We Tried ALL the Whataburger Sauces—Here’s What to Buy and What to Skip

One of my favorite ice-breaker questions is “If you could produce any condiment at-will out of your pinky finger, what would it be?” The fastest response I’ve ever gotten was a former boss who said “Whataburger Spicy Ketchup” with zero hesitation. At that time, I’d never been to the Texas-based burger chain, so I didn’t understand the big deal. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know he was sharing an almighty truth with me: Whataburger knows sauces.

Whataburger also knows where I live, judging by the package I received containing ten different bottled condiments available online and in select retailers. Luckily, Omaha Steaks recently sent over a wide selection of meats in their “Elf’s Steakhouse” box—including a pack of burgers I earmarked for this lineup of sauces. Let’s find out what the orange-and-white burger shop brings to the sauce shelf.

Fancy Ketchup

Fancy might be exaggerating, but this is no slouch. Whataburger’s Fancy Ketchup contains no artificial flavors, preservatives, or high-fructose corn syrup. Most importantly, this classic ketchup does exactly what it needs to do: taste good on fries and burgers. Heinz should start watching their back.

Spicy Ketchup

You can tell this is made with real jalapeño; the heat is so familiar and legit. There’s a reason this is spoken of so highly in the fast food condiment space. Even if you’ve never had Whataburger, this is worth checking out just on the “ketchup with heat” front.

Spicy Ketchup with Cholula

While the heat of the standard Spicy Ketchup gets in your face and quickly recedes, the heat of this Whataburger ketchup gets you over time. A little goes a long way. Cholula fan or not, this variant-of-a-variant definitely has a different feel from the standard. This would be a great niche gift for the Cholula superfan in your life.

Honey BBQ

You’re not gonna find a better fast food-branded honey barbecue sauce—bottled or otherwise. While I tested this on a burger and fries, I know this truly belongs on chicken. This won’t last long in my fridge.

Honey Mustard

Honey mustard is my go-to classic condiment, and this absolutely delivers what I’m expecting. While this doesn’t do too much for fries, it’ll absolutely shine when I have a chicken tender dipping party here soon with all these excess sauces.

Sweet & Spicy

Here’s something unique to this line: every sauce’s source of spice is different. The heat found here is different from what you get in the Spicy Ketchup—all thanks to the use of green jalapeños rather than red. This sauce, again, belongs on chicken (even if it’s used on a bacon burger at the actual restaurant).

Buffalo Sauce

That unmistakable Buffalo flavor is here in spades, for better or for worse. Buffalo isn’t my favorite sauce, but this is a solid take on society’s most overdone wing sauce. Unless you’re the world’s biggest Buffalo sauce fan, you can skip this one.

Buttermilk Ranch

It’s…ranch! Despite being a Midwestern boy, I wasn’t raised with ranch as a catch-all condiment. The ranch fans in my life cosigned this as a solid, “fast food-y” ranch worth using a little of.

Jalapeño Ranch 

Holy cow, this is better than the original just by way of adding an actual flavor! This is the first ranch I’ll ever grab out of the fridge on purpose. The ranch coolness mitigates the spice pretty quickly, so you can knock down a significant amount in a short time, even if you don’t have a high spice tolerance.

Patty Melt Sauce

Folks, my go-to Whataburger order is the Patty Melt, so having this in my home is a true honor. This onion-y, garlic-y, pepper-y sauce is just absolute magic no matter how you use it. This will sit right next to Arby’s Sauce and Taco Bell’s Creamy Chipotle in the “goes on every sandwich no matter what” section of my fridge.