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The Spicy Upgrade You Need To Make With Tartar Sauce

A plate of fish and chips or fried oysters are commonly paired with a ramekin filled with tartar sauce — but the condiment is far from an afterthought. It's creamy and tangy in its purest form, but it is also fairly mild. So, for seafood lovers who also appreciate a dose of heat in each bite of their food, tartar sauce could benefit from a spicy boost. To make it happen, a generous dash of your favorite hot sauce is the only extra ingredient you'll need.

There are many interesting facts about tartar sauce like how some versions contain more ingredients than you might realize. The most basic recipe for tartar sauce might have mayonnaise, mustard, pickle relish, and lemon juice, while elevated takes add capers or Worcestershire sauce. That means hot sauce can really stand out and easily add spiciness. You can add a few teaspoons of hot sauce to any brand of store-bought tartar sauce, or mix it into a homemade version like Tasting Table's simple tartar sauce recipe that uses dried dill as well as chopped dill pickles.

Read more: 15 Different Ways To Cook Fish

hot sauce bottles - Fotema/Shutterstock

To add the spicy essence of chilis to tartar sauce, grab your favorite brand of hot sauce. If you don't use it often, Frank's Red Hot or Valentina are good options for milder heat, Tabasco is a classic choice that provides a bit more kick, or go with brands like Crystal or Cholula for more spice. Still not sure? Look through our ranked list of grocery store hot sauces or you could even make your own hot sauce. But only you know your spice tolerance, so start with a couple of dashes, and add more to taste. Hot sauce is the easiest option to add heat to tartar sauce, but other ingredients work too. Consider cayenne pepper, paprika, red pepper flakes, chilis in adobo sauce (dice the peppers or just use the sauce), or the brine from canned jalapeños or cherry peppers to add heat to the condiment.

Use your spicy tartar sauce to pair with an array of seafood dishes, like a batch of classic British fish and chips or panko fried shrimp. Tasting Table's shrimp Po'boy sandwich and our classic Maryland crab cakes are delicious vessels for a piquant tartar sauce. Or add a dollop or two of spiced-up tartar sauce to your favorite fish tacos recipe. And for less conventional ways to use the leftovers, use it as a dip for your fries and onion rings, or to spruce up deviled eggs, baked potatoes, roasted vegetables, and chicken tenders.

Read the original article on Tasting Table

The Handy Ingredient That'll Thicken Tartar Sauce

Tartar sauce is a classic condiment that pairs particularly well with seafood. Traditionally served alongside fried fish, shrimp, or crab cakes, the tangy, slightly sweet sauce involves a creamy mayonnaise base combined with chopped pickles, capers, onions, lemon juice, and such herbs and spices as dill and parsley. The mayo foundation is enhanced with these primary ingredients, which contribute a subtle crunch and brightness. Say, however, your tartar sauce is a bit runny for your liking, or you simply want to fill out the already delicious dip. To achieve this worthwhile feat, all you need is a dollop of a dairy darling you may already have in your fridge: sour cream.

Sour cream — an effective thickening agent for various gravies, soups, stews, and sauces — can be easily incorporated into tartar sauce to impart an extra layer of richness to the mixture. Its inherently fatty character, the result of lactic acid binding with proteins, helps hold the sauce's elements together, creating a smoother, concentrated consistency. Plus, sour cream brings an even greater zip to tartar sauce's profile.

Read more: The Most Useless Cooking Utensils, According To Chefs

bowl of tartar sauce - New Africa/Shutterstock

Whether you typically eat your fish and chips with the store-bought stuff or prefer whipping up a homemade tartar sauce recipe, there's no doubt that the sauce benefits from the sour cream. Its presence ensures a velvety mouthfeel and a well-balanced tanginess that complements the mayonnaise, pickles, capers, and other ingredients. And, like any dish, making tartar sauce from scratch allows for better control over the ingredients. By adjusting the amount of sour cream you can customize the sauce. Start by adding one or two dollops at a time and incorporate more until you discover the perfect portion.

