Fans Told Mashed What Their Favorite Chick-Fil-A Sauce Was - Exclusive Survey
Chicken nuggets on their own can be kind of boring, even if they are the decidedly superior kind produced by Chick-fil-A. That, however, is why dipping sauces exist, and luckily America's fast-food favorite is not lacking in the dipping department since the menu currently offers seven such sauces. In our ongoing attempt to keep a finger on the pulse of the fast-food consumer, Mashed recently posted yet another of our patented polls asking the million-dollar question: What's your go-to Chick-fil-A dipping sauce? We offered a choice of five — Chick-fil-A sauce, garden herb ranch sauce, honey mustard sauce, Polynesian sauce, and zesty Buffalo sauce. Around 7,600 people took the time to answer.
The overwhelming favorite, chosen by 53% of our poll respondents, is the chain's signature Chick-fil-A sauce. This condiment is essentially honey mustard dressing mixed with barbecue sauce, plus perhaps a mystery ingredient or two. (Chick-fil-A has said that ranch dressing is a third ingredient, but it might just be trolling us.) So popular is this sauce that the internet is awash in copycat recipes (here's ours), but you can also buy Chick-fil-A's version in supermarkets or just keep swiping extra tubs of the stuff whenever you drop by the restaurant.
The runner-up makes us think of eating nuggets on a tropical island
In second place with 19% of the vote is Polynesian sauce. This condiment has actually been around a lot longer than the signature sauce, though, since it made its Chick-fil-A debut back in 1984. At the time, it was one of only three dipping sauces for the nuggets that had been on the menu since 1982. Honey mustard, another Class of '84 alum, took third place with 13%, but barbecue, the third member of the original trio, was not included in our poll. (Don't worry, it's still on the menu, as is sweet and spicy sriracha.)
Zesty Buffalo sauce makes a surprisingly poor showing, coming in fourth with just 9% of the vote. Could it be that this sauce is less zesty than advertised? Some Redditors seem to feel this way as they complain that they miss the hotter version Chick-fil-A used to have. As one user wrote, "I used to use the Buffalo sauce on everything, but this Zesty Buffalo tastes terrible." The least popular sauce, however, is garden herb ranch, favorited by a mere 7%. While it's not necessarily bad as ranch dressings go, this type of condiment does tend to be bland and may not do much to enhance the flavor of the chicken.