Grandma’s Easy Tartar Sauce Recipe

Try my creamy tartar sauce recipe! It is an easy dipping sauce for golden fries or battered and deep fried fish and seafood! So what’s your personal tartar sauce recipe? Let me know, you can leave a comment below if you like!

Every home cook surely has his or her own personal tartar sauce recipe.

I’m absolutely certain about that. This means that there’s also a very wide range of different kinds of homemade tartar.

What?

You might be thinking?

Tartare Sauce From Scratch

A tartar sauce from scratch? Can you make tartar sauce at home then?

Sure thing! And what a classic this is! Not only in the UK, where you traditionally get tartar sauce alongside an all time classic beer battered and deep fried fish and chips of course.

In Belgium tartar sauce is also talk of the town!

Fries

Believe it or not. Most people use tartar sauce as a dip for our Belgian fries, more as an alternative for the classic mayonnaise. However we also love a good dollop of tartar sauce on our fish burgers.

And alongside a freshly pan seared flounder in butter! Like plaice, or lemon sole. Flounder, mashed potatoes, lettuce with vinaigrette and a homemade tartar sauce. That’s a classic Belgian dish.

Yep, what a surprise hey.

Tartar Sauce vs. Remoulade Sauce

No kidding.

I for a fact have seen all sorts of ingredients in tartar sauces over the years while food blogging. And then I’m talking about the range of ingredients that goes into it. Ingredients such as raw shallots, onions, capers, dill, parsley, chives, boiled eggs, mustard, worcester sauce, tabasco, lemon juice and so on.

Question is, what really goes into a classic tartar sauce recipe?

Here’s the catch.

A classic tartar sauce contains mayonnaise (preferably a homemade one), a chopped up hard boiled egg, raw onion or shallot, lemon juice, mustard and freshly chopped chives.

Gherkins & Capers

Do you like to add extra chopped up pickled gherkins and capers?

Then your tartar sauce recipe actually becomes a French remoulade sauce. Which still tastes great of course with a beer battered and deep fried fish and chips!

So what’s your favorite tartar recipe then?

Do you have a secret ingredient or trick that you want to share with us?

Leave a comment below!

Grandma’s Creamy Tartar Sauce Recipe

Luc’s grandmother even prepared her own version.

And it contained crumbled hard boiled eggs in it to make it extra chunky and creamy! She also added fresh tarragon instead of chives. And gherkins. Now I know very well that technically speaking her tartar sauce recipe is in fact a remoulade sauce.

However everyone in the family calls it a tartar sauce.

So I will keep saying that as well.

Homemade Mayo

Some chefs don’t add store bought mayo. No, they start to make their fresh tartar sauce from scratch by using an egg yolk, mustard and vegetable oil and like that they create their own kind of homemade mayo as a base for this tartar sauce. Make the tartar sauce as chunky or as runny as you prefer.

So this next tartar sauce is the one Luc is so fond of: his grandma’s classic tartar sauce recipe!

It’s a very easy recipe and one that is very quick to prepare.

And admit it once and for all, a homemade tartar dip tastes much better than the ready-made supermarket version. Serve the tartar in combination with fresh (or fried) seafood or a nice fillet of broiled fish.

Fish& Chips

But let’s not forget our all-time family favorite: a generous portion of hand cut golden fries and a great beer battered and fried fillet of cod right next to it.

Tell me: who doesn’t love a good batch of fish and chips from time to time?

I don’t have to ask twice whether fish and chips is OK for dinner.

Enjoy!

Grandma’s Creamy Tartar Sauce Recipe

Print

Creamy Tartar Sauce Recipe

Prep Time

20 mins

Cook Time

0 mins

Total Time

20 mins

 

My creamy Tartar Sauce Recipe, an easy dipping sauce for golden fries or fried fish and seafood! What's your personal tartar sauce recipe then?

Course: Appetizer, Sauce

Cuisine: English, French

Servings: 4

Calories per serving: 98 kcal

Ingredients

• 5,5 oz pickled gherkins (155 g)
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• a handful fresh tarragon chopped finely
• 2 hard-boiled eggs
• pepper
• salt

Instructions

1. Add the hard-boiled eggs to a clean blender. Pulse a few times, just enough to crumble the egg roughly. Keep them chunky!

   

2. Then transfer the egg crumble to a large mixing bowl and put it aside until needed later on. Add the sweet and sour pickled gherkins to the blender now. Pulse them into a coarse mixture and keep this chunky as well!

   
3. Pour this gherkin crumble in the mixing bowl in which you put the crumbled eggs. Then add the mayonnaise.
   

4. Stir well and add the freshly chopped tarragon and lemon juice. Season with a little pinch of pepper and salt.

   

5. Stir the sauce well. Then check the seasoning and add extra pepper or lemon juice to taste if necessary. Pour the tartar sauce in a clean bowl and serve chilled.