On top of its role as a thickening agent, sour cream elevates the flavor of tartar sauce, not only for use on luxurious bites of seafood but for other types of food, too. As you may have gathered from the name, its sour taste and creamy texture can help to mellow out the stronger flavors, making this versatile ingredient a great addition to tartar sauce and more.

Read the original article on Mashed

A Different Drum: Relishing The Ongoing Debate: Dill Versus Sweet

I spent time within Lent this year wondering where I could get a good fish sandwich that's enhanced with good tartar sauce. I meant to ask around, but whenever I was with someone who would likely volunteer his/her opinion, I'd forget to pose the question. Some political pollster I'd make.

Lent would have been the perfect time to investigate the fish and fish sandwich scene, as restaurants frequently run specials on them during the season known for meatless traditions among some groups. On a brighter note, I did dine at one Catholic organization's fish fry.

Kristy Smith

Growing up Catholic, I resigned myself that if it were a Friday night during Lent, I would be eating either fish sandwich or fish sticks. It would always be some kind of minced fish bits, reconstituted into a more palatable geometric shape — the nutritional equivalent of pressboard.

When times were better for our family, we traded up to battered fish fillets that came in triangular shapes with slightly rounded corners. I much preferred them, but understood the how and the why of family economic star alignment in order for them to show up in our freezer.  Therefore, I didn't hold it against my mom for not serving them more regularly. Those fish fillets hailing from colorful yellow boxes seemed much more sophisticated than Mrs. Paul's plain old fish sticks.

I did hold it against my dad for not being Catholic and therefore not having to play the fish shell game with the rest of our household. But he'd sit there and watch the rest of the family munching on minced fish while he'd opt for some meat-based leftovers. Grrr. What the heck?!

However, in that pre-Fry Daddy era, my Dad always eagerly helped himself (to loud protests led by me) to the fries on the baking sheet that also held whatever form of fish. The way I figured it, if you wanted the "chips", you should have to eat the fish along with it.

I wondered who might lend some authority to this topic. I decided upon American culinary expert James Beard, who legitimized American and English cooking during the 40s-60s, and whose cookbooks I have collected. Beard's recipe for tartar sauce can be found at www.Jamesbeard.Org/recipes/tartar-sauce:

1 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup finely chopped dill pickle

1/3 cup finely chopped onion

1 teaspoon finely chopped capers

1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard, or to taste

Dash of lemon juice or tarragon vinegar

That's pretty much aligned with how I fix tartar sauce, but by way of disclaimer, I will state I have NEVER added capers, which has always seemed like overkill. Additionally, if you're short enough on money that you're eating pressboard fish, odds are good you probably don't have an optional ingredient like capers just sitting around. Let me also admit I like to used dried minced onions in place of fresh ones when I'm in a hurry or don't have any onions diced ahead in the fridge (my immediate family is comprised of onion lovers).

Probably the most controversial aspect of the above tartar sauce recipe is that it contains chopped dill pickles, versus sweet pickles. The pickle or relish type serve as a tartar sauce dividing line. Chef Gordon Ramsay favors dill, while Chef Emeril Lagasse prefers a sweeter taste with his sauce. People generally feel strongly about their preference.

From my childhood, I can vouch for the imminent importance of tartar sauce and its almighty taste-covering-up properties when you're dining on pressboard fish. Many evils were disguised before the phrase "kitchen confidential" was ever uttered.

Armed with that knowledge, I went about happily making Miracle Whip and sweet relish tartar sauce under the tutelage of my mother — until I experienced the modern miracle of mayonnaise and dill relish tartar sauce at a friend's house.

I can recall coming home and pleading with my mother to let me make the non-sweet tartar sauce for our family. You'd have thought I'd proposed throwing in a walnut-sized measure of Drano as the secret ingredient. Not on your life, sister!

I've since discovered, after graduating to a higher grade of fish, it's easier to avoid tartar sauce all together, which allows skipping the aftertaste of its memories.

— Kristy Smith's Different Drum humor columns are archived at her blog: diffdrum.Wordpress.Com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: A Different Drum: Relishing the ongoing debate: dill versus sweet

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