Recipe Station

We always assumed those restaurant secret sauces were complicated to make and contained special or very expensive ingredients. However, as these three facts prove, there's really not that much to get excited about:

Employees have to sign non-disclosure agreements
Fast food companies, places like McDonald's, take their special sauce recipes very seriously. They're treated with the utmost concern, so much so that employees only know the ingredients on a “need-to-know” basis. And even then, those employees are made to sign non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, which are contracts that basically say, “Don't tell anyone you know this, or else.” This has become so common a practice that sites like Inc.com refer to drafting NDAs as “Protecting your ‘secret sauce.'”

The recipes exist online, and they're made of pretty common ingredients
Of course, so much secrecy and subterfuge is all for naught. According to the Daily Mail, the recipe for Big Mac special sauce has existed online “for years,” and it's even available on McDonald's website. And it's all thanks to former executive chef Dan Coudreaut. (Way to take the fun out of it, Coudreaut.) Aside from exposing what's supposed to be a well-guarded secret to the world, this revelation goes one step further to take all the specialness out of the sauce by divulging just what the ingredients are. Talk about a buzzkill. Everything needed to make McDonald's special sauce can be bought at the “local grocery store.” Seriously, it's nothing more than mayonnaise, mustard, and relish, with some other spices thrown in. Why, there's nothing special about that at all! What's worse, these publicized pieces of privileged information pretty much all contain the same main ingredients, with a few minor differences in spice quantities. So now that the cat's out of the bag for the Big Mac, it seems only fair to spoil a few more childhood favorites.

It's all a load of hooey
So with the lackluster reality of secret sauces, all the fake subterfuge probably looks like a waste of time and energy. But is it really? Think about it. Most of us won't hurry to plunk down our hard-earned cash for a special burger topped with plain-everyday sauce. But call it secret sauce, or special sauce, and many of us will happily fall for it each and every time. Because no matter how much we know the truth, when it comes to the fantasy, we're loving it.

Have You Tried These Sauces Before? 

Well, we'll certainly never look at restaurant special sauces again, even at our favorite restaurants. In fact, thanks to our newfound knowledge, we may just start making these sauces ourselves and save the money we'd spend going out.

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Article Source: Grunge