Give Your McDonald's Chicken Sandwich A Southern BBQ Makeover With This Saucy Tip

McDonald's gives you plenty of options for dressing up a chicken sandwich beyond the usual toppings. A standard McChicken is served with mayonnaise, while a McCrispy has no sauce at all, just pickles and a buttered potato roll. If you want to bring a lot more flavor to any of McDonald's chicken sandwiches, you need to look at its range of dipping sauces. And not just any single sauce either. Mix McDonald's Tangy BBQ Sauce with honey to make your own honey BBQ chicken sandwich.

Mixing McDonald's Tangy BBQ Sauce and a container of honey over Chicken McNuggets has gained traction on social media with some calling it a hack, but really you're using the sauces the way you're supposed to. Honey and BBQ sauce are a natural combination, and adding the mixture to a chicken sandwich gives you a sweet, smoky taste without waiting for McDonald's to innovate a new sandwich on the menu. The honey makes the mixture thicker and stickier, so it really clings to the chicken. It can also be pretty messy, so have some napkins handy.

The honey will put sweetness front and center, so you may need to balance the sauce. Since Tangy already contains high fructose corn syrup, your honey BBQ mix could end up tasting sweeter than you'd like. Keep a little extra plain Tangy BBQ to mix in if you need to tame the sweetness. However, if sweet is what you're going for, then just add more honey. If you want some heat, you could always swap honey for McDonald's Hot Honey Sauce to give it a sweet and spicy kick.

Honey BBQ sauce may not have the long history of some other popular BBQ sauces. Kansas City-style, North Carolina vinegar, South Carolina mustard, and other regional sauces often take center stage, but honey BBQ has been around for at least 40 years. Some South Carolina sauces, especially Carolina Gold sauce, are made with honey. Brands like Sweet Baby Ray's, Kraft, and Buffalo Wild Wings all sell versions of honey BBQ sauce at Walmart.

McDonald's is no stranger to Honey BBQ sauce, even if you won't find it on the U.S. menu in that form. North of the border, Canadians have been enjoying Honey BBQ sauce as one of the dipping sauce choices at McDonald's since at least 2022. The difference between Honey BBQ Sauce and Tangy BBQ Sauce is subtle but significant. High fructose corn syrup is the first ingredient in Tangy BBQ, while Honey BBQ lists honey, sugar, and blackstrap molasses as its sweeteners.

Depending on what you're eating, you can use more or less of each sauce, enough to coat a whole piece of chicken or just add a little flavor accent. For strips and McNuggets, it's easy enough to empty both sauces into the box, close it up, and shake until the chicken is coated. For sandwiches, you'll need a little more finesse. Remove the bun, slather the sauces onto the chicken, and coat it as best you can. The thin foil lid from the sauce packages can help spread the sauce in a pinch.