Szechuan Sauce: How a Fanbase Became Desperate for a Dipping Sauce

On October 7, 2017, fans of the hit TV show “Rick and Morty” rushed into McDonald’s restaurants all over the country, hoping to get a packet of “Rick and Morty” branded szechuan sauce

People were desperate to get the sauce because it was a joke on the show “Rick and Morty”. In the episode “The Rickshank Redemption,” Rick travels back in time to 1998 to when McDonald’s first released the dipping sauce to promote Disney’s “Mulan” and he tries to buy as much sauce as he can. Later in the episode, he gives a speech to his grandson Morty about their future adventures and how he will get the szechuan sauce even if it takes him “nine seasons”. These two parts of the episode became a meme among the fans and the re-release of the sauce was widely anticipated.

Junior Kishan Patel went to a McDonald’s restaurant on October 7th and he went to the McDonald’s near Old Navy. When he got there, there were a lot of cars and the line was “going out the door”, demonstrating the hype. Before Patel even got into the establishment, they already ran out of sauce. By the time he was in the restaurant were a lot of people there. “You know it’s bad when people line up hours before just to get sauce” Patel said. When he finally got to order he bought some chicken McNuggets and presumably some regular dipping sauce.

Twenty packets of the sauce were sent to each restaurant, but some did not even receive the sauce. This angered fans and created chaos.“[There was] no actual fighting but they were fighting to get to the szechuan sauce” says Patel. At some locations, police officers had to go in and stop fans from rioting. One fan claimed that he was stabbed. The fans were tired from waiting all morning for their novelty sauce. “It’s a meme sauce that makes people come out and it’s stupid!” says junior Gabriela Damacela.  One fan was so desperate that he sold his own car on eBay to get a packet.

The sauce is not just limited to McDonald’s. It is widely used in Chinese cuisine with many different dishes. You can even find it in grocery stores or make it yourself with other recipes. There are literally thousands of recipes that involve szechuan sauce. Szechuan sauce is made with chili peppers, ginger, soy sauce, garlic, and sugar. There are several ways to get your own sauce if you don’t want to go to McDonald’s. Check out the recipes at the bottom of the article!

McDonald’s is planning to rerelease “Rick and Morty” branded szechuan sauce in the winter with much more sauce. It will be sold for much longer period of time. Fans should be able to ask for it normally instead of going crazy over it. This will prevent the chaos that happened on October 7th and will hopefully appease the fans.

A few recipes to make your own Szechuan sauce:

https://www.thespruce.com/indo-chinese-szechuan-sauce-1957580

https://www.thespruce.com/szechuan-chicken-recipe-695245

https://www.vogue.com/article/how-to-make-szechuan-sauce

Sources:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rachel-marie-szechuan-sauce-mcdonalds-car_us_59e11f43e4b0a52aca17f9af

https://www.snopes.com/2017/10/09/mcdonalds-szechuan-sauce-rick-and-morty/