Never Forget the Tartar Sauce Again

How to Make Tartar Sauce

We’ve all done it. We come home with a special, seafood treat for dinner and then realize we forgot the tartar sauce. This happened to me just last week. I made salmon burgers from scratch. When it came time to assemble the burgers with all the fixing’s, I realized I forgot to pick up a small jar of tartar sauce. Going back out was not an option. A round-trip to the supermarket would take a good 1 ½ hours to 2 hours. I knew that tartar sauce must be ridiculously easy to make. I did a little online research, and it is.

I played around with a few online recipes. After tweaking the recipes, I came up with the following quick and easy recipe.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup safflower or corn oil
• 1 teaspoon fresh, squeezed lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
• ½ teaspoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon dry mustard or ¼ teaspoon prepared mustard (spicy style)
• salt to taste (about ¼ teaspoon)
• 1/3 cup sweet pickle relish (Note. You can easily make this from scratch too.)

Instructions:

1. You will need 2 small mixing bowls. In the first mixing bowl, add and whisk all the ingredients, leaving out the oil and sweet pickle relish.
2. Next, measure out the oil and place it into the second mixing bowl. Slowly whisk in the oil into the first mixture, starting with literally a drop at a time, until it starts to thicken. Once it starts to thicken, it has successfully emulsified. Now, add all the oil while whisking, although, don’t add the oil too fast. Keep it at a steady stream while you whisk.
3. Lastly, add the sweet pickle relish and mix thoroughly.

You should have about 2/3rd cups of tartar sauce now. Realize you have also made homemade mayonnaise too! For mayonnaise, just don’t add the sweet pickle relish.
The nice thing about this recipe is that it is all natural with no preservatives, as store bought mayonnaise and tartar sauce is. Whatever you don’t use, refrigerate for up to a week. Enjoy!

image credit – photo by Madeleine titled “Crab Cakes”