Tartar Sauce Recipe

This is a light Tartar Sauce Recipe that has all the flavors you love in a classic tartar sauce, only made lighter and fresher. It’s made with sour cream as a base and is loaded with fresh dill, parsley, capers, and honey dijon mustard.

A bowl and a spoon are all you need to mix this lovely homemade tartar sauce up and serve it alongside your favorite seafood delicacies. It’s so much better than store-bought you’ll never go back.

 

 

You’ll love how simple it is to make your own tartar sauce — it only needs the chopping and mixing of a few ingredients. The result is an incredibly good sauce that will make you create endless ways to serve it! My favorite would be this Calamari Recipe.

WHAT IS TARTAR SAUCE?

The classic white dipping sauce served commonly as an accompaniment to fish and seafood is called tartar sauce.

Tartar sauce is made with capers, dill, and a variety of other ingredients mixed into a base of mayonnaise or sour cream. Mine is a vegan tartar sauce made with sour cream.

In fact, it is made with light sour cream and is better for you than the traditional mayonnaise version.

HOW TO MAKE TARTAR SAUCE

This light as air-light dill tartar sauce is basically a mix of sour cream, fresh dill, parsley, some nice sweet honey dijon mustard, and some salty capers.

This balance of sweet, salty, and the bite from the capers with the freshness of dill, herbs, and light sour cream really makes this sauce what it is—the best tartar sauce ever.

So, how to make vegan tartar sauce? You literally just put all the ingredients in a bowl and stir, mix them up really well, and you are ready to feast.

Tartar Sauce Ingredients

• Light Sour Cream. You can even use fat-free!
• Fresh Dill. Minced.
• Fresh Parsley. Minced.
• Lemon. Juice half a lemon and save the other half for later.
• Salt and Pepper.
• Honey Dijon Mustard. This is a combination of two of my favorite mustard condiments! It brings the perfect amount of sweetness and flavor to the tartar sauce recipe.
• Minced Capers. You’ll find these in jars at your grocery store, usually with the mayonaisse, pickles or pickle relish.

What to use Tartar Sauce for?

I love spreading it on sandwiches, serving it as a dip for grilled veggies or fresh veggies, on the side of grilled fish, and actually, my second favorite would be having this light dill tartar sauce as a dip with some french fries! You can also have it with crab cakes, fried fish, or even fish sticks.

Besides the Calamari recipe I mentioned earlier, it’s also lovely with a Fish Fry or Pan-Fried Potatoes.

What is the difference between mayonnaise and tartar sauce?

Mayonnaise is an emulsion of raw eggs and oil to create a creamy condiment that is relatively bland. It is often dressed up with spices. Tartar Sauce might or might not use mayonnaise as the base, however, it is anything but bland. In fact, tartar sauce is full of flavor from several different sources including capers and dill.

What is a tartar sauce substitute?

The really cool thing about this recipe is that we’ve made it so much lighter than traditional tartar sauce, you really should give it a try. By making the tartar sauce with sour cream, not only is it better for you, it has a better taste and texture as well. If you don’t have the ingredients for my homemade tartar sauce on hand, and you really must have a substitute, you could try ranch or tzatziki sauce. But really, nothing compares.

TIPS TO MAKE THE BEST TARTAR SAUCE

• Making tartar sauce isn’t hard, but there are a few tricks that will make this homemade tartar sauce recipe even better.
• Choose your herbs wisely. Look for crisp green herbs that do not appear wilted and have no browning or discoloration.
• Use a sour cream without added fillers or thickening agents. Some store brands have unnecessary added ingredients that affect the taste, texture, and chemical nature of the sour cream.
• Taste test before adding salt. Capers have a lot of salt content, so you want to be careful to not oversalt this recipe.

HOW TO STORE EXTRA TARTAR SAUCE

You will want to keep your homemade tartar sauce in the refrigerator in an air-tight container for a few days. While at its best fresh, my tartar sauce recipe will keep about as long as an open container of sour cream would keep in the fridge. If the whey from the sour cream separates it can be stirred back in or poured off.

Homemade tartar sauce cannot be frozen as it changes the consistency and texture of the sauce.

Use a real lemon. It might be tempting to use lemon juice from a bottle. In a tight spot, that can be okay. But in fresh homemade tartar sauce, you really want freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Make sure to click “print recipe” because this one’s a keeper!