The Big Mac landed on McDonald’s national menu in 1968, and home cooks have been guessing at the sauce ever since. Most of those guesses start the same way: mayonnaise, a squirt of ketchup, maybe a spoonful of Thousand Island straight from the bottle. The color comes out about right. The taste never does. Then a former corporate chef for the chain filmed himself making the real thing in July 2022, eleven ingredients in order, and opened with the fact that kills almost every copycat on the internet. There is no ketchup in Big Mac sauce.
The chef who put it on camera
Mike Haracz, who says he once worked as a corporate chef at McDonald’s and lives in Illinois, posted the recipe to TikTok in July 2022, where he had more than 315,000 followers. He told viewers to ignore the “super-secret” versions circulating online and said his own carries weight because of where he worked. Eleven ingredients, one bowl, no heat. He has said flatly that this is as close as you get to the original without a commercial kettle behind you, and having made it twice now, I think he is right.
No ketchup, and the label backs him up
McDonald’s has never made the formula public, but it does publish the ingredient statement, and there is no tomato in it. The color people read as ketchup is paprika and turmeric doing the work, over an oil, egg yolk and vinegar base that is really just mayonnaise built from scratch. Pickle relish, onion powder, garlic powder, mustard seed and mustard bran fill out the rest. Once you see the list, the ketchup theory looks like what it always was: a guess that explains the color and nothing else.
The mustard is where copycats go wrong
Two tablespoons of Düsseldorf mustard go in, not the yellow squeeze bottle. That is the single ingredient most home versions miss, and it is the reason a lot of them taste like plain burger sauce. Düsseldorf is a German-style mustard, and if your store does not carry it, Dijon is the accepted swap. Yellow mustard will work if that is what is in the refrigerator door, but it is sharper and flatter, and you will taste the difference next to a real Big Mac. Buy the Dijon at minimum.
Mayonnaise and relish do most of the heavy lifting
One cup of mayonnaise is the base, and Hellmann’s is the brand named in the video (sold as Best Foods west of the Rockies). Do not reach for Miracle Whip. It is a different product with a different sweetness, and it takes the sauce somewhere else entirely. A quarter cup of sweet pickle relish goes in next, and this is the ingredient that varies most between brands. Some relishes are candy-sweet, some are barely sweet at all, so taste before you commit to a second spoonful. Cooks who have tested the recipe also skip cider vinegar; white wine vinegar is what the recipe calls for, and plain distilled white works too.
The spices, including three pinches at the end
Regular paprika only. Smoked paprika is specifically ruled out, and it will wreck the sauce in a way you cannot fix. White pepper, not black, at an eighth of a teaspoon, so you get the heat without black flecks through a pale sauce. Onion powder and garlic powder go in at a teaspoon each, powder rather than the coarser granulated versions. Then the three small additions that separate this from every other copycat: an eighth of a teaspoon of sugar, a pinch of turmeric, and a pinch of MSG for savory depth. Turmeric is not decoration here, it shows up on McDonald’s own ingredient list as a color.
Mix it in the right order, then leave it alone
Dry spices dumped onto cold mayonnaise clump, and you end up with a streak of paprika in one bite and nothing in the next. A smart fix some cooks use is dissolving the dry seasonings in the vinegar first, in a corner of the bowl, before the mayonnaise goes in. Thirty seconds of extra work, noticeably more even sauce. Then cover it and put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before you taste, and stir once more right before serving. That half-hour rest is part of the recipe, not a suggestion. Straight out of the bowl it tastes like seasoned mayo. After a few hours it tastes like a Big Mac.
Building the burger underneath it
You need three sesame seed buns for two sandwiches, because the middle layer is a second bottom bun. Use 80/20 ground beef in two-ounce patties, pressed thin and wider than the bun, cooked about 90 seconds a side in a hot skillet, then toast the cut sides of the buns in the fat left behind. The assembly order matters: sauce, shredded lettuce pressed down into it, diced onion, patty, cheese, middle bun, sauce, lettuce, onion, pickles, second patty, top bun. Soaking the diced onion in cold water takes the raw bite off. Pressing the lettuce into the sauce keeps it from sliding out the back on the first bite.
If you would rather buy it than mix it
Haracz went looking for a supermarket match after people kept asking, and landed on Great Value Secret Sauce at Walmart. “I compared the ingredient statement of Big Mac sauce on the McDonald’s website to a variety of store options and this one was the closest,” he said, calling it the closest thing you could get from the supermarket. He has also said his homemade version is closer in flavor, and that the bottled one runs a little sweeter and carries preservatives the restaurant sauce does not. Walmart says the sauce launched around April 2019. Reaction to it is split, which is about what you would expect from a bottle standing in for a formula this familiar.
