Thousand Island Dressing Recipe

Homemade thousand island dressing is great tossed with salad leaves but nothing beats it as the “secret sauce” on your burger. Yesssss. You gotta try it! Our Salad Dressing topic is brought to you by Stonyfield Organic.

I’ll admit that I’m not a huge thousand island dressing fan. Or at least, not a fan when it’s on a salad. But I truly love it on other things, like on a burger or spread onto a ham sandwich. It’s killer. The creamy tang cannot be beat.

What Is Thousand Island Dressing?

Thousand Island dressing is a pretty basic mixture made of mayonnaise (sometimes I sub in yogurt to make it healthier), ketchup, sweet pickle relish (or chopped up bread and butter pickles), a few seasonings, and a little blast of hot sauce.

I think the reason it works well on sandwich-type things is that it has that creamy mayo thing going on and then a touch of sweetness and heat. So it adds a few things without being complicated.

It’s worth noting that thousand island dressing is pretty similar to Marie Rose sauce, sometimes called seafood sauce or cocktail sauce in the UK. This is the stuff that Brits put on their shrimp cocktail, thus different from here in North America where we use a mixture of ketchup and horseradish sauce. Ohhh… I just invented brilliance in my head. What if we mixed together the two, like, made the thousand island dressing recipe below and then added horseradish to it? Gotta go make this right now. Enjoy!

Using Homemade Thousand Island

While of course you can use this salad dressing on, you know, a salad, you can also use it as a condiment. My favorite use for thousand island is on burgers and sandwiches. Some people also enjoy it as a dip for veggies or french fries. How do you use yours?

Thousand Island Dressing Recipe

Contributor: Christine Pittman

Homemade thousand island dressing is great tossed with salad leaves but nothing beats it as the “secret sauce” on your burger. Yesssss. 

• Author: Christine Pittman
• Prep Time: 5 minutes
• Cook Time: 0 min
• Total Time: 5 minutes
• Yield: 3/4 cup 1x
• Category: Sauce
• Method: No-Cook
• Cuisine: American

Print Recipe

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• ½ cup mayonnaise
• 2 Tbsp. ketchup
• 2 Tbsp. sweet pickle relish
• 1 tsp. apple cider or white vinegar
• ¼ tsp. garlic powder
• ¼ tsp. onion powder
• 2 dashes hot sauce, such as Tabasco

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

1. Measure all ingredients into a small bowl and whisk until it is an even pink color.

Love this recipe? I’d appreciate it if you could scroll down and add a *5 star rating* to help others know they’ll love it as well!

Disclosure: Stonyfield has provided giveaway items and social media promotion in exchange for mentions in the Salad Dressing Series. Also, the senior editor of this site is a paid brand ambassador for Stonyfield. All opinions are ours and honest, always.

This post originally appeared in April 2016 and was revised and republished in February 2023.