This Red Robin Campfire Sauce recipe is a spot-on copycat of the one served at Red Robin! Made with just 2 ingredients and in less than 5 minutes, this addicting fry sauce has a tangy, smoky, and slightly sweet flavor that you just can’t. stop. eating. Whether served with fries, onion rings, burgers, or chicken nuggets, it’s the BEST dipping sauce!
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This may be the most perfect dipping sauce on the planet.
I know that’s a big claim, but this Red Robin Campfire Sauce copycat recipe won’t take long to win you over. It’s also known as Red Robin onion ring sauce, campfire mayo, or fry sauce. No matter what you call it, you’ll be serving it on everything from burgers to french fries to hot dogs in no time.
For other copycat recipes, try these Crumbl Peanut Butter Cookie Copycat or this Applebee's White Chocolate Maple Blondies!
🏅 Why this is the BEST Campfire Sauce recipe
There are several other copycat recipes out there for Red Robin dipping sauces, but we found that none of them truly had the same addicting flavor and tang as the original campfire sauce. Instead they tasted like mayonnaise masked with barbecue sauce and chipotle powder, which left a very flat, disappointing taste in our mouths (and is NOT like the original).
So we went to work! We tested rounds (and more rounds) of this sauce with different ingredients, brands, spices, and ratios until we had the perfect Red Robin Campfire Sauce. Here are some highlights of the final recipe
- Tastes like the original 👏
- 2 ingredients
- Fast and easy (just 5 minutes including cleanup!)
- Tangy and flavorful without a mayo-y aftertaste
- Amazing on practically everything (well maybe not everything… but close 😜)
🍟 Ingredients
This recipe is made with just 2 ingredients. Although you can use whatever brands you prefer, we found that the brands below gave us the closest taste to the original Red Robin dipping sauce (This post is not sponsored by these brands. I have included links to view the exact product, but they can be found cheaper at your local grocery store).
- Thousand Island dressing: We used Ken’s Steakhouse Thousand Island Dressing (affiliate). This dressing adds that tang that so many other recipes were missing, along with a hint of sweet.
- Barbecue sauce: Our preferred BBQ sauce is Sweet Baby Rays Hickory and Brown Sugar (affiliate). If you use a different brand, try to choose a smokey bbq sauce with a hickory and brown sugar flavor profile.
🥣 How to make campfire sauce
You can’t get much easier than this fry sauce. Just measure and mix! Depending on what brands you use, you may need to add a bit of water to thin the sauce to your desired consistency.
👨👩👧👦 For a crowd
This sauce would be AMAZING for a burger bar or grilling party! The recipe makes about 1 ¼ cups. You can easily double, triple, or quadruple the recipe depending on the size of your crowd.
🙋 Questions and Answers
To get the same taste as the original, you make this sauce with a mixture of Thousand Island dressing and hickory brown sugar barbecue sauce. Easy!
No, campfire sauce isn’t vegan because the dressing is mayonnaise based, which contains eggs.
Yes! Technically you can use any brand you like and you will get a similar sauce, but we found that the specific brands listed in the recipe card gave us the closest taste to the original Red Robin Campfire Sauce. We recommend trying it with the listed brands first!
This makes a killer sauce for french fries, burgers, onion rings, or chicken nuggets.
👨🏼🍳 Tips & Tricks
- Try it with the brands listed in the recipe card for the closest taste to the true Red Robin onion ring sauce.
- Store the campfire sauce in an airtight container for up to 1 week for best results.
- After refrigerating, you may need to loosen the sauce by adding ½ teaspoon of water at a time until it has reached the desired consistency.
📖 More recipes with few ingredients
- This 4-Ingredient Slow Cooker Potato Soup is one of our most visited recipes. And for good reason! It’s creamy, flavorful, and so easy to make.
- For a simple appetizer, try this 3-Ingredient Cheese Ball with cream cheese, ranch dressing mix, and walnuts. Yum!
- For an easy grilling dinner, make this 4-Ingredient Chicken Marinade. Super easy and tastes like a Cracker Barrel Chicken copycat!
- Another easy but impressive appetizer is Chicken Apple Sausage Bites with maple glaze.
- This Spicy Honey is just a few ingredients and delicious on almost everything.
👋🏻 Connect with us!
If you try this recipe, please leave a comment and star rating to let us know how it is! We’d also love to connect with you on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. Tag @borrowedbites or hashtag #borrowedbites to show us your food!
📋 Recipe
The BEST Red Robin Campfire Sauce (Perfect Copycat!)
Ingredients
- ¾ cup thousand island dressing (We prefer Ken's Steakhouse Thousand Island Dressing)
- ½ cup barbecue sauce (We prefer Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory and Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce)
- Water if needed
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, combine the thousand island dressing and barbecue sauce.
- If too thick, add water ½ teaspoon at a time until sauce is desired consistency.
- We love comments! Please come back and leave us one after you’ve tried this recipe.
Notes
- Try it with the brands listed in the recipe card for the closest taste to the true Red Robin onion ring sauce.
- Store the campfire sauce in an airtight container for up to 1 week for best results.
- After refrigerating, you may need to loosen the sauce by adding ½ teaspoon of water at a time until it has reached the desired consistency.
Add Your Own Notes
Nutrition
All nutrition information is provided by a third party and is an estimate only. Use your own nutritional calculator for more specific measurements.
Lynn says
Local stores stopped carrying this sauce. So i decided to see if i could find a recipe online because Amazon’s prices were quite high. Almost every recipe I found calls for jalapeños and mayonnaise and I don’t care for either. Then I found your recipe and thought I’d give it a try because I already had the ingredients. It’s seemed to taste pretty good but it was missing something. I read the label from an empty Campfire sauce bottle I had, and one of the ingredients listed was Whiskey. I added 1/2 once and that put the taste way over the top, now it tastes exactly like the real deal. If someone is worried about the alcohol, you can remedy that by simmering it for 10 minutes to remove the alcohol but leaving the whiskey taste
Misty says
Great idea! You can also use a barbecue sauce that has whisky in it for that added flavor. Thanks for sharing!
Kimberly says
I’ve never found a campfire sauce so close to the original! This is spot on. If my kids are looking for me don’t tell them I’m hiding in the closet eating fries and campfire sauce thank you
Misty says
I am so glad you thought so! We sure did a lot of testing to find the right ingredients to make it as close as possible to the original. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.
Laura says
My most favorite sauces and I never put them together. Thank you.
Danielle says
Hope you love it!
Spensa says
I can’t believe this sauce… it’s tastes EXACTLY like Red Robin’s. Guilty admission here… I’ve been cutting up russet potatoes and making French fries just so I can eat this sauce. Ha! Seriously so good. And stupidly easy. It’s this good and only 2 ingredients? Mind blown! Thank you for figuring this recipe out!
Danielle says
Thanks for your feedback! We think so too!