The Definitive Ranking Of Chick-Fil-A's Dipping Sauces

Heading to Chick-fil-A for one of the chain's chicken sandwiches or nuggets? Here's your guide to the best dipping sauces to flavor that tasty chicken. The dipping sauces come with orders of nuggets, which ranked high on our list of the best fast-food chicken nuggets and tenders. You can also ask for sauce to dip your fries or put on your sandwich. Some of the restaurant's most popular options are even sold in larger quantities at the grocery store so that you can keep them on-hand at home.

We sampled all of them, dipping nuggets in each portable tub to get the full Chick-fil-A flavor effect. When tasting, we considered flavor, of course, but also looked at texture and thickness. Great sauce is thick enough to stick to each nugget, and that ended up a big factor that separated the okay sauces from those that really got our attention. There weren't any sauces that we wouldn't order again. Some definitely stood out for their balanced flavor that worked so well with the chicken, plus the thick consistency. Finally, we learned a little bit about the nutrition facts in each option. Sauces don't typically bring a lot of nutritional benefits, but we noted which were loaded with more sugar than we expected so that people looking to limit their intake could be aware.

Our least favorite dipping sauce during our Chick-fil-A taste test was the garden herb ranch. It would be good with fresh vegetables, but as an accompaniment for the chain's crispy chicken nuggets full of savory flavor, it just didn't have the complex flavor we wanted. This sauce is on the tangy side and it has a strong buttermilk flavor, but the herbs aren't as zesty as we hoped. It was only okay with nuggets but didn't work well with Chick-fil-A's famous waffle fries. There wasn't any hint of sweet, savory, or smokey, which we got from most of the other options on the dipping sauce menu.

Considering it's also one of the higher-calorie sauces with 140 calories per serving, this isn't the choice that we'd go with. It is one of the only options with protein, but at just 1 gram, it's not a significant amount. It ended up at the bottom of our rankings due mainly to a lackluster taste. With so many other tasty options available, we'd just as soon skip the ranch.

The zesty buffalo sauce is the spiciest of the options from Chick-fil-A but it still has a creaminess that works well with nuggets. Cayenne red pepper is on the ingredients list but the addition of egg yolk and vinegar help balance out the extra kick. It pairs well with chicken but is a particularly good addition to the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. If you want to really bring up the heat, spread this buffalo sauce on the bun of the spicy deluxe sandwich.

With just 25 calories per serving, this has the lowest impact on the nutrition of your meal. If you like to use a lot of sauce with your chicken, this is a good option that won't load up your dish with extra calories and fat. It was a bit too spicy for our young kids, who preferred the sweeter sauces. But if you're a fan of buffalo sauces, you'll love this version.

If you like sweet, the Chick-fil-A honey mustard is a sauce you definitely should try. It's thicker than honey mustard from some other chains and has a stronger honey flavor. This was one of the more syrupy options as well, which resulted in a lot of dripping when we tried it. This was a good option with nuggets and one of our favorites to use as a dipping sauce for fries. Our entire family can agree that this sauce is tasty, so if we have to share sauce, this is one that we would all be happy to get.

This sauce has 50 calories per serving, but much of that comes from the honey and sugar in the recipe. The ingredients list includes mustard seed, but the honey is the stronger element between the two. With a slightly stronger mustard flavor, this would probably end up higher on our list. As is, it's a good option all-around that adds flavor that will appeal to most palates.

Chick-fil-A Polynesian sauce is a more unusual option you don't see at other fast food chicken chains. It has both sugary and sour elements but leans more toward sweet. It's a little thinner than some of the options from Chick-fil-A and is more of a glaze than a true dipping sauce when it comes to texture. That thin consistency moved this one further down the list than we might otherwise have put it based on the taste. This wasn't as noticeable when we added it to a chicken sandwich, but it made it difficult to enjoy Chick-fil-A's large waffle fries.

It has 110 calories per serving as is, which isn't surprising given that its top ingredient is sugar. You can also pick up this sauce in a 16-ounce container at the grocery store. If you like sweet and sour sauce, pick up a larger container of the Chick-fil-A Polynesian sauce to use on other items in your kitchen.

