House Tartar Sauce

Name: House Tartar Sauce
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 cup mayonnaise; ⅓ cup dill pickle, chopped fine (about 2 spears); 1 tbsp capers, drained and chopped; 1 small shallot, minced (about 2 tbsp); 1 tbsp fresh dill, chopped (or 1 tsp dried); 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice; 1 tsp Dijon mustard; ½ tsp sugar; Black pepper, and salt only if it needs it

The sauce that was born to sit next to fried fish, made the way the 1860 cookbooks did it before the jar existed: mayonnaise, chopped pickles and capers, a little shallot, fresh dill, lemon and a spoon of Dijon. Sharp, cold and a little crunchy. It is better after twenty minutes and best the next day.

Total time

10 min

Serves

6

Difficulty

Easy

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As seen on Episode 291

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Essentials · serves 6

1 cup mayonnaise ⅓ cup dill pickle, chopped fine (about 2 spears) 1 tbsp capers, drained and chopped 1 small shallot, minced (about 2 tbsp) 1 tbsp fresh dill, chopped (or 1 tsp dried) 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice 1 tsp Dijon mustard ½ tsp sugar Black pepper, and salt only if it needs it

·

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The preparation

4 steps, about 10 minutes start to finish.

01
1. Chop the pickle, capers, shallot and dill fine. Fine matters: big pieces fall off the fish.
02
2. Stir everything into the mayonnaise in a bowl.
03
3. Taste. It should be sharp first, then creamy. More lemon if it is flat, more pickle if it is bland.
04
4. Cover and refrigerate at least 20 minutes so the shallot softens into the sauce. Keeps a week.

lightbulb The chef's notes

“The pickle is the whole personality of this sauce, so use one you would eat on its own; a sweet bread-and-butter pickle makes a different, sweeter sauce that some people prefer. A spoon of the pickle brine instead of the sugar is the pub trick. Chopped hard-boiled egg is the old addition and is good if you want it heavier.”

Cooked the same night, Episode 291

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House Tartar Sauce

The preparation

Cooked the same night, Episode 291

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