History: The name was popularized by a 1975 advertising campaign featuring a list of the Big Mac’s ingredients: “Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” The precise recipe for what McDonald’s itself now calls Big Mac Sauce remains a secret, but it is recognized as a variant of Thousand Island dressing.
Big Mac Sauce is delivered to McDonald’s restaurants in sealed canisters designed by Sealright, from which it is meant to be directly dispensed using a special calibrated “sauce gun” that dispenses a specified amount of the sauce for each pull of the trigger. Its design is similar to a caulking gun. (Source)
Big Mac: It's all in the sauce
Why it’s awesome: Let’s face it, we all know how bad fast food is for us, that might be partly why we love it so much. I myself haven’t had a burger like this in ages, in fact the last time I ate a burger like this was at IN’N'OUT Burger in California almost 6 months ago. My goodness I do love their burgers, and felt less guilty knowing they were fresh! So making this sauce at home and enjoying it with freshly grilled burgers is UNBEATABLE!
Big Mac Sauce Needs to Chill Overnight
Big Mac Secret Sauce Ingredients & Portions:
- 1/2 Cup Hellmans Real Mayonnaise
- 2 Tbsp French dressing (use kraft french dressing)
- 4 Tsp Sweet pickle relish
- 1 Tbsp Finely minced white onion
- 1 Tsp White vinegar
- 1 Tsp Sugar
- 1/8 tsp Salt
Big Mac Secret Sauce Revealed
This recipe makes 3/4 cups of sauce, simply scale as needed!
COMBINE AND REFRIGERATE FOR SEVERAL HOURS OR OVERNIGHTServings: How many servings will it yield?
Big Mac Cook time & Directions:
Get your “mise en place” ready. That’s a fancy term for gather all your ingredients and prepare them. Once they’re all prepped, mix them all together. That’s it. You’re done! That wasn’t so hard was it!?!
Nutritional Benefits: Considering the ingredients, like mayo, relish, kraft french dressing, sugar it’s probably not the sauce you run to when you’re trying to lower cholesterol or start a new health trend. However, I will say that, knowing the source of the ingredients is always a leg up when eating something. Knowing your onions were fresh, your relish was of good quality, your french dressing well that’s unavoidable. The gist of it is that if you made it at home it’s probably not as bad as if you ate it in a restaurant near you! 
There’s a guilt free Big Mac for you!
wowsers! I’m gonna have to give this one a try!
It’s totally worth the try! When I first discovered it, I made it for my friends and they instantly knew what it was. They couldn’t believe how much it tastes like the real deal!
I love sauce
I’m confused about the sweet pickle relish…I live in the middle of nowhere so can’t buy it pre made anywhere, is there a recipe online i could use to make it? – what exactly is it?
Cooks.com has a ton of sweet pickle recipes here’s the first one I found!
12 cucumbers
4 lg. onions
6 peppers (3 green, 3 red)
4 tsp. celery seed
4 tsp. mustard seed
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. tumeric
3 1/2 c. vinegar
2 1/2 c. sugar
Chop or grind cucumber, onions and peppers. Combine all ingredients in large heavy pan and cook 3 hours after coming to a boil or until contents are reduced to about 5 pints.
Pour into clean pint jars and seal. Process in water bath 5 minutes after canner water comes to a boil.
It is such a good recipe
Gonna be making this soon…I’m craving a big mac but don’t want to order one cause I know ill regret it…
The original recipe only has two ingredients. I used to make it when I worked at MacDonalds in high school.
I actually make it using cheesewhiz,sweet relish and mayo.
Sounds good. I’ll give that a shot.
look I don’t care about the sauce….I just would like to know why the flipping Big Mac is looking like a small MAC compare to when it fist was introduced to the world!!!!!!!
To save all the trouble, when I make hamburgers at home, or especially beef steakettes, I have simply used Thousand Island dressing. Buy the good stuff, not the no-brand name.
Good suggestion Rudy, they’re very similar.
Not only that, they don’t even look like they’re own ads. Check out this video we posted recently about it.