What's Actually In Wendy's New Krabby Patty Secret Formula Sauce?
Ahoy, elder millennial "SpongeBob Squarepants" fans! You're going to want to sit down for this. SpongeBob is turning 25 (yes, seriously). And if that makes you feel old, at least there's an upside. To celebrate, Wendy's is bringing you a taste of The Krusty Krab with its Nickelodeon-inspired Krabby Patty Kollab burger. It's really just a Dave's single with a special sauce. But it's that special sauce that has fans' tongues wagging.
Although many have tried to decipher exactly what's in the Secret Krabby Patty Sauce so far, it seems, none have been able to just by taste alone. But almost everyone who's tried it notes that it tastes like a burger sauce with some kind of spice to it.
A Reddit user who works at Wendy's posted some images, saying that the sauce itself looks a bit like the chain's ghost pepper sauce. The user also posted an image of the ingredients. While difficult to read, it is a very long list of ingredients one expects to see in a fast food sauce (such as soybean oil, sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup). Key ingredients read like it's some kind of mayonnaise spiked with tomato paste and hot sauce.
But is it really just Thousand Island Dressing?
Wendy's is really leaning into the cartoon theme with this limited edition burger, plus being uncharacteristically tightlipped about the ingredients in the Secret Krabby Patty Sauce. Fans seem to think the secret sauce is some kind of kicked-up Thousand Island dupe. Indeed, many have compared it to McDonald's secret sauce, which is also often compared to Thousand Island dressing, which itself has pretty mysterious origins.
The sauce kinda sounds like a riff on a Thousand Island (aka Russian dressing or comeback sauce) which contains mayo and has ingredients like ketchup, vinegar, garlic, onion, and pickles — but this doesn't appear to have chopped pickles listed. Instead it has some similar ingredients to a pickle brine — and it seems to be spicier. The Wendy's Secret Krabby Patty Sauce clearly has hot sauce in it, so you could probably get a similar result by spiking some Thousand Island with cayenne pepper or hot sauce.
The burger is part of the Krabby Patty Kollab menu, which also features a Pineapple Under the Sea Frosty. The limited-time menu items dropped on October 8 in the U.S., Canada, and Guam.