A great homemade burger sauce is an easy win to shift a big juicy burger from yum territory to holy-crapola-this-is-amazing land! Besides, when a burger sauce recipe is this easy and so much better, nobody has an excuse to resort to those squeezy bottles of overly-sweet sauce sold at grocery stores…..
I have two go-to burger sauce recipes: a tomato chutney-like one (25 minutes on the stove) and this creamy one (a quick 20 second mix job). You probably figured why the latter is especially popular in my circles. 😂
Copycat Heinz Secret Burger Sauce
This burger sauce is a copycat of Heinz Secret Burger Sauce. Except theirs includes acidity regulators (260, 330), stabilisers (412, 415), and preservatives (202, 224), to name a few of the more tantalising ingredients on the label.
This burger sauce recipe does not. 🙂
Even using store-bought mayonnaise, which I have done so here, this sauce still leaves the Heinz stuff in the dust! (I really need to pop a mayo recipe on my website, don’t I??!)
Sauce talk: Different sauces for burgers
With the rise of gourmet burgers, you see all sorts of condiments, sauces and relishes on hamburgers these days! But here’s a core list of my favourite burger sauces I use:
Ketchup (or Aussie tomato sauce) – Straight out of the bottle, just as it is!
Mayonnaise – Plain, or flavoured like this Special Burger Sauce recipe (see below).
Yellow mustard – I’m talking the garish yellow stuff, sometimes labelled “American mustard”. (Caution: Don’t accidentally use the other bright yellow mustard, Hot English Mustard, which is spicy!)
Creamy burger sauce (this recipe) – A mayonnaise-based savoury burger sauce, usually with little bits of gherkins in it.
Tomato burger sauce (chutney/relish, recipe here) – A slightly chunky style sauce that’s similar to tomato chutney except not as sweet and with less earthy spices like cardamom, ginger etc.
Thousand Island sauce – A creamy pink sauce made with a mix of mayonnaise and ketchup that’s popular with seafood (Aussies’ favourite prawn dipping sauce!) Recipe here.
Barbecue sauce – See my Barbecue Pork Ribs recipe for a classic homemade Barbecue Sauce recipe.
Ingredients in homemade burger sauce
Here’s what you need to make this burger sauce.
Sweet gherkins – These are gherkins that are (as the name may give away!) sweet as well as tangy rather than just tangy. Substituting with any gherkin / pickled cucumber will work fine here, but one that leans sweet is best if you want to replicate the store bought burger sauces.
Juice from gherkin jar – We to use some of the pickling juices for tang and flavour in our sauce. A neat trick!
Mayonnaise – I like using whole egg mayonnaise for a smoother, more rounded flavour. Hellmans and S&W are two popular brands here in Australia. Kewpie Japanese mayonnaise is extra-creamy and also great, albeit more expensive. Substitute with any ordinary mayonnaise, but the flavour may be slightly sharper and sweeter.
American yellow mustard – We’re after that artificially bright yellow stuff here which adds flavour and colour warmth to the sauce. Not to be confused with hot English mustard which is a similar colour but very spicy! Substitute with any smooth mustard, like Dijon.
White wine vinegar – Brings the main sharpness to the sauce. Substitute with apple cider vinegar. If you’ve only got ordinary white vinegar, reduce by about 1/3.
White sugar – We need a little sweetness to balance the sauce. I just use white but brown will work fine too.
Spices – Paprika (which makes the sauce a bit pinky), onion powder and garlic granules (substitute with garlic powder). Onion and garlic powder can be substituted with more of the other.
How to make special burger sauce
It’s very technical … dump and mix. 😂 We need more recipes like this!!!
Using the burger sauce – double up!
I was born with the instinct to double up – sauce on the bottom lid and smeared on the top lid or drizzled over the burger patty stack piled up in the bun. I can’t imagine just smearing it on the lid or base of the bun – am I wrong??
I know you know how to mix together a bunch of ingredients but I made a quick little how-to video for you anyway. Mainly as an excuse to show off how good hamburgers are with homemade sauce.
I hope you give this a go one day! Let me know in the comments below if you do. – Nagi x
PS. And if you want a Cheeseburger to slather this on, just head right here.
Watch how to make it
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Special Burger Sauce
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup whole egg mayonnaise (Note 1)
- 1 tbsp American yellow mustard (Note 2)
- 2 tbsp sweet gherkins finely chopped (Note 3)
- 2 tsp gherkin juice (from the pickle jar) (Note 4)
- 2 tsp white sugar
- 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar (Note 5)
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp garlic granules (or 1/4 tsp garlic powder)
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a small bowl or jug and stir until smooth.
