Your Store-Bought Tartar Sauce Deserves This Chef-Approved Upgrade

Tartar sauce isn't just a seafood condiment, it also works great with sandwiches, roasted vegetables, and lots of other dishes. If you don't feel like whipping up a batch of homemade tartar sauce, bottled brands are a convenient alternative, but they may lack some flair. For tips on tweaking store-bought sauce, Mashed consulted chef Michael Vignola, who serves as corporate executive chef at New York restaurants The Corner Store, Catch, and Catch Steak (all part of the Catch Hospitality Group). Vignola gave us some exclusive answers on how to enhance the flavor of bottled tartar sauce with a relatively simple addition.

According to Vignola, Kalamata olives can help store-bought tartar sauce achieve restaurant-quality status. Native to Greece, Kalamata olives are quite sizable and are richly purple. In addition to saltiness, Kalamata olives also have fruity undertones that make for a deeper flavor profile. The texture is equally sumptuous, as this olive variety has a meatiness that stems from the fact that it's only harvested at peak ripeness. It stands to reason that these briny masterpieces would pair well with tartar sauce when you consider that many recipes typically feature another briny ingredient, pickles.

When incorporating Kalamata olives, one of many tasty black olive varieties along with Niçoise and Gaeta olives, chef Michael Vignola recommends that you rinse and chop them before you add them to your store-bought tartar sauce. Rinsing can make for a more interesting flavor, as it removes some of the salt that may obscure the multi-faceted taste of Kalamata olives. 

As for how to chop the olives, take a cue from pickle preparation in tartar sauce recipes and chop up the fruit in small pieces to ensure they are fully distributed throughout the sauce. Use as many Kalamata olives as you like, but bear in mind that using too many may overwhelm the other flavors, especially those of delicate herbs such as dill and parsley. Vignola's expert guidance shows that even a seemingly minor addition can go a long way when improving the flavor of store-bought sauces.