Which Barbecue Sauce is the Barbe-Best? A Reporter Puts 5 Fast-food Flavors to the Test.
FOOD
By EMILY BUSH/Staff Writer
The flavor of barbecue sauce is one of the most unanimously known flavors in America. The slightly smoky, tangy, and sweet flavors all harmoniously coming together can make any meat, chip, or other snack taste far superior.
However, fast food barbecue sauces should be doing the same for their own products. In lieu of this, I have put five restaurants’ barbecue sauces to the test in order to find which barbecue sauce is the absolute top.
To be a fair ruling, I gave every barbecue sauce the same meat to go with it: Tyson’s chicken fries. Each sauce got three chances at dipping, and they were tested on both initial taste and aftertaste to see which one holds up the best.
Without further ado, here are my rankings from last place to first place.
No. 5
Taking last place is actually Popeyes. I sort of expected this from my previous biases around Popeyes sauce, but I was not expecting it to place so low on my ranking.
It has a somewhat light flavor compared to the other sauces, and its tang is almost sour. It has a good aftertaste as well, but no strong defining flavor. For that, I gave it a 4/10.
No. 4
Next up, Slim Chickens. This may come as a surprise since Slim Chickens actually won the chicken tender taste test a while back, but for some reason, the sauce just left an “interesting” taste in my mouth. It has a small kick of flavor after striking low, giving it a lot of dimension.
That’s what placed it above Popeyes at about 6/10.
These next few all place very closely both in my heart and my taste. This may be a controversial third place, but McDonald’s takes it at 9/10. The taste is much more sweet than all of the others, and it has a combination that is more smoky and sweet than what I would call tangy (like on their package).
No. 3
I do enjoy McDonald’s Tangy BBQ a lot, but it is just not applicable to very many meats. The baseline that I gave all of the sauces just did not jive well with the sauce, giving it a slightly lower score than the next two.
No. 2
In second place, we have Chick-fil-A barbecue. It’s a nearly perfect sauce. It can be applied to more than just the products at Chick-fil-A (I personally use it on my Subway oven-roasted chicken sandwiches), and it is a very nice balance between sweet and tangy with a bit of a tingly aftertaste, every quality of a great sauce.
My only complaint would be that it doesn’t have a very strong flavor, leaving me wanting a bit more.
No. 1
Finally, in first place with a perfect score of 10/10, Burger King! With a high, smoky taste to start and a tangy low towards the end, this sauce has dimension in every flavor.
It’s punchy and good with just about everything, even other kinds of fries.
There you have it; these five have been ranked! Feel free to do your own ranking or maybe even see what we can rank next.