Tiktok’s Viral Pink Sauce - The Recipe, The Chef, and The Controversy

Ketchup is out, pink sauce is in! The last summer of 2022 marks the making of the most vibrant dipping sauce in the history of Tiktok. In the name of fried chicken, we present to you Tiktok’s very own Pink dipping sauce.

Early in June, the Tiktok community was caught off guard after seeing the weirdest dipping sauce that was floating all over the platform which resembles the Pepto-Bismol for its vibrant pink color. 

The viral video was created by a Miami-based chef, Chef Pii, who filmed herself dipping her fried chicken in a bowl of hot pink sauce. The viral pink sauce blew up, collecting different responses from the netizens. While many are amazed by how the pink sauce was pulled off, complaints and critiques started turning down this vibrant condiment. Chef Pii’s pink sauce became the talk of the town for a series of times, many are curious as to the sauce’s taste and its nutritional label. 

Many claimed that this product has no distinct taste, for some may taste it similar to ranch dressing while others may taste it differently. Due to the virality of this peculiar invention, the viral Tiktok Pink Sauce was then released on the market. It tapped millions of customers after being sold at a nationwide retailer, Walmart.

The idealist behind the viral Pink Sauce is Veronica Shaw, a 29-year-old professional chef from Florida. She goes by the name Chef Pii on Tiktok and set the trend for food content after showing her followers her unique way of dressing up fried chicken, salad, lamb chops, veggies, fries, and even McDonald’s hamburgers with a hot pink sauce.

According to Chef Pii, Tiktok tends to order random condiments for fun, thus, she wanted to muster up a concept as crazy as it can be and ended up making the sauce in the color pink. She also claimed that she had been hitting some of her customers with this extraordinary sauce just before the condiment went viral on Tiktok. The chef also shared the components of how this pink sauce was made possible. On the Pink Sauce website, she shared the list of ingredients which includes sunflower seed oil, honey, chili, garlic, 2% of lemon juice, milk, citric acid and the main ingredient that causes this pink color is the pitaya, known as the red dragon fruit.

In the video, the Pink sauce has this creamy-looking consistency but the actual product was more like watery pink milk that when dipped in foods like burgers and chicken easily slips down the handler’s fingers. The aesthetic visuals of the unique dipping sauce spark the interest of the 154 million viewers giving Chef Pii the chance to market her creation.

Now that the Viral Pink Sauce was out in the market, customers wanted to be ensured by the food safety standard and guidelines of the trending sauce. As we know, products that trend on Tiktok do not always  follow the necessary steps to be released in the market, and the viral pink sauce is no exception to this possibility. 

It was a mystery for many users whether this product is worth the try, however, Chef Pii herself confirmed on her live stream that the pink sauce was not approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), claiming that the pink sauce is not a medical product for it to be approved.

Provided that the pink sauce was not FDA-approved, controversies over this product started blowing up after its market release.

Customers are complaining about receiving bad bottles and unsatisfactory products; mostly rotten-smelling sauces.  Issues about the shipment of the product are also on loose provided that some ingredients, like milk, can cause problems to the sauce just before it can reach the customer. Customers are also concerned about the pink sauce's lack of preservatives which could possibly shorten its shelf life. It has a high chance of going bad, especially in warmer weather, leaving customers with the question, “should the pink sauce be refrigerated?”.

TikTok made it clear that the product has multiple packaging errors starting from misspelled ingredients to the inconsistency of the product's colors. Apparently, the product label misspelled ‘vinegar’, listed 444 servings per bottle,  and more accusations about the product's health risks are shared.

To address the growing controversy over Pink Sauce, Chef Pii filmed a Tiktok video of her apology. In her Tiktok post, she made it clear that the pink sauce is legal and safe, provided that it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Regarding the issue of color inconsistency, the chef argued that was on purpose. She also claimed that there was a mixed-up serving size wherein 30 servings of pink sauce was the actual serving per bottle.

Moreover, the chef shared that she and her team worked to continually improve the product and planned to cut the price down from $20.

The obsession of people with the pink sauce did not stop on the product's taste but also the mystery of how it was manufactured. Even though chef Pii already addressed the issue regarding the products nutritional label and color inconsistency, people are still fascinated by it.

Videos of customers comparing the product they received from the actual video of the chef were circulating around social media sites. Evidently, the original video showed a darker mageta colored sauce that appears to be as thick as the ranch dressing. However, after several days, the sauce was much lighter and obviously dropped its consistency.  Although Chef Pii explained that the color was made by the dragon fruit, customers' theory was that the color used was not actually from the fruit but a pink dye.

Now, the theories about the viral pink sauces were all over the internet luring more viewers and customers to keep up on the trend.