Best Homemade Tartar Sauce

This easy homemade tartar sauce recipe is so much better than anything you can buy at the store. It’s extra creamy, packed with flavor, and you can make it in 5 minutes.

I’ve always been disappointed with bland, store-bought tartar sauce, which is why we created this recipe. It has a tangy, fresh flavor that is perfect for all your favorite seafood dishes.

A big bowl of this homemade tartar sauce is a must-have whenever we’re making poached salmon, homemade fish sticks, or my favorite crab cakes. Once you try it, you’ll never go back to the jarred stuff again.

Key Ingredients

• Mayonnaise: This forms the creamy base of the sauce. You can use your favorite store-bought brand or, for the best result, try making your own mayonnaise. While I prefer full-fat mayo for its richness, you can substitute it with light mayo or plain yogurt for a lower-calorie option.
• Pickles: Chopped pickles add essential crunch and flavor. We love using homemade pickles or the refrigerated kind, but bread and butter or sweet pickles also work if you prefer a sweeter sauce.
• Lemon Juice: Freshly squeezed lemon juice is so important. It adds a zesty, fresh flavor and thins the sauce to the perfect consistency.
• Capers: Roughly chopped capers add texture and a briny flavor that truly makes this sauce incredible. They are one of the reasons our homemade sauce tastes so much better than what’s sold at the store.
• Dill: Both fresh and dried dill work well here and are a must for that classic tartar sauce flavor. If you don’t have dill, fresh parsley is a great alternative. For another sauce with dill, try this dill sauce for salmon (although, it’s lovely with most seafood dishes).
• Dijon Mustard: A little Dijon mustard adds extra tang and flavor. Trust me, don’t skip this one!
• Worcestershire Sauce: A small dash of Worcestershire sauce might seem unusual, but it brings all the flavors together beautifully. We use this same trick for many of our dressings and sauces, including our homemade ranch dressing.

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make the Best Homemade Tartar Sauce

If you can chop and stir a few ingredients together, you can make this tartar sauce. I’ve always been disappointed with store-bought versions, so after borrowing a few tips from our favorite seafood restaurants, we devised a recipe of our own. I’ve never looked back.

Tip 1: Chop everything nice and small. Take a moment to chop your pickles, capers, and fresh dill finely. This guarantees that every dip or drizzle of sauce delivers a full impact of flavor.

Tip 2: Let it sit before serving. After making this recipe so many times, we’ve noticed that this sauce gets even better with a bit of time in the fridge. So, if you have the time, after stirring your sauce ingredients together, slide it into the fridge and leave it for at least 15 minutes. This gives all the flavors time to mingle. Trust me, this small step makes a big difference in the final flavor!

What to Serve with Tartar Sauce

We are a big tartar sauce family, and we enjoy this sauce with so much more than just seafood. That said, we love this sauce next to classic seafood recipes like homemade fish sticks, garlic caper baked salmon, shrimp cocktail, and these Maryland-style crab cakes.

Beyond seafood, this sauce is also incredible with popcorn chicken, baked French fries, sweet potato fries, and our rosemary potato wedges. For more homemade sauces, see our homemade ketchup or this creamy honey mustard sauce. And, if you are a seafood lover like me, you might want to save this classic mignonette for the next time you have oysters!