buffalo Sauce.
We placed each sauce in order according to flavor balance, texture, and versatility, and the buffalo sauce came out on top. The sauce pairs a classic blend of cayenne, vinegar, and garlic with a buttery base. We were intrigued and enticed by its opaque and bright orange hue and robust pepper and garlic-forward aroma. And boy did it deliver on the flavor and texture fronts. The already well-balanced trifecta of spicy, tangy, and aromatic gets yet another layer of complementary richness from that butter flavor. The heat and tangy zing work perfectly with all the savory burgers, chicken items, and fries. But what made the buffalo sauce stand out from conventional counterparts is its ultra-creamy consistency. Bottled buffalo sauces tend to be thinner, making it easier to coat chicken wings you toss them in. But McDonald’s Spicy Buffalo Sauce is thick, luxurious, and made for dunking.
McDonald’s Spicy Buffalo Sauce is well loved
McDonald’s Spicy Buffalo dipping sauce fans from all over North America have expressed their love of the product on Reddit. It’s a fan favorite that many Redditors recommend pairing with specific menu items. Of course, chicken is the first dish that comes to mind when we think of buffalo sauce, and that’s where many start. In addition to dunking chicken nuggets into the sauce, customers also recommend recreating a limited-time specialty, the Buffalo Ranch McChicken. According to one customer, “you could order a McChicken, sub ranch and have them give you a buffalo packet on the side” to slather onto the bun. For that matter, you can mix McDonald’s ranch — another high-ranking sauce — with the buffalo sauce to cool it down and make it even creamier.
Chicken isn’t the only protein that’ll benefit from being dunked into buffalo sauce. You could add the Spicy Buffalo Sauce to a fried fish sandwich or swap it with ketchup on your favorite cheeseburger. Another Redditor recommended adding the sauce to a burrito like McDonald’s sausage breakfast burrito. It’d also taste delicious as a dipping sauce for the famously crispy McDonald’s hash browns. A McDonald’s employee even wrote, “I work at McDonald’s, I won’t eat the food, but I will take the Buffalo sauce.” So, if you happen to pocket extra sauce packets, you open up a whole new range of applications, from dunking pizza rolls in it to drizzling it over a bowl of mac and cheese.
