Vegan Cocktail Sauce Is One Easy Swap Away

When we think of cocktail sauce, we often picture a thick, vibrant, red-colored sauce elegantly served alongside shrimp or oysters. While cocktail sauce pairs fabulously with seafood dishes, it's also great with pigs in a blanket or mixed into meatloaf. In a cocktail sauce, you'll usually find a mixture of ketchup, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and hot sauce. Even though there are now plenty of vegan versions of seafood and meat products to buy or recipes to make, a traditional cocktail sauce isn't vegan as anchovies are the primary ingredient within the Worcestershire sauce component. Anchovies give a savory yet tangy, sweet, and salty flavor (altogether identified as umami), while other complementary flavors within Worcestershire sauce are acidic notes from vinegar, sweetness from molasses, and slightly spicy notes from cloves, mustard seeds, and black peppercorns. 

Most cocktail recipes call for very little Worcestershire sauce — a dash to ¼ teaspoon — as a little does go a long way. However, cocktail sauce just doesn't taste the same without that dash of Worcestershire, so substituting it to make it vegan is well worth it. Luckily, its flavors are already bottled up in another sauce that's 100% vegan-friendly: Tamari. This Japanese sauce is derived from the liquid of pressed miso paste made from fermented soybeans, water, salt, and koji (fermented rice).

Tamari is actually more widely available nowadays than ever before. It's been gaining familiarity in recent years not only for its unique flavor but also for its health benefits. Any regular cocktail sauce recipe that calls for Worcestershire sauce can be replaced one to one with tamari. Tamari looks and tastes similar to soy sauce but with a slightly thicker consistency; it's also frequently used as a soy sauce substitute by those who are both gluten-free and vegan. However, soy sauce contains wheat, which can be detrimental for those who eat a gluten-free diet. That being said, if you can't easily access tamari and you're not trying to avoid gluten, soy sauce may also replace Worcestershire one-to-one in a cocktail sauce recipe. 

Compared to Worcestershire, tamari is more versatile as an ingredient for cooking but also complies with a number of dietary restrictions. In any recipe that calls for Worcestershire sauce, feel free to substitute it with tamari (or soy sauce) one to one for an equally delicious outcome. Tamari can also replace Worcestershire in Caesar salad dressing, red beans and rice, french onion soup, and Bloody Mary cocktails. Now that you're armed with how to make a great vegan cocktail sauce, try pairing it with any of the best-tasting vegan fish products available!