I love mustard more than anyone I know—it’s my favorite condiment by a landslide. I know that’s a controversial opinion, but it shouldn’t be. The beauty of mustard lies in its versatility. It can be tangy, sweet, smoky or spicy. Whole grain mustard has a nice texture, and it can be extra creamy when it’s used to make dijonnaise. It can add a ton of flavor to meals—like this creamy chicken dijon recipe—without you spending a ton of time in the kitchen.
But my favorite kind of mustard is probably honey mustard. If I’m having a bad day, it can always be made better with an order of chicken nuggets and a side of honey mustard for dipping. So I started to wonder: Of all the fast-food restaurants, which one has the best honey mustard?
I tried eight fast-food honey mustards to see how they fared. For a true side-by-side comparison, I decided to taste all of them with the same chicken nuggets. I made a bag of frozen Tyson chicken nuggets and invited my parents over for the ultimate honey mustard taste test. We don’t typically agree on much when it comes to food, but we were surprised to find that we all agreed on the best honey mustard dipping sauce.
1/8
Hayley Schueneman for Taste of home
8. Chick-fil-A
Sorry to Chick-fil-A fans, but this honey mustard was definitely the worst in the lineup. The reason is pretty simple: It was more honey than mustard. None of us picked up any mustard tang or flavor through the sweetness of the honey. The look and consistency was also really similar to honey—really thick and a little translucent. I would happily drizzle this on a buttermilk biscuit rather than a chicken tender.
The fact that McDonald’s honey mustard ranked this low was also a shocking twist! The sauce is pretty thin, and the flavor was confusing. It looks more like mustard than it tastes. The sauce didn’t taste bad, just not at all like honey or mustard. McDonald’s has a lot going for it, but sadly not in this ranking. My dad was pretty fired up about this one: “This tastes like they’re playing it safe. It’s disappointing.”
We all thought that Arby’s honey mustard had the strongest taste right from the first bite. Our complaint was just that it was almost all honey, no mustard. My mom said that it reminded her more of a mayo-based salad dressing than a honey mustard. It definitely had an airy, almost whipped texture, and was missing that characteristic mustard tang. If you don’t like mustard very much, you’d probably like this Arby’s offering.
Arby’s and KFC’s honey mustards were basically tied in our rankings. We all felt like KFC’s option was too sweet and too honey-forward. It did have a grainier texture that felt closer to mustard, but the taste was missing. It was a very creamy sauce that coated the nuggets well, but didn’t really stand out in the crowd. Again, a nice dipping option if you are only meh on mustard.
I did not have high expectations for Burger King’s honey mustard, so I was surprised when it made it to the top half of the list. It’s a very smooth sauce, but not so creamy that it feels more like a dijonnaise than a mustard. This one, like so many of the others, was much more honey-forward than mustard-forward. It was, however, tangier than KFC’s, and that cemented its spot in fourth place.
Wendy’s honey mustard was incredibly creamy, but managed to do something that none of the other creamy sauces did: provide a mustard tang that came through stronger than the sweetness of the honey! This was a huge win, in our opinion. There was definitely a sweetness to it, but the mustard bite was unmistakable. It was the first sauce in the group that felt like it truly belonged in the honey mustard category.
Before doing this experiment, if you had asked me what my favorite fast-food honey mustard was I would have absolutely told you that it came from Popeye’s. I’m happy to report that it’s still one of the strongest contenders. It’s very creamy, very tangy and overall a well-balanced sauce. It’s not too sweet, and the tanginess of the mustard really comes through strong on the aftertaste and builds as you eat it.
Trust me, we were all really surprised by how good Sonic’s honey mustard is. I don’t think I had ever tried it prior to this taste test, and I sure have been missing out. Firstly, it’s really thick, so it does a great job of coating nuggets and getting them extra saucy. Secondly, it has the sharpest mustard flavor out of all of them—my dad even wondered if it had some horseradish in it. But it’s not all burn; the honey sweetness tones it all down for a really well-balanced bite. This is the best honey mustard dipping sauce out there, and a true win for mustard lovers!
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