What's Actually In McDonald's Nether Flame Sauce?

McDonald's has another sauce that has only hit stores for a limited time. The new Nether Flame sauce, named after the fiery underworld of the Minecraft universe, gets a noticeably spicy kick from the prominent inclusion of chili peppers and cayenne red peppers. But what else is in this tasty new dip?

McDonald's lists the ingredients in this sauce online. Starting with a base of water and vinegar, Nether Flame gets its heat from chili and cayenne red peppers, plus a small amount of oleoresin capsicum, a spicy pepper derivative also found in pepper spray. More flavor comes from its added sugar, salt, garlic, apricot concentrate — to help balance the heat – and dashes of natural flavors, garlic powder, "spices," and yeast extract for a touch of umami. 

To remain shelf-stable and mass-marketable, Nether Flame also has other ingredients to help maintain consistency, like xanthan gum, soybean oil, a "starch" made from both modified and unmodified corn starch, and the preservatives sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate.

Cayenne pepper can naturally provide a moderate baseline spiciness (it's a spicy ingredient you should add to your chocolate chip cookies). But with McDonald's Nether Flame sauce, the company uses it to noticeably turn up the heat — as it has done before with cayenne pepper.

Nether Flame is not McDonald's first dipping sauce that hinged its appeal on cayenne pepper. In 2023, fans enjoyed the rollout of McDonald's Sweet & Spicy Jam and Mambo Sauce, two limited-time-only sauces that both derived a subtle heat from cayenne peppers.

McDonald's also uses cayenne pepper in the breading for its Spicy Chicken McNuggets, which proved popular enough after their 2020 debut for McDonald's to occasionally bring them back for limited-time availability. If the Minecraft Nether Flame sauce is popular enough, perhaps it will enjoy a similar fate. Hopefully, though, its popularity will stop short of becoming another Rick and Morty-style szechuan sauce disaster.