Review: McDonald's Hot Honey Sauce Will Be The Star Of Your Next McDonald's Order

Some see hot honey as a passing food trend of the 2020s, soon to be cast aside for the next big thing (umami honey?), but for me, hot honey is here to stay. Ever since I first tried it, drizzled all over a pizza at a craft beer bar, I've been obsessed with finding all the best ways to use hot honey. I drink it daily in an apple cider vinegar tonic, spread it on toast, add it to marinades — I even had a beekeeper friend make a special extra-extra hot batch just for me. It's a fixture in my life and it should be a fixture in yours, too.

The good news is, if you're a frequent flyer at McDonald's, adding a little sweet spice to your life just got a lot easier. The king of American fast food just hopped aboard the hot honey train with four new menu items centered around the trendiest condiment of the decade. With all due respect, McDonald's — it took you long enough. I got my hands on all four spicy-sweet items on launch day to decide if this menu is a hot honey fan's dream, or if McDonald's just single-handedly killed the longest-running food fad since TV dinners.

Some recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.

To test these new McDonald's items and accurately represent them, I tried each for the first time while it was hot and fresh. I noted the flavors, with a specific focus on how the hot honey sauce complemented (or clashed with) each ingredient in a particular sandwich. I assessed its heat level, sweetness, and compared it to hot honey in its pure, unadulterated form.

I kept my focus fixed on the quality, versatility, and flavor of the star of this new menu — the sauce — with a lesser focus on the quality and taste of the other ingredients in each item. Each item was tasted on its own, without modifications, to reflect the experience most customers will have when ordering straight from the menu. Please note that all prices reflect those in my local area (northeastern Pennsylvania) and are accurate at the time of writing, but are subject to change.

It all started in Australia, back in March of 2025. Macca's (that's Aussie for "McDonald's") unveiled its limited-time hot honey menu to plenty of down-under fanfare. Soon after, it brought the trendy new sauce to New Zealand and Canada. The new hot honey lineup was a huge hit with Aussies, Kiwis, and Canucks, so the fast food giant decided to take the sweet heat stateside.

The star of the new menu is the sauce, which isn't quite the same as your favorite grocery store hot honey or the hot honey that you make at home, which usually consists of just honey and spicy peppers. McDonald's version infuses the sauce with hot and sweet peppers, plus a touch of vinegar. 

You can get the sauce on the side of any order, or try it on one of the new, limited-time-only items featuring the spicy honey. The items featuring the new sauce include a Snack Wrap, McCrispy (one with bacon, one without), and a Sausage Egg Biscuit. The Snack Wrap includes chicken, lettuce, and shredded cheese, and the McCrispys are made with chicken, lettuce, mayo, and fried jalapeños.

McDonald's new hot honey sauce, and the menu items featuring it, are available starting on January 27th, 2026 at participating restaurants around the U.S. The sauce isn't around for good, so don't drag your feet if you want a taste. It's unclear how long McDonald's will keep it around for, or if there's any talk about adding it to the permanent sauce lineup if well received. The new Sausage Egg Biscuit is available only before 10:30 a.m., while the other sandwiches and the Snack Wrap are available on McDonald's lunch menu.

The Hot Honey McCrispy is priced at $5.69 at my local McDonald's, while the Bacon Hot Honey McCrispy is a dollar more. Since the new Snack Wraps made their debut in the summer of 2025, they've been priced at $2.99 in most U.S. locations. The hot honey version is no different. 

The Hot Honey Sausage Egg Biscuit costs about $4 at my local McDonald's, and extra sides of the sauce will run you an additional $0.29 per dip cup. If you were to add one Hot Honey Sauce cup to a McDonald's meal, it would tack on 50 calories, 13 grams of carbs, 11 grams of sugar, and a half gram of fat.

The Sausage Egg Biscuit was both my personal favorite and objectively the best of all McDonald's new spicy honey-drenched items. There's something so appealing about breakfast sausage smothered in a sweet sauce, especially when a little heat is tossed into the mix. There was plenty of Hot Honey Sauce on the biscuit to level it up with spice and just the right amount of sweetness, but sauce fiends might want to add a touch more. I also appreciated that McDonald's kept cheese away from this sandwich. The cheese-honey combo is iconic — but only if it's Brie or goat. American cheese and honey don't belong anywhere near each other.

Of all McDonald's breakfast items, the Sausage Egg Biscuit is definitely at the top of the ranks, second only to the iconic Egg McMuffin. But, on its own, it feels like it's missing a little something. The Hot Honey Sauce gives this morning treat exactly what it needs to become as legendary as the Egg McMuffin. The sweet, fiery sauce brings out the peppery heat and sweetness naturally present in the sausage. Meanwhile, the egg acts like a neutral backdrop to give the sandwich a little more heft, and thus, a more satisfying bite. I'm normally not big on fast food biscuits, but my McDonald's biscuit was light and fluffy, and its butteriness added a bit of a fatty flavor to the sauce, making it taste even more potent on the sandwich.