Chick-fil-A's sweet and spicy sriracha was a surprise favorite. It's not one that we'd tried before, even though we frequently pick up Chick-fil-A nuggets. It was a favorite among the older participants in our taste test but was too spicy for our young kids. This has a hotter kick than the Polynesian sauce but is still a sweet-and-sour combo. The sriracha-style sauce is also a bit thicker than some of the others, which helped it cling to fries and nuggets. The kick was a bit too much for the chicken sandwich, but only because we love that combination of vinegary pickle and crispy, savory chicken.

It's only 45 calories per serving, putting it on the low end compared to many other sauces. This fact, combined with its delicious taste and great-for-dipping consistency, helped this sauce earn a spot toward the top of our list. It will probably become one of our go-to options when ordering Chick-fil-A nuggets, at least for the adults who like the extra kick of heat. Fortunately, we can pick up a 16-ounce container at the grocery store to get the same sweet and tart flavor with just the right amount of kick to put on other home-cooked meals.

If you're craving a classic dipping sauce for nuggets, barbecue is the way to go. Chick-fil-A's barbecue is a sweet and savory tomato-based sauce. It includes both sugar and brown sugar, which gives it a sweeter taste overall than other top barbecues that we've tried. The consistency is one of the best from the chicken chain, however, and there was minimal dripping with each bite, even when our youngest kids tried it out. With a little bit of smokey flavor, this could easily be our favorite at Chick-fil-A. It fell a bit in our rankings just due to the lack of depth.

The sugar also puts it a little higher on the calorie count per serving. Each individual packet has 45 calories. If you want more than a single serving, you can ask for multiple packets or pick up a 16-ounce container of this barbecue at the grocery store. It's one of a few sauces from Chick-fil-A sold outside of the restaurants.

The honey-roasted barbecue sauce is the only dipping sauce that comes in a smaller squeeze packet, which is too bad because it was one of our favorites. It was very similar to the Chick-fil-A sauce in both taste and texture but had a little bit more of a smokey, savory element. It added a hint of sweet honey to the barbecue and was more balanced than the honey mustard or barbecue sauces. 

It's only 60 calories per packet, but since these are roughly half the size of the larger dipping sauce containers, it is comparable to the Chick-fil-A sauce. If you only want a small amount, however, this smaller packer is the way to go. Chick-fil-A recommends it with grilled chicken but we also like to use it on their chicken sandwiches. It made a tasty dip for fries and nuggets as well. This small packet felt much less wasteful than some of the larger options and helped us keep from going overboard on condiments.

Chick-fil-A sauce is one of the unique options from the chain and one of the most popular options based on its dedicated following. The exact recipe is a closely guarded secret, but there are plenty of dupes out there if you want to recreate it at home. It's not very complicated to make your own version when you combine barbecue, honey mustard, and ranch.

Chick-fil-A sauce has a little extra mustardy bite, but it still falls on the creamier side of the options on the menu. There are also smokey notes that give it extra depth, which was one of the main reasons that it ended up at the top of our list. It has a hint of sweetness without being too syrupy. All of these flavors combine to make it into something extra special.

Unfortunately, it's pretty high on the calorie count as well, with 140 calories per single serving. We like to enjoy it on occasion, but try not to give it a regular spot on our plate. That's hard, considering it's so tasty and you can pick up a 16-ounce or 24-ounce container at the grocery store.

Even though we've been Chick-fil-A enthusiasts for years, we tried the restaurant's dipping sauces side by side with nuggets and fries for the first time. We also paired some of our favorites with Chick-fil-A sandwiches and salads to see how they worked on other menu items.

Taste was our top criteria and we tended to like balanced options best. Sauces that were too sugary, too spicy, or too sour didn't work as well as those with a combination of multiple tastes working together. We also liked those with a thicker consistency, especially since we judged them by how well they worked as a dipping sauce. Thin sauce tended to run off our chicken or fries, making a mess and wasting sauce.

We also considered the nutritional profile of the various sauces, since some were surprisingly high in calories. We tend to enjoy a lot of sauce with our nuggets and even though some of them were tasty, they weren't so good that we wanted to add hundreds of extra calories to our meal.