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The Best Burger Sauce

Five minutes, no cooking, and better after an hour in the fridge. The pickle brine is the part everyone leaves out.

Prep
5 min
Rest
1 hr
Makes
Makes about 1¼ cups (300 ml)
Jump to the recipe
A burger served beside a bowl of creamy sauce
Photo: Aleksey Bystrov / Pexels

Every burger chain has a version of this and they are all built the same way: mayonnaise for fat, ketchup for sweetness and color, pickle for acid and crunch, and something warm underneath — paprika, onion, a little mustard.

The ingredient most recipes skip is a spoonful of the pickle brine itself. It thins the sauce to a pourable consistency without diluting the flavor the way water or milk would, and it adds acidity in a form that reaches every part of the sauce rather than sitting in the pickle pieces. Two tablespoons is the difference between a sauce that sits in a lump on the bun and one that spreads.

It is also the right dip for air fryer salmon bites when you want something sharper than cream.

Finely chopped pickles, not relish. Relish is sweetened and it pushes the whole thing toward candy.

For something cooked and smoky rather than cold and sharp, make homemade barbecue sauce instead.

Rest it an hour. Onion powder and paprika are dry and need time to hydrate; straight after mixing the sauce tastes dusty and slightly harsh, and an hour later it does not. This is not a marginal difference.

A ramekin of burger sauce beside ketchup and mustard
Photo: JEFERSON GOMES / Pexels

Homemade burger sauce: the card

Five minutes, no cooking, and better after an hour in the fridge. The pickle brine is the part everyone leaves out.

What you need

  • 1 cup (240 g) mayonnaise
  • ¼ cup (60 g) ketchup
  • 2 tbsp yellow mustard
  • ⅓ cup (60 g) dill pickles, very finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp pickle brine from the jar
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp white wine vinegar
  • ½ tsp garlic powder
  • ¼ tsp cayenne
  • Black pepper

Mix, then wait

  1. 1 Chop the pickles as finely as you can. Anything larger than a grain of rice reads as a lump rather than texture.
  2. 2 Whisk everything together in a bowl until completely smooth and uniformly pale orange.
  3. 3 Cover and refrigerate at least an hour. This is the step that makes it taste finished rather than mixed.
  4. 4 Taste before serving and adjust: more brine if it is thick, more cayenne if it is flat.

Keeping and using it

  • Keeps a week refrigerated. It thickens slightly overnight; loosen with a little more brine.
  • Also good on fries, in a chicken sandwich, and as a dip for anything fried.