Tartar Sauce Recipe

This homemade tartar sauce is a 5-minute mayo-based condiment with dill pickles, capers, yellow onion, and parsley folded in. It is without question a must when eating fish in our house. I always keep a jar in the fridge any time I’m cooking seafood. It’s tangy, briny, and ready for anything that swims.

This is actually one of the first things I ever learned to make way back in my restaurant days when I was barely a teenager. The chef walked over, set a large container of mayonnaise next to a pile of dill pickles, capers, and onion, and told me to finely dice everything and have a batch ready for service. I have made this sauce a thousand times since, and a jar of it sitting in the fridge next to my classic Cobb salad dressing is what most weeks at our house look like.

Tartar Sauce

Tartar sauce is a French mayonnaise-based condiment, traditionally written as sauce tartare, and most often served with seafood.

The goal is to have the right balance of briny vegetables, fat, and salt so they complement each other perfectly and enhance what you’re adding them to. The ratio that I use for tartar sauce is a scant half cup of those brined capers and pickles to 1 cup of fat, which works beautifully. It’s also totally fine if a bit extra pickle juice or caper brine makes its way in.

When it comes to the salt part, taste it, season it, taste it again. See if you need more. Remember, you can always add more, but it’s really hard to take it away.

I highly recommend mixing a jar of this every Friday through the summer and keeping it close to anything that hits the fryer, especially the seafood dishes I always pair it with, which I’ll get into in the serving suggestions section below.

Ingredients and Substitutions

Whenever seafood is on the menu, these are the ingredients I use to make my easy tartar sauce. I have also included a few substitutions that I’ve tested and can recommend.

• Mayonnaise – Full-fat only, either my homemade mayonnaise or a good jarred mayo like Duke’s. I skip low-fat; the sauce goes thin and tastes like sweetened water. No, sorry.
• Yellow onion – Sharper and crisper than red, and it holds its snap in the fridge for a reason. Shallot or sweet onion works as well.
• Dill pickles – The firmer, the better. My homemade dill pickles are what I use first, or a good jarred kosher dill is fine. Bread and butter pickles have too much sweetness and can taste weird in the sauce.
• Capers – Brined, not salt-packed are what I recommend for this recipe. Don’t worry if a little extra brine gets in the sauce. Delicious!
• Fresh herbs – Italian flat-leaf or curly parsley work. Chopped fresh dill folded in just complements everything and is a must-have. Now, if you only have dry, substitute it in, no problem.
• Salt and pepper – To taste, and only after the brines have done their work. Most batches need barely any salt at all.

How to Make Tartar Sauce

Small-dice the onion: Peel the yellow onion, cut it in half, and small dice it so the pieces are about the size of a caper. You don’t want a bite of anything too big.

Finely chop the capers: Drain the capers, chop them fine on a cutting board, and scrape both the capers and any brine that bled out onto the board into the mixing bowl.

Small-dice the dill pickles: Cut the dill pickles into a small dice the same size as the onion. Pat the diced pickles on a paper towel for a few seconds to lift the surface brine so the sauce does not thin out in the fridge.

Chop the parsley: I rinse and dry the fresh parsley, pull the leaves off the stems, and finely chop so it folds into the sauce.

Fold everything together: Add the mayonnaise to a mixing bowl, then the diced onion, pickles, capers, dill, and parsley. Fold with a rubber spatula until the sauce is one color and every solid is folded all the way through. Simple as that.

Season, taste, and chill: Lastly, I season lightly with sea salt and cracked black pepper, taste a spoonful on the tip of a finger, and adjust. Cover the bowl and refrigerate.

Serving Suggestions

A jar of this tartar sauce never lasts long in my fridge, and once you try it, you’ll understand why. I typically dollop it on a fish fry plate with vinegar and a wedge of lemon. I spoon it across a tray of homemade Maryland crab cakes and sometimes I pile it on a soft brioche bun with a fried fish fillet and crisp lettuce for a sandwich my daughter will trade her dessert for.

When I am hosting, I prepare 3 small ramekins side by side: this tartar, a homemade cocktail sauce for the shrimp, and a Cajun remoulade for the salmon patties. Everyone picks their favorite, go back for seconds, and let me tell you, the food is gone in no time. I highly recommend making a double batch if you’re hosting family or friends.

Make-Ahead and Storage

Make-Ahead: I make this up to 3 days ahead, and the sauce is at its best 24 hours after I mix it.

How to Store: I transfer the sauce into a glass jar with a tight lid and refrigerate for up to 7 days. I do not freeze tartar sauce.

More Sauce Recipes

• Beurre Blanc
• Chimichurri Sauce
• Mornay Sauce
• Bechamel
• Pomodoro Sauce