McDonald’s Is Bringing Back Szechuan Sauce
Has any condiment ever had a longer, more intense, or stranger relationship with popular culture than McDonald’s Szechuan sauce? If there is one, I can’t think of it. And now the cultiest product to come out of one of the world’s biggest corporations is making a rare comeback.
Yes, you will once again have an opportunity to sample heaven’s greatest fast-food dipping sauce, AKA McDonald’s Szechuan sauce, later this month. The rare concoction is making a triumphant return for just the third time in 24 years; according to McDonald’s press release, the sauce will be available “for just a few days beginning March 31, while supplies last.”
How do you get your hands on it? You can order it “exclusively” starting on the 31st through the McDonald’s app. It will be a free option for dipping sauce when you order Chicken McNuggets, or you can also purchase up to five (5) sauces a la carte. By sheer coincidence, that’s how many different labels the sauce will have this time around; as you can see above, four of the five labels come together to spell the word “Szechuan.” Collect them all, etc.
This remarkable sauce was first introduced as a movie food tie-in with Disney’s animated Mulan back in 1998. To help promote the film, McDonald’s temporarily offered Szechuan sauce with their Chicken McNuggets.
It was basically forgotten after that — except by the creators of Rick and Morty who put it into a 2017 episode of the series, where one of the characters professed their love for the long-discontinued product. Suddenly McDonald’s Szechuan sauce was an internet meme, and everyone wanted to try some.
The enormous attention on the sauce convinced McDonald’s to bring it back — where the overwhelming demand from Rick and Morty fans caused “riots” among disappointed customers. McDonald’s then brought it back again, in significantly larger quantities in 2018.
And that brings us to 2022, when you will have yet another chance to get your hands on this mythical foodstuff, provided you’ve got that McDonald’s app. Good luck and happy sauce hunting. (Let’s hope it’s not the leftover packets from 2018; that’d be kind of gross.)