Bought burger sauces all taste of one thing and it’s usually sugar. The pleasure of the home-made one is the layering: mayo for body, ketchup for sweetness and a hit of umami, mustard for sharpness, pickle brine for acid, smoked paprika for the faint smoke that anchors it next to a charred patty. The proportions matter less than the rest. A sauce that sits twenty-four hours in the fridge tastes substantially better than a sauce that was whisked up that morning, because the spices have time to rehydrate properly and the mayonnaise to take on the flavour of everything else.
Yield and time
- Makes: about 250ml, fills a small jam jar
- Hands-on: 5 minutes
- Total: 24 hours (whisk, then rest in the fridge overnight before using)
Ingredients
- 200g good mayonnaise
- 60g tomato ketchup
- 25g yellow American mustard
- 25g brine from a jar of dill pickles (see the dill pickle card)
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
- ½ teaspoon white pepper
- A pinch of caster sugar
Method
Whisk everything together in a bowl until the colour is uniform and the spices have stopped sitting on top. Taste. Adjust: if it’s not sharp enough, another teaspoon of mustard; if it’s too sharp, another tablespoon of mayonnaise; if it tastes flat, a pinch more salt.
Scrape into a clean jar, lid on, into the fridge. Twenty-four hours minimum before it goes near a burger.
Storage
Sealed and refrigerated, it keeps two weeks.
Part of the burger from scratch weekend.