Outback Bloomin' Onion Sauce

Home reconstruction

The dipping sauce that comes with the Bloomin' Onion is pinkish-orange and clearly has some heat in it, so the instinct is to reach for cayenne. That gets you a sauce that is hot in the wrong place.

The heat is horseradish. Horseradish and chilli burn through completely different mechanisms — chilli hits receptors on the tongue, horseradish releases volatile compounds that go up into the sinuses. Anyone who has eaten the real thing will know immediately which one they are tasting.

The three components

Horseradish is the defining ingredient and the one to adjust.

Ketchup gives the colour and a little sweetness. This is the one people overdo, and too much makes it taste like a prawn cocktail sauce.

Mayonnaise is the body. Full-fat, because low-fat versions go thin and faintly sweet once you slacken them with ketchup.

Everything else — paprika, a little cayenne, oregano, salt — is background.

Use prepared horseradish from a jar

Not fresh grated, which is several times stronger and will take over. Not creamed horseradish sauce, which has already been diluted with cream and will throw both the heat and the consistency.

Plain prepared horseradish in vinegar is what the quantities here assume.

What you need

• 240 ml mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp tomato ketchup
• 2 tsp prepared horseradish, plus more to taste
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• a squeeze of lemon

Method

1. Whisk everything together until completely smooth.
2. Taste, and add horseradish a teaspoon at a time until the burn is where you want it. This is the only ingredient worth adjusting.
3. Refrigerate at least an hour.

There is no cooking.

The hour in the fridge is not padding

Straight from the bowl this tastes like three separate things — mayonnaise, then ketchup, then a horseradish spike. It needs time for the horseradish oils and the garlic to distribute through the fat.

An hour is the minimum, two is better, and it is the biggest single difference between a home version and the restaurant one.

Why not more cayenne

A quarter-teaspoon is there for background warmth and a little colour. Past about a teaspoon it starts to fight the horseradish rather than support it, and you end up with a sauce that burns in two unrelated places at once.

If yours tastes flat, it is almost certainly short on horseradish or salt, not short on chilli.

Storing

A week in the fridge in a sealed jar. It gets slightly hotter over the first two days as the horseradish infuses, then holds steady.

Do not freeze it. Mayonnaise splits.