When it comes to savory foods to pair with hot honey, chicken might be the most obvious choice. The Hot Honey McCrispy was everything that I wanted it to be, save for a few minor hiccups. The sauce clung nicely to the crispy breading on the chicken, so the sandwich never turned into a sloppy mess. I was surprised to see mayonnaise on it, assuming that the hot honey would function as the only condiment, but it worked. The spicy-sweet sauce and the mayo blended together, giving it a layer of creaminess that I didn't know it needed. However, the mayo drowned out the hot honey flavor a bit, so it was in need of an additional dollop.

The Hot Honey Sauce carried this sandwich. It was intended to be the star, and it certainly acted like it. There was plenty of spice and plenty of sugar, but not so much that I thought I was chowing down on dessert. My major qualm was with the crispy jalapeños; they didn't add much fire, and they had a deeply savory flavor that didn't mesh well with the hot honey. It felt like they were in a power struggle with the honey, and failed miserably to win (how embarrassing for them). If I were to order the Hot Honey McCrispy again, I'd most definitely get it sans jalapeños.

As you probably expected, there wasn't a major difference between the McCrispy with bacon and the McCrispy without it. Normally, I prefer a chicken sandwich without any additional meats on it, but in this case, I preferred the Bacon Hot Honey McCrispy. The bacon-less version didn't have nearly as satisfying of a bite; crunchy bacon added just the right amount of textural contrast to make this sandwich feel complete. Plus, the added saltiness paired nicely with the intensely sweet sauce. The umami-rich bacon helped rein in the sweetness, giving the honey a more balanced flavor, much like the breakfast sausage did in the Sausage Egg Biscuit.

Not only did the bacon balance the flavors and add a much-needed crunch, but the saltiness also drowned out the funky-tasting jalapeños, ultimately making for a better sandwich. Without the bacon, the Hot Honey McCrispy leaned just a little too hard into "sweet" territory. A salty, fatty ingredient was necessary to keep the Hot Honey Sauce from flying a little too close to the sun.

The Snack Wrap was my least favorite canvas for McDonald's Hot Honey Sauce, although it wasn't entirely disappointing. For starters, it took me a little while to get a bite with any sauce on it — the first couple were mostly just tortilla and cheese. Once I got to the spicy, honey-drenched zone, I was underwhelmed. The salty, creamy cheese all but masked the sweet-and-spicy sauce, so an extra drizzle was in order. Even with a little extra, the hot honey felt out of place on the wrap. The cheese didn't pair well with it, and somehow, the tortilla seemed ill-fitting for such a sweet sauce, especially compared to the buttery potato bun of the McCrispys.

It's obvious that the Snack Wrap wasn't constructed with hot honey in mind. Ranch and spicy — the two standard Snack Wrap sauces — are much creamier, and therefore much more capable of standing up to all the shredded cheddar on the Snack Wrap. If the cheddar had a sharper flavor, the sauce could have meshed well with it. But the hot honey seemed like it was fighting the flavor of the cheese with every bite, and the cheese won.

There are a few key differences between a standard hot honey recipe and this McDonald's sauce: For one, McDonald's adds vinegar and sugar to its recipe, so it isn't just honey infused with peppers. The addition of vinegar helps cut the sweetness, which is particularly necessary in McDonald's hot honey since it contains added sugar. The vinegar is very subtle, but its job is a crucial one: It adds the tiniest bit of tang to act as a backdrop for all the sugar in the sauce to play against. This gives the sauce some nuance and prevents it from tasting like spicy candy.

The McDonald's sauce is also a bit thinner than traditional hot honey, which allows for easier drizzling and dipping. The added sugar makes it sweeter, so a chicken nugget, french fry, or sandwich doesn't need to be absolutely smothered to get the full effect of the sauce. A little goes a long way here, so it's up to you if you want the sauce to enhance whatever it's on, or steal the show completely. You can't go wrong either way.

Now, for the best part: the heat. I'm usually unimpressed with the heat level of spicy fast food sauce, but McDonald's didn't hold back when it made this hot honey. The spiciness isn't overpowering, but it's potent enough that it doesn't get drowned out by the honey and sugar whatsoever. Still, if you wanted to pile on the sauce, you could easily do so without setting your mouth ablaze.

I've tried quite a few different varieties of hot honey, from popular hot honey brands at the grocery store to Thai chile-infused versions from my local farmer's market. McDonald's Hot Honey Sauce was unlike any of these, and that's not a jab at the Golden Arches by any means. I was seriously impressed with this sauce, from its consistency and flavor all the way down to its aesthetic appeal — there's something about that speckled red color that makes you want to want to dunk everything in it. 

The floral honey flavor comes through clearly, and the spicy peppers create a warming heat rather than a sharp zap to the taste buds. For a fast-food sauce, it feels thoughtfully constructed, not rushed or one-note, which will go a long way in making it memorable. It also lacked the infamous chemical aftertaste that a lot of fast food sauces can't seem to shake.

The hot honey is likely versatile enough to stick around on the McDonald's menu and still offer something new to fans every time they place an order. It works as a chicken nugget dip, a sauce to spice up boring fries, and the perfect flavor boost for a breakfast sandwich or McCrispy. As far as the new items featuring the sauce go, the hot honey was strongest — by far — on the Sausage Egg Biscuit. It worked well on both McCrispys, but I wish McDonald's had skipped the crispy jalapeños; when it comes to a condiment as bold as hot honey, it's best to let it do all the talking, flavor-wise.