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McDonald's Sweet Chili Sauce Recipe
McDonald's Sweet Chili Sauce
By Todd Wilbur

Recipe Type: Sauce
Calories: 55
Cook Time: 15 minutes
Recipe Rating: 5.0 (4 reviews)
 

To celebrate the Olympic Winter Games in February 2010 McDonald's introduced this new Asian-inspired dipping sauce for the chains McNuggets. The sauce quickly became a top-requested favorite and the cloning requests have been pouring in here at Top Secret Recipes Headquarters. McDonald's says the sauce will only be available for a limited time, so I had to get on the case right away if I was going to reverse-engineer a clone to use on home baked chicken fingers and nuggets. It took me about eight attempts to discover the right proportion of corn syrup to granulated sugar for the perfect consistency and sweetness, and the cornstarch was essential to create a thick sauce that wasnt syrupy. The cayenne pepper provides the necessary kick along with the chili sauce which you can find at the grocery store where the Asian foods are parked. It also goes by the name Sambal Olek, or just Sam to its close friends.
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 cup light corn syrup
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons chili sauce (sambal olek)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
pinch ground cayenne pepper

1. Combine vinegar and water in a small bowl. Whisk in cornstarch.

2. Combine the cornstarch solution with the remaining ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir often until mixture comes to a full boil, cook for 1 minute, then turn off the heat and let the sauce cool, uncovered. Sauce will thicken as it cools.

Makes about 1/2 cup.
        
German  
Submitted on 06/14/10
This is an exact replica of the McDonald's sauce. The great thing is, you can add more cayenne if you want more of a kick than the McDonalds version. Used my first batch on some chicken wings - it was awesome.
brett novy  
Submitted on 05/05/10
This sauce is better then I have tasted at McDonalds. Good work Todd and keep up the good work.
Carol  
Submitted on 04/14/10
Excellent clone Todd!!! My daughter works at McDonald's and we had some of this sauce to do a side by side comparison and the taste was exactly the same. McDonald's sauce was slightly thicker but that was the only difference. We LOVED it....great work!
Heather  
Submitted on 04/07/10
Oh wow! Thanks so much for this recipe; since I tried it a few weeks ago, I had been hoping to either try and convince the nice people at McDonald's to give me packets in bulk, or that you'd clone it. (It's also a close match for the sweet-and-spicy sauce on the Asian boneless wings at Wendy's, so that's a very lovely secondary use for this delicious sauce.) Thanks again!