- Use for burgers – browse my Burger collection or try the latest and greatest Cheeseburger! I generously slather on the base bun as well as the lid (or drizzle the stack).
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Life of Dozer
A typical early evening stroll – he disappears off into the distance then I have to use the maximum zoom on my phone to locate him (yup, he’s peeing). 😂
This is by far the best burger sauce I’ve ever had absolute winner at the dinner table
I LOVE HEARING THAT! N xx
Wow! Made this in advance for burgers tomorrow and I swear I can already taste the burger just by trying the sauce, haha. Another winner!
The whole family loved this sauce, which I served with the cheeseburger recipe, absolute winner dinner. For my tastes, I used half the sugar in the recipe and added a squirt of tomato sauce. Perfecto.
Burgers have a sauce traditionally: yellow mustard.
Burgers are from Texas and the mustard is a bit of a defining characteristic. Burgers don’t have mayo, sandwiches do. Burgers don’t have ketchup, meatloaf does. Burgers have yellow mustard as sauce. This is one way you can tell a real burger.
We do our own thing here in Australia, anything goes 😉
🙄🙄🙄
🤣🤣🤣
Ryan PLEASE get over yourself
Ryan, you get top vote for drip of the year for that pretentious and ridiculous comment.
Nice burger sauce Nagi, and really similar to what I’ve been using for awhile now, although for my version I add a splash of Worcestershire sauce and a few drops of hot sauce.
Burger sauce is like alchemy, a great burger sauce can transform any old burger into something truly incredible 😉
Tell that to burger historian George Motz! Your definition of what makes a burger is far too narrow.
What are you, the Burger King?
BA HA HA!!!! Good one 🙂 N x
Yawn
Da bomb!
Burgers have mustard. They don’t have ‘sauce.’ Americans taking a Texas food and bastardising it. Ugh.
Next you will tell me chili has beans.
🙄🙄🤣🤣
Ryan get over yourself
Dearest Nagi – woohoo!!! I have struggled immensely to serve burgers to guests as I have never really enjoyed any sauce to serve in them to make them devine. But finally…… the back yard bbq burger will regularly be on on offer from now on! And your simple but INCREDIBLY special sauce will always be there! This REALLY simple to make sauce is a game changer. You, Dozer (and your recipes) really make such a difference in my life. From the bottom of my heart – thank you so much!!!! xx
This sauce was delicious – it’s what ate home made burgers have been lucky. We will make it on high rotation!
Fabulous. We loved it.
I changed a coup[e of things. I left out the onion and salt and added bacon instead.
Very, very guilty pleasure confession here – I like Big Macs but only because of the sauce. Is this the same saucy tempter ?
Will definitely try your secret sauce. I recently found a super easy mayo recipe using one egg, where you dump everything in a narrow jar and then quickly mix it with a stick blender. I suspect all the recipes that use the “drizzle oil very very slowly as you mix” are holdovers from the olden times when emulsifying was done by hand. The one-egg recipe makes a decent amount for a small household-2 eggs or more makes too much for us to be able to use up while it is fresh.
i think u are great
This looks amazingly tasty and simple. I’ll be trying it tomorrow but I can already tell that I’ll love it. I have no gherkins right now so I may substitute the standard green pickle hamburger jar to use it up. Perhaps baby dill pickles would work better? I’ll probably try both.
I can’t wait to try this recipe. Your burgers have my mouth watering. I make a my own special sauce using mayo and srirachi sauce. It gives it a little heat.
OK so now my tongue is hanging out for a burger (Just like Dozer) and I haven’t even had breakfast yet.
Will stash this one for reference. thank you
Sounds delicious. I will not rate your burger sauce, I am a thousand island guy and at 83 will not be changing.
Good news letter, you are great and that dog is OK, too.
Keep up the good work and never lose your sense of humor Nagi.
Kewpie, fer shur. But your recipe is way too sweet for me. When it comes to a burger, I like to just KISS it with Bayley Hazen blue or sharp cheddar (or Stilton) + lettuce + Kewpie. Especially when the meat is Wagyu.
Really, though, tartiflette is more to my taste — although there’s a great burger place in Paris that serves up a tartiflette burger!!! Mon dieu! Oy vey iz mir! Great balls of fire!
Interesting, not a trace of ketchup! (which means I must try it to believe it.) 🙂 Love your work, Nagi.
Hey Nagi – Love how you add so many multi-cultural dishes and ideas to your website. I think eating and cooking is a huge part of our lives but at the end of the day if a recipe doesn’t fit our ideals then we should simply not make it. If it does enjoy to the max. Nagi you are simply amazing x
I love the recipes Nagi .
You always bring a smile to my face with your down to earth approach . AND Dozer is adorable .