​​What's Really In Chick-Fil-A Sauce?

Chick-Fil-A is one of the most profitable and fastest-growing restaurant chains in America, according to Business Insider. Since the debut of its fried chicken sandwich in 1964, Chick-Fil-A has grown from a small restaurant outside of Atlanta, to a national brand with over 2,000 locations across the country — all without being open on Sundays. The company moved well past offering simple chicken sandwiches and waffle fries too. Chick-Fil-A added healthy, diet-friendly menu items as well.

Its large variety of sauces is another weapon in its culinary arsenal used to keep customers coming back. There are eight sauces on the menu that customers can pair with their fries, sandwiches, biscuits, or whatever else they want. Most of them give you an idea of what's in store for your tastebuds with names like Sweet & Spicy Sriracha and Zesty Buffalo. However, the eponymous "Chick-Fil-A" sauce leaves an air of mystery lingering on the tips of customers' tongues. Its tangy mustard-like flavor has left many customers guessing what gets put into this secret sauce.

Chick-Fil-A spilled the beans on their secret sauce in a tweet back in 2012. The tweet reveals that the sauce is a hybrid of three sauces. It is made from a mixture of barbecue sauce, ranch dressing, and honey mustard. The sauces combine to give it the smoky, tangy, rich flavor that die-hard fans have come to love. So the next time there's a sauce shortage, you can make your own at home.

According to Chick-Fil-A, the sauce was made at a Fredericksburg, Virginia location in the 1980s. A team member accidentally mixed the recipes for barbecue sauce and honey mustard sauce that Franchise Operator Hugh Fleming made, and the wildly popular sauce was born. Chick-Fil-A says it shipped more than 500 million individual sauce packets to its restaurants in 2017 alone.

Some lucky shoppers can even purchase bottles of the sauce to keep at home for the next time they make biscuits and fried chicken sandwiches for themselves.