A Big Mac copycat recipe is only as good as the Big Mac Sauce you make to go with it! The internet is full of recipes claiming to make the perfect Big Mac sauce, so we had to try our hand at our own with not one, not two, but three different variations of the tangy classic.
We judged ours om color, consistency, and of course, the flavor, but it isn’t fair to judge our sauces without the OG, so we sampled some original sauce on its own. When it isn’t on a burger and you’re tasting it solo, it’s a surprisingly sour sauce. When it’s on the burger or getting dipped with fries, it’s a great sauce, a classic for a reason, but on its own it has a huge punch of flavor.
And we didn’t want to taint the results of our little experiment, so we cleansed our palates between tastings with a sniff of coffee and sip of water so each sauce got a fair shot at the title.
Most recipes online start with a mayo base, then diverge when it comes to the seasoning. Our first sauce is a combination of mayo, pickle relish, and finely diced white onion and few key seasonings like garlic powder, onion powder, white pepper, and paprika. Some recipes say to use sweet pickle relish, but we went with a dill relish, and the tanginess it added to the sauces was awesome. Combined with the white onion, it was pretty close to the flavor, and similar in consistency, but the paprika doesn’t dissolve into the sauce and that alone left it grainier texture that immediately makes it stand out.
This problem is remedied in sauce #2, that skips a lot of the savory seasonings and gets its flavor from the addition of pickle juice and French dressing. At a glance this one was the closest in appearance to the original sauce, if a little less thick, but how did it taste? This one is actually phenomenal! It has the creaminess from the mayo with the sourness from the pickle juice and dressing that was not only incredibly close in flavor to the original, but we thought might even be better than the original. A very controversial take, I know, but so far sauce 2 is the closest on pretty much all fronts. How does sauce 3 compare?
Sauce 3 has the same mayo base as the others, but with a few key changes like ketchup and some yellow mustard. A lot of recipes only swear up and down that ketchup is not included in Big Mac sauce, so this is already a controversial addition. But the real standout of this sauce is the inclusion of smoked paprika, and this makes it suffer the same problems as the first sauce.
It has a grainy look and texture that immediately tells you it is not Mac sauce. And the smokiness that comes from it dominates the whole mixture. It’s a fine sauce, tasty even, if you want a smoky dip for fries, burgers, or hot dogs, but it doesn’t hold up to the comparison.
Sauce 2 takes the cake by pretty much every metric! It’s a little looser than the Mac sauce, but that can be forgiven with its awesome flavor and smooth and creamy texture. With our sauce copycat crowned, we need some Big Mac copycats to go with it. We cooked a few of Midamar’s Halal 100% beef burgers on a griddle for the fast-food experience, then went to stack or Macs. The original burger incorporates layers of sauce, toppings, two patties, and three buns in total.
We spread the sauce over the two bottom buns, one goes into the middle of the burger; topped them both with some shredded lettuce, then one with a slice of American cheese and the other with some pickles. Then we need the classic burgers over both and stacked them up, before topping it all with the classic sesame seed bun.
Serve these with some fries and you’ve got the Big Mac experience at home, and dare I say, even better with your homemade sauce! If you tried these for yourself, which was your favorite? Do you have a go-to Mac sauce? Let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, enjoy these sauces with a tasty Halal burger and we hope to see you again with another delicious Halal recipe.
