Raising Cane’s Dipping Sauce Copycat Recipe

Raising Cane’s Dipping Sauce is a tangy, creamy, peppery, and addicting dipping sauce that goes with literally everything. We love it with french fries, chicken tenders, and burgers.

This recipe was one of the first recipes on my site back in 2019, and it continues to grow in popularity because it is so good! It is one of our favorite recipes, so I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

My husband and I brought home a huge container of Cane’s Sauce from a trip to visit his parents in Louisiana back in the Spring of 2019, and we experimented for days – trying different combinations of spices, ingredients, and timing to get the flavor just right. We think this Cane’s Sauce recipe is nearly perfect, and I hope you like it.

👩🏻‍🍳 What is Raising Cane’s Sauce?

Cane’s Sauce is the signature sauce from Raising Cane’s Restaurants. Raising Cane’s is a fast-food restaurant franchise that serves amazing fried chicken tenders with quite possibly the very best chicken dipping sauce that you will ever try. At our house, Cane’s Sauce is a food group, and we always order extra sauce, so we knew we had to make our own copycat version.

The very first Raising Cane’s Restaurant was opened in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the Louisiana State University campus. My husband went to college at L.S.U., so we have a special connection with Cane’s. (We go out of our way to get Cane’s on every road trip.)

Table of Contents

1. 👩🏻‍🍳 What is Raising Cane’s Sauce?
2. 🥘 Cane’s Sauce Ingredients
1. So what’s in this Cane’s Sauce?
3. 🥣 How to Make Cane’s Sauce
4. 🍳 Raising Cane’s Sauce Uses
5. 🐓 What Does Raising Cane’s Sauce Taste Like?
6. Where Can You Buy Raising Cane’s Sauce?
7. ✏️ Helpful Tips
8. 🥦 Can You Make this Paleo or Vegan?
9. 🥫 How to Store Cane’s Sauce
10. More Copycat Raising Cane’s Recipes
11. Other Delicious Homemade Sauces
12. Raising Cane’s Sauce Recipe
13. 🌶️ Other Great Cajun & Creole Recipes

🥘 Cane’s Sauce Ingredients

So what’s in this Cane’s Sauce?

• Ketchup – You can use any kind of ketchup – we usually use Simply Heinz because it does not have high fructose corn syrup in it and has more of a tomato taste, but you can use what you have.
• Mayonnaise – Our favorite mayonnaise for Cane’s Sauce is Blue Plate – it is from Louisiana, and we think it has the best flavor. My father-in-law will go to battle over that mayonnaise. (Here’s a fun history about Blue Plate – https://blueplatemayo.com/about/.) Our second choice would be Duke’s. Don’t use Miracle Whip – it will be too sweet.
• Black Pepper – I like to use coarse ground black pepper – there isn’t always a noticeable difference in dishes when using different size grinds of pepper, but I think one of the best things about Cane’s Sauce is its pepperiness, so the coarser grind gives you that big, bold pepper flavor. If your pepper container says “table grind or coarse grind,” – that is perfect. That being said, there is nothing wrong with the “pure grind” you just might find that you need to add a little more pepper to get the right amount of pepperiness. 
• Garlic Powder – We just use plain old garlic powder/granulated garlic – not dehydrated garlic. I have used several different brands, and they all work fine. Just don’t use garlic salt.
• Worcestershire Sauce – I like to use the Lea and Perrins brand, but have also used the cheaper versions like the Heinz brand and the Publix store brand. 
• Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning – Tony Chachere’s Seasoning is the little bit of lagniappe (something extra) that I like to add to this recipe to make it as good as it is. It is not officially in the original recipe, but the addition of Tony’s Seasoning really takes this recipe over the top, and it’s what we think makes this recipe so good. It used to be my “secret ingredient” that made this recipe unique, but now everyone is using it!

🥣 How to Make Cane’s Sauce

Making your own Cane’s Sauce is really simple. It uses simple ingredients, and somehow, you end up with the most amazing sauce. Someone leaked what they claimed to be the “official” Cane’s sauce recipe on Reddit a while ago, and this recipe is a little different than that recipe, but we love it. Ugh, seriously… why is Cane’s sauce so good?

Ok, so here’s how to make it. First, gather up all of your ingredients – mayonnaise, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, pepper, and Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning.

Then, you literally just put it all in a bowl and whisk it together.

Put the sauce in an airtight container or mason jar and refrigerate for at least 6 hours – the longer, the better – then enjoy it. That’s all you need to do.

I will probably say this ten times in this post, but the best way to get the real Cane’s flavor is to let the sauce sit in the fridge for as long as you can resist before serving it.

A minimum of 6 hours will give you the best flavor (I KNOW – who wants to wait 6 hours for Cane’s?!)

Seriously though, the longer, the better for this sauce. 

If you eat it right away, it will taste like ketchup – we learned this from a lot of trial and error. We either make it the night before if we want it for lunch or in the morning if we are planning to have it for dinner. It is worth the wait.

