According To TikTok, You Can Make Wendy's Ghost Pepper Ranch Sauce At Home

In the world we live in today, making copycat versions of your favorite dipping sauce is an experience shared by countless lovers of fast food, regardless of what your favorite chain is. While I'm partial to the delicious copycat Papa John's garlic sauce, one sauce that countless people are dying to perfect the recipe for is none other than the Ghost Pepper Ranch sauce from Wendy's. The sauce first arrived on the Wendy's menu in 2021 to complement the similarly hot Spicy Chicken Nuggets but has become a staple of Wendy's modern offerings. So much so that the restaurant chain released two additional items as a part of its ghost pepper menu in 2023.

Needless to say, the Ghost Pepper Ranch sauce is a popular additive to any meal that needs a creamy, spicy kick to it — and thus, demand for a homemade copycat version is expected. However, while most recipes have some foundationally similar ingredients — such as, you guessed it, ranch powder — each copycat recipe uses slightly differing techniques to obtain their ideal rendition of Wendy's Ghost Pepper Ranch.

Now, among the biggest choices to make when crafting your homemade Ghost Pepper Ranch is figuring out what form of ghost pepper you want to put in it. While Wendy's rendition of the sauce can best be achieved by putting ghost pepper powder into the concoction, others like to buy whole ghost peppers, dice them up, and throw them into the sauce. Beyond that, there's ghost pepper hot sauce and ghost pepper sea salt that can be used to achieve the spice level you're looking for. Paprika, while not a part of the ghost pepper family of products, can also lend a helping hand in rounding out the flavor.

Alternatively, there are copycat recipes for Wendy's Ghost Pepper Ranch dipping sauce that didn't get unveiled by TikTok users (they were posted to other pockets of the internet). The general consensus among many of these recipes is that a healthy serving of cayenne pepper can act as a fitting substitute for ghost pepper, which often proves to be overwhelmingly hot when added to homemade concoctions. As always, while it likely won't kill you, using extremely hot peppers like ghost peppers can be volatile, so being conservative with the amount is key.