Saturday, May 17, 2008

Fry Sauce

Ever wondered the history of Fry Sauce? ok... maybe not, but here's the scoop anyways.

The other night when we were at Chadders (a place like In & Out), I was discussing Fry Sauce with Jimmy. I quite like the sauce but Jimmy isn't quite as fond of it as I am. He reminded me it was native to Utah and the West.

I decided because so many Utah and Idaho teenagers tried to have good clean fun, they spent way too much time at Wendy's and McDonalds and came up with some random mayonnaise/ketchup concoction that they marketed to local fast food places. Well - I think I was slightly off, but it was a nice theory.

Here's the official low-down on Fry Sauce from Wikipedia:

Fry sauce is a regional condiment served with french fries. It is usually a simple combination of one part ketchup and two parts mayonnaise. When spices and other flavorings are added, it is similar to—but thicker and smoother than—traditional Russian dressing and Thousand Island dressing. Fry sauce is commonly found in restaurants in Utah, Nevada, much of Idaho, eastern Washington and rural Oregon, but is also commonly found in supermarkets across the country, as well as available by mail-order.

The Utah-based Arctic Circle restaurant chain claims to have invented fry sauce around 1948. Arctic Circle serves it in its restaurants in the western United States. Many other fast-food restaurants and family restaurants in the region, such as Carl's Jr, Crown Burgers, Apollo Burger and Hires Big H, offer their own versions of the sauce. It is also featured at In-N-Out Burger restaurants in California, Nevada, and Arizona.

Until 1999, Utah franchise locations of McDonald's also carried fry sauce. The chain stopped stocking the condiment because of the high waste it produced: because of its mayonnaise content, the sauce spoils after a single day if left unrefrigerated. Nevertheless, many other national fast food restaurants in Utah and nearby states serve fry sauce.

Let's tally our votes here on this nifty survey and see how many like fry sauce. I'm very curious to see how it all turns out.

6 comments:

Jenni Taysom said...

I don't know if my vote logged or not, but I voted that I love fry sauce. I either eat my fries plain (no ketcup) or with fry sauce. I worked at Arctic Circle during high school and we would make the fry sauce fresh. Arctic Circle has great hamburgers because they put the fry sauce on the hamburger - yum!

Andrea said...

UH, LOVE it! Us Idaho girls have to stick together. :)

Janey said...

So I totally loved fry sauce until i found out it had mayo in it....seriously, Mayo?? And all those burger places trick me when i say "no mayo" because they always say "it's a special thousand island type sauce...." hmmmm.... despite all that, I do kind of still desire fry sauce :)

Janey said...

So I totally loved fry sauce until i found out it had mayo in it....seriously, Mayo?? And all those burger places trick me when i say "no mayo" because they always say "it's a special thousand island type sauce...." hmmmm.... despite all that, I do kind of still desire fry sauce :)

Alison said...

I LOVE frysauce! So love it! I voted all for it. That's the only way to eat fries for sure.

Marne said...

I love traveling to places and explaining the whole fry sauce thing...people think it is so wierd. We love it at our house!