Skinny Special Sauce

Skinny Special Sauce is your new favorite condiment! Use it as a thick spread for burgers, fries, chicken tenders, etc., or thin it out for an epic dressing.

If I could name one food that brings me back to my teenage years, it’s an In-n-Out grilled cheese. I know, I know. What about their burgers? I didn’t eat much meat in high school, but as a gal growing up in Southern California, the local In-n-Out parking lot was the place to hang out on a Saturday night. Oh, suburban living.

Did you know that they have *epic* grilled cheese there? It’s off menu, as are most of the super delicious In-n-Out items. Just think of a double-double without the meat. Because let’s be honest–the true magic of In-n-Out is in the sauce. If you’ve tried my Lighter Animal-Style Burgers, then you know what I’m talking about.

What MAKES SKINNY SPECIAL SAUCE SO SPECIAL?

Let me make one thing clear: special sauce *is not* Thousand Island sauce. Are these sauces in the same family? Yes. But if In-n-Out just slapped Thousand Island on their burgers and called it a day, wouldn’t they just call it that instead of special sauce? Haha okay maybe not, but just hear me out.

Special sauce has the same base of mayo-ketchup-pickles. But it has less pickle flavor than traditional Thousand Island. It’s also a bit more complex, with added spices and a tangy kick of mustard to round everything out.

This mimics the “mustard down” technique that In-n-Out uses on their burgers to create a tangy crust on their beef patties. I’ll get to that in more detail when I share my Lighter Animal-Style Burgers recipe later in the week.

As is the case a majority of the time, I used food god Kenji’s analysis and technique of In-n-Out burgers as the basis of my recipe. In order to lighten the sauce up, I cut half of the mayo with nonfat, plain Greek yogurt.

The sugar was unnecessary because of the sweetness from the ketchup. The vinegar also didn’t need to be there because there is plenty of tang from the Greek yogurt and mustard that I added in myself. I usually don’t keep relish around, so I just chopped up some dill pickles and really liked the results.

I tried the sauce side-by-side with real In-n-Out sauce and found some flavors missing. Adding paprika, garlic, and onion powders really did the trick. Look at how they look side-by-side now!

Now that we’ve got that sauce down, there are tons of copycat options at our fingertips! This sauce is very similar to Big Mac special sauce, so you could make your own at home.

I’m also partial to Animal-Style fries, which are actually better when you make them at home because In-n-Out French fries are notoriously bad.

I’ll share recipes for all of these very soon with you all. In the mean time, let me know in the comments how you plan to use of this delicious Skinny Special Sauce!

I’d love to hear from you if you make this recipe! It makes my day when you share your pics on Instagram and tag me (@litecravings). Don’t forget to use #litecravingsrecipes to make sure I see it. If I don’t get a chance to scroll through my tags quickly enough, I won’t see your post. I always make a point to look through the hashtags, though, so I’ll see it there!