This easy homemade tartar sauce is better than anything you can buy at the store. It’s extra creamy and perfect for serving next to your favorite seafood dishes.
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Our better than store-bought tartar sauce is so simple to make. You probably already have most of the ingredients you need to make it in your kitchen.
We love this sauce served next to poached salmon, homemade fish sticks, and our favorite crab cakes.
How to Make the Best Homemade Tartar Sauce
If you can chop and stir a few ingredients together, you can make tartar sauce. I’ve always been disappointed with store-bought tartar sauce, so taking a few tips from our favorite seafood restaurants, we devised a recipe for our own.
The full recipe is below, but here is a quick overview of each ingredient. Here is what you will need to make tartar sauce from scratch:
- Mayonnaise provides our creamy base. You can use store-bought mayo or for the best tartar sauce, try making your own mayonnaise.
- Pickles add crunch and flavor to the sauce. We use dill pickles and particularly enjoy these homemade pickles or the refrigerated Claussen pickles for this. For a sweeter style, try bread and butter or sweet pickles instead.
- Fresh lemon juice is essential for the best tartar sauce. It thins out the sauce making it the perfect consistency for dipping, and adds a fresh zesty flavor.
- Capers are an optional ingredient since we don’t always have them in the fridge, but they add even more flavor and work wonders when mixed with lemon and herbs.
- Fresh or dried dill is a must for us. If you don’t have dill, parsley is a good alternative.
- Worcestershire sauce is an unusual ingredient, but it brings the sauce together. We only add a dash. We add Worcestershire sauce to dressings and sauces quite a bit. We use it to make this homemade ranch.
- Dijon mustard is another optional ingredient, but if you have it on hand, we highly recommend it.
Once you have all your ingredients in a bowl, you’ll stir them until well combined. Just a few seconds of stirring turns the sauce into a creamy and delicious sauce.
For the best tartar sauce, refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. It gets better and better overtime.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I make the sauce lighter in calories? For a lighter sauce with fewer calories, you can swap the mayonnaise for light mayo or plain yogurt.
How long does homemade tartar sauce last? This easy homemade tartar sauce lasts for about a week when stored in the fridge. We love making a double batch to enjoy it throughout the week. You lose the fresh flavor from the lemon any longer than a week.
What to Serve with Tartar Sauce
Skip store-bought sauce and serve it next to these easy homemade fish sticks, easy baked popcorn chicken, these perfectly roasted shrimp, or oven-baked salmon.
Tartar sauce is a must when making our Maryland-style crab cakes.
I love to serve tartar sauce with roasted vegetables. I especially love dunking baked sweet potato fries or these oven-baked potato wedges into the sauce. Roasted cauliflower is also delicious.
More Homemade Sauce Recipes
How to Make the Best Tartar Sauce
This easy homemade tartar sauce is extra creamy and perfect when served next to shrimp, fish sticks, crab cakes, and even roasted veggies.
Makes about 3/4 cup
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
1/2 cup mayonnaise, try homemade mayonnaise
1 small dill pickle, chopped very small (3 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste
1 tablespoon capers, chopped, optional
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill or 1 teaspoon dried dill
1/2 to 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard, optional
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
Directions
1Combine the mayonnaise, pickles, lemon juice, capers, dill, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard in a small bowl and stir until well blended and creamy.
2Season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Taste then adjust with additional lemon juice, salt, and pepper. For the best flavor, cover and store in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
3Keep, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for one week.
Adam and Joanne’s Tips
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA database to calculate approximate values.
Nutrition Per Serving
Serving Size
1 tablespoon
/
Calories
64
/
Total Fat
6.9g
/
Saturated Fat
1.1g
/
Cholesterol
3.9mg
/
Sodium
103.8mg
/
Carbohydrate
0.3g
/
Dietary Fiber
0.1g
/
Total Sugars
0.1g
/
Protein
0.1g
