The ‘Mulan‘ Szechuan dipping sauce has just about eclipsed the actual release of ‘Rick & Morty‘ season three in terms of its feverish fan clamouring.
The now-mythical limited-time-only McDonald’s nugget dipping sauce circa-1998 has become the calling cry for the show, much in the same way that “six seasons and a movie” caught on with fans of ‘Community‘ (Dan Harmon‘s pretty good at this, would you even believe).
While Ronald’s House of Flavour has officially dove into the rip in the space/time continuum and rescued a precious handful of bottles of the good gear, spiriting them back to the present day and into the possession of show co-creator Justin Roiland, that doesn’t do much for your average schmo like you or me.
Hell, Mayor McCheese himself has already given away the last earthly remaining gallons of the stuff to three *grits teeth* extremely lucky so-and-sos.
https://twitter.com/McDonalds/status/892116641126985728
We are… so… stinkin’… happy for you all.
There’s been many, many attempts at cracking the great dipping sauce code – extremely good YouTube show Binging with Babish got remarkably close with a bang-up lookin’ array of sauces, for example – but now one intrepid Redditor has gifted unto us all a recipe that might get you inside that elusive ballpark.
A man simply known as ‘Xeropoint‘ has knocked together a little reverse engineered version of the sticky stuff that, while it’s obviously not *exactly* the same as the limited run product from the late 90s, is definitely a hellishly tasty-lookin’ sauce in and of itself.
Break out the saucepan and get ready to take your nugs to flavourtown, bitches.
- Mince 6 cloves of Garlic and sweat (heat them up in a skillet)
- add 4 tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
- add soy sauce to taste (DO NOT USE LOW SODIUM SAUCE)
- add 2 tablespoons Plum Sake (Drink additional 3oz Plum Sake)
- Reduce sauce slightly (Drink additional 1.5oz Plum Sake)
- 3 1/2 tablespoons cock sauce (Sriracha)
- add 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- Red pepper flakes to taste
- Minced ginger to taste
- Consume remaining Plum Sake
Simmer that shit for a solid 5 minutes, stirring pretty much constantly. The brown sugar helps it keep the proper consistency, so it’s important to use. Play around with the recipe to your taste. Might want more or less Balsamic Vinegar. Might want more or more Plum Sake. I’d definitely recommend you make it several times to figure out your own flavour.
This sauce is, obviously, not McDonald’s-calibre; Binging with Babish‘s suggestion of combining pre-existing Sweet & Sour and BBQ dipping sauces to create a middle ground is still probably the closest to the real sauce as you’re ever gonna get.
But unlike that one, this recipe is both a) actually good, and b) won’t glue your colon shut.
Whether that satisfies your own personal season arc is, quite obviously, up to your own tastes.
