Tartar sauce is a French cuisine that is simple in preparation, has a vibrant flavor, and great versatility in usage. Tartar sauce is prepared from a combination of ingredients like sour cream, lemon, dill, salt, pepper, mayonnaise, mustard, and capers.
Tartar sauce is a recipe that is great to have in hand because of its unrivaled versatility. If you decide to make this sauce in bulk, you don’t have to prepare it every single time you ache for it. But, how do you preserve it?
Can you freeze tartar sauce? Yes, you can. This is a tricky one because the presence of mayonnaise in tartar sauce can make it unsuitable for freezing. To help it freeze better you can exclude mayonnaise from the mix and add it after the sauce thaws. You can freeze homemade tartar sauce without mayonnaise for about 6 months.
Serving Tartar sauce is not restricted to seafood like fish, crab, crab cakes, and chips as most households do. You can also serve your veggies, sandwich, and baked potatoes with tartar sauce. Tartar sauce can be homemade or bought from your local retail store.
What Kind of Tartar Sauce Freezes Best?
In your expedition to preserve your tartar sauce for future consumption, you would want to do that without any change to its original flavor, taste, texture, and creaminess. You should take into consideration how well your tartar sauce reacts to the harsh cold air in the freezer.
Tartar sauce bought from retail stores is usually mixed with mayonnaise, and they do not freeze well in freezers. Freezing it would separate the mayonnaise, leaving your tartar sauce with a consistency you won’t like.
Homemade tartar sauce without mayonnaise freezes best, and for a longer duration. You can add mayonnaise after thawing your tartar sauce to get the best taste.
How To Freeze Your Tartar Sauce
The procedures for freezing are so comforting, but you would be required not to add all the ingredients while mixing. This is to make it suitable for consumption after freezing.
To freeze your tartar sauce after mixing, you would need a glass bowl to mix, and a mason glass jar to freeze. You would also need a regulated freezing temperature to prevent freezer burn.
Step 1: Portion The Tartar Sauce
The most convenient way to preserve tartar sauce without mayonnaise is to either freeze it in a large glass bowl or portion it into smaller glass jars.
Portioning your tartar sauce would save you the expense of having to thaw the whole bowl when you need it for quick consumption.
Step 2: Storage
Dirty particles in the freezer can drop into your tartar sauce if it is not covered. This could cause your sauce to lose its taste, hasten its spoilage, or ruin your freezing experience.
To store your tartar sauce properly, cover the glass jar with plastic wrap. Make sure to place the jar on the topmost layer of your freezer.
Step 3: Freeze The Tartar Sauce
Before you freeze the tartar sauce make sure no liquid finds its way into your sauce and freeze at a regulated freezing temperature of about -20°F.
Before you freeze the sauce, remember to label the glass jars with the contents and the date of the freeze so you wouldn’t mistake your sauce for another or forget how long you have stored it if you lose sight of it in the freezer.
The regulated temperature would keep your sauce from going bad, and make thawing easier.
How to Defrost Frozen Tartar Sauce
When defrosting tartar sauce, you don’t need any equipment just like you did with the freezing process. There are two ways you can go about thawing your tartar sauce
Get the frozen glass jar of tartar sauce out of the freezer and thaw them for 30-40 minutes in the refrigerator. This is the ideal way to thaw your sauce because the refrigerator keeps the temperature regulated.
But if you need to use your sauce immediately, it might not be the best way to go about it.
You can reduce the time spent on thawing tartar sauce by putting the frozen glass jar in hot or lukewarm water. The duration the tartar sauce would stay in water is dependent on what you need it for.
Thawing in hot or lukewarm water is a faster method by which you can defrost your tartar sauce. You should make sure to balance the glass jar well in the water. An imbalanced glass bowl or jar can pour the content into the water, leading to wastage of the sauce.
Thawed tartar sauce should not be left out for a long time before you use it.
How to Recognise Spoiled Tartar Sauce
Spoiled tartar sauce gives off an offensive, strange odor and will lose its texture when it starts going bad.
Always check tartar sauce bottles gotten from local retail stores for the expiration date. So that you would not buy expired products.
Homemade tartar sauce glass bowls should be covered carefully, after taking portions from the jars, build-ups and remnants should be cleaned to prevent the growth of bacteria.
You should not consume spoiled tartar sauce as it is not safe. Good tartar sauce gives the best nutritional and medicinal benefits.