Tartar Sauce

That sounds very similar to the tartar sauce from Winona, Minnesota, Mose’s Fish Shop Tartar Sauce, which is made of mayonnaise, turnip greens, capers, and dill weed.  http://www.mosestartarsauce.com/ 
 
 

I threw together a test batch by eye just to see if it hit any notes. You can't evaluate the taste and texture properly for at least 8 hours. The taste I remember is there, but the texture of what I made was wrong. I didn't want to work from a head of cabbage and bought a small bag of angel hair shredded cabbage for the small batch convenience. That was a mistake. So was the mayo. Too much and the Kraft brand was much too salty. What I remember was a texture close to double cut slaw. Conspicuous green that probably was from the outer leaves. The dill relish that I used was very mushy too. My bet for the times was the vegetables and whole pickles were probably run through a bull chopper. I did mine in a regular food processor and ended up with too fine of chop.

Dawn, at La Camaronera (and on the Fish Box truck) they serve what in my mind I think of as cuban tartar sauce:  Mayo, pickle relish (not a lot) and a LOT of vinegar - I think it is industrial white vinegar.  It is really very tart.  Not at all sweet.  Have you run into this before?  Or is it just them?

I make my tartar sauce with mayo, chopped dill pickle and dill pickle juice. No sweetness at all. We love it.

MiamiDon


Dawn, at La Camaronera (and on the Fish Box truck) they serve what in my mind I think of as cuban tartar sauce:  Mayo, pickle relish (not a lot) and a LOT of vinegar - I think it is industrial white vinegar.  It is really very tart.  Not at all sweet.  Have you run into this before?  Or is it just them?

 
No I haven't Don. Short of using acetic acid, I wonder what he's doing if it's that vinegary. Most of the tartar-like sauces that I've had in the dives on 8th street and Flagler have been pretty much a seasoned mayo. If there were any solids, like you say, they were sparse and most looked like parsely. The tastes were strongly citrus and/or capers. Most vinegars are about 5%. Maybe he's using a foodservice grade spirit vinegar or pickling vinegar to get that acidity or maybe a brine from one of the other pickled products he's using. I'd wonder about the stabiliity of the mayo base at that acidity though. I'd also wonder if the mayo base is a blender based mayo he's doing himself.  

Ann, that sounds delicious.  I'm going to try it.  I've been known to take my own tartar sauce to restaurants that serve great seafood but give you those crummy Kraft tartar packets.  (Nothing worse than sweet tartar sauce.)