🍳 Raising Cane’s Sauce Uses

Cane’s Sauce is, of course, meant for dipping crispy chicken tenders (we love to serve it with homemade chicken tenders) but you can use it for almost anything that you can think of that is best served dipped in or drenched in a sauce.

We use it for:

• French Fries – I love to use canes sauce as a fry sauce for dipping homemade fries – I love this recipe from Against All Grain.
• Sweet Potato Fries – We love these Bacon-Wrapped Sweet Potato wedges
• As an “aioli” for Sandwiches and Burgers
• It’s also great on Fried Fish!
• Hush Puppies
• Dipping Fresh Veggies
• Tater Tots

🐓 What Does Raising Cane’s Sauce Taste Like?

Raising Cane’s Sauce is a little tangy, a little peppery, and has a little bit of spice. It has a little bit of tang that comes from mayonnaise and a little bit of the sweet tomato flavor from ketchup. All balanced out by a heap of black pepper, some spice from Tony Chachere’s seasoning, and a bit of garlic powder.

I recently heard from someone that they use dijon mustard, onion powder, and salt as well, and it made their sauce fantastic. I haven’t tried that combination yet, but let me know if you do!

Where Can You Buy Raising Cane’s Sauce?

Currently, you can only buy Cane’s Sauce in a Raising Cane’s fast food restaurant. I am dreaming of the day that you can buy a bottle of Cane’s Sauce. 

Until it is available in stores, you can make this Copycat Raising Cane’s Sauce Recipe at home!

✏️ Helpful Tips

• I am not joking when I say to let this sauce sit for at LEAST 6 hours. If you taste it immediately, it will just taste like ketchup. Seriously, pop it in the fridge and come back later. You won’t regret it.
• Make sure you add Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning. I have tested Slap Ya Mama, Homemade Cajun Seasoning, and Who Dats Creole Seasoning. They all make a yummy sauce, but Tony’s is the only one that really gets the flavor right. (Seriously, we tested this SO many times and so many different ways.)
• While making your Cane’s Sauce, make a batch of Buttermilk Fried Chicken Tenders – they taste just like Cane’s Tenders, and they taste so good dunked in that perfect peppery sauce!

🥦 Can You Make this Paleo or Vegan?

One of the biggest perks of making your own sauce at home is that you can make it fit any diet you are following. You can control what goes into it. You can make it Paleo, Whole30, gluten-free, dairy-free, and even vegan. I have now created a separate post with my Paleo Raising Cane’s Sauce since so many people were looking for tips to make it!

(The gist is that you just need to use Paleo mayonnaise or Vegan mayonnaise, Paleo ketchup (without added sugar for Whole30), and Paleo Worcestershire Sauce (most have some kind of added caramel color/sugar/gluten/soy – this recipe is really good.) )

If you don’t want to customize your sauce, you can use whatever mayonnaise or ketchup that you have in your refrigerator – to be honest, that is what we often do. This recipe is so easy, so delicious, and so forgiving, no matter what ingredients you use

🥫 How to Store Cane’s Sauce

Homemade Raising Cane’s Sauce can, unfortunately, expire, though I doubt this sauce will last long enough to go bad. You should store your sauce in the refrigerator in an airtight container & use the sauce within 10 – 14 days. (We like to store our sauce in a mason jar.)

*I hate that I have to add this, but – I am by no means trying to steal or sell the real Raising Cane’s Sauce – we can’t get it where we live and that makes us sad! The real recipe, as I have been told by many an angry message, does not have any Tony Chachere’s Seasoning in it. This recipe does, and it is so delicious.

My recipe is what we have found to be the closest recipe to the real deal, and it is our favorite sauce for dipping all kinds of things. Until Raising Cane’s starts selling their sauce in a bottle or opens a location near us, we will keep making our own at home!

More Copycat Raising Cane’s Recipes

Since I first wrote this post, I have made a Copycat Raising Cane’s Chicken Tenders recipe, and these homemade chicken tenders are crunchy, juicy, and delicious! Served with a side of Copycat Raising Cane’s Coleslaw, it’s like a trip to Cane’s without leaving the house.

Cane’s Restaurants use crinkle-cut fries, so if you really want to make a copycat meal – bake up some frozen crinkle fries and start dipping! Our next project is going to be Raising Cane’s Texas Toast! I hope you enjoy all the recipes!

Other Delicious Homemade Sauces

Cane’s Sauce is the ONLY dipping sauce you need – but if you want to try something else, here are some other tasty sauces:

• Boom Boom Sauce
• BBQ Sauce
• Paleo Cane’s Sauce
• Homemade Tartar Sauce

Have You Tried This Recipe?
Please rate it and leave a comment below. I would love to hear what you think!

🌶️ Other Great Cajun & Creole Recipes

• Southern-Style Collard Greens
• Authentic Louisiana Red Beans and Rice
• Creole Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo
• Slow Cooker White Beans and Ham
• Shrimp Creole
• New Orleans BBQ Shrimp

Condiments

Homemade Tartar Sauce

Main Courses

New Orleans BBQ Shrimp

Side Dishes

Corn Maque Choux

Main Courses

Instant Pot Country Style Ribs