Smash Burger Sauce
The five-ingredient secret sauce that separates a smash burger from a regular burger — creamy mayo, sweet ketchup, briny pickle juice, sharp mustard, and just enough cayenne to remind you it is there. It is the reason every bite tastes somehow more complete than the sum of its parts.
Ingredients
For 4 servings · tick what is ready
Use the scaled ingredient list. Steps and temperatures stay unchanged; use a larger pan or dish if needed. Seasonings to taste stay to taste.
How to make it
Combine the mayonnaise, ketchup, pickle brine, mustard, garlic powder, and cayenne in a small bowl. Stir with a fork or small whisk until completely uniform and smooth. The brine will loosen the mayo significantly, so the finished sauce is more pourable than standard mayo — this is correct, it allows it to spread into every crevice of the smashed patty and bun.
Fold in the finely diced dill pickles. Taste and adjust: more ketchup for sweetness, more pickle brine for sharpness, more mustard for bite, more cayenne for heat. The sauce improves with 15–30 minutes of resting time in the refrigerator — the flavors meld and the pickle brine fully integrates into the mayo. Apply generously to the bottom bun before building the smash burger.
About this recipe
By ForkRecipe Kitchen · Source: ForkRecipe / FoodML and contributors. Recipe content available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Serving count is an estimate; check quantities in the source recipe.