The sauce you are copying is not the only one there has been
McDonald’s tested two different sauce formulas after the Big Mac went national, and when both did well, the company merged them into one recipe known internally as Big Mac Sauce Recipe “72.” The jingle brought “special sauce” into common use in 1974. A reformulation arrived in 1991 and stayed until 2004, when Fred Turner, the chairman and CEO who had run the company for a decade starting in 1977, pushed the chain back toward how it used to do things. “It’s time to make a hamburger the way we used to make a hamburger,” he said at the time, according to the Chicago Tribune. McDonald’s had misplaced the 1972 recipe, and an old supplier still had a copy. Preservatives came out of the sauce in 2018. The version you are matching at home is, essentially, the 1972 one, as detailed in the sauce’s long reformulation history.
Worth making? Yes, and here is my one shopping note
Everything in this recipe except the Düsseldorf mustard is already in a standard American pantry, and the mustard is a five-dollar jar that will outlast the batch by months. One cup of mayonnaise turns into roughly a cup and a half of sauce, which is enough for a crowd of burgers plus a bowl for fries, and fries may be where it is best. Make it the morning of, not the minute before. The difference between a 30-minute rest and a five-hour one is real, and it is free.
Copycat Big Mac Sauce (The Former McDonald’s Chef’s Version)
Course: CondimentCuisine: American24
servings5
minutes30
minutesThe real Big Mac sauce recipe, straight from a former McDonald’s corporate chef, and there is no ketchup in it.
Ingredients
1 cup mayonnaise (Hellmann’s, or Best Foods out West)
1/4 cup sweet pickle relish
2 tablespoons Dusseldorf mustard (Dijon works as a substitute)
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1 1/4 teaspoons paprika (regular, never smoked)
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/8 teaspoon sugar, plus a pinch each of turmeric and MSG
Directions
- Measure the white wine vinegar into a medium mixing bowl. Add the paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, white pepper, sugar, turmeric and MSG, and stir them into the vinegar until the dry seasonings are wet and no clumps remain. This one extra step keeps the spices from streaking through the finished sauce.
- Add the full cup of mayonnaise to the bowl on top of the seasoning paste. Use real mayonnaise, not Miracle Whip, since the whole body of the sauce comes from here. Scrape the measuring cup clean so you are not short.
- Spoon in the quarter cup of sweet pickle relish. Do not drain it first; the liquid that comes with it is part of the tang. If your relish is unusually watery, hold back a teaspoon of the juice.
- Add the two tablespoons of Dusseldorf mustard. Dijon is the substitute if your store does not stock Dusseldorf, and plain yellow mustard will do in a pinch, though the sauce comes out sharper and less rounded.
- Stir everything together with a spatula until the color is uniform and no pale streaks of mayonnaise are left. Scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl as you go, because dry seasoning likes to hide there. The sauce should look pale orange, not pink.
- Transfer the sauce to an airtight container or jar. Press the lid on and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Tasting it before this rest is a waste of time, since the onion and garlic powder need the moisture to bloom.
- Pull it out, stir once more, and taste. If it reads less sweet than the drive-thru version, stir in another teaspoon of relish. If it reads flat, add a few grains of salt rather than more spice.
- Spread it thick on toasted sesame seed buns with shredded lettuce, diced onion, pickles, American cheese and thin beef patties, or set the bowl out next to a plate of fries. Keep whatever is left covered in the refrigerator and stir before each use.
Notes
- Paprika amounts vary between written versions of this recipe, from a quarter teaspoon up to 1 1/4 teaspoons. More paprika gives you a deeper color and a rounder flavor, so start low if you want a paler sauce.
- Skip cider vinegar. White wine vinegar is what the recipe calls for, and plain distilled white or rice wine vinegar will stand in without changing the taste much.
- The sauce is better the next day than it is after 30 minutes, so make it the morning before a cookout and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does Big Mac sauce really have no ketchup in it?
A: Correct. McDonald’s own ingredient statement for the sauce contains no tomato at all. The orange color comes from paprika and turmeric, which is why so many copycat recipes get the shade right and the taste wrong.
Q: What can I use instead of Dusseldorf mustard?
A: Dijon is the substitute named in the recipe and it gets you very close. Plain yellow mustard will work if that is all you have, but it is sharper, and the sauce ends up tasting more like a generic burger spread.
Q: How long does homemade Big Mac sauce keep?
A: Store it covered in an airtight container in the refrigerator and stir it before each use. It is mayonnaise-based, so treat it the way you would treat any mayo-based dressing in your fridge.
Q: Is there a store-bought version that comes close?
A: Great Value Secret Sauce at Walmart is the supermarket bottle a former McDonald’s corporate chef picked as the nearest match after comparing ingredient statements. He says it runs slightly sweeter than the restaurant sauce and that the homemade version is still closer.
