Elevate your seafood with our easy-to-make perfect seafood dipping sauce that all the seafood dishes need! Packed with tangy and savory flavors, this sauce features fresh lemon and garlic. I especially love it with cooked crab, clams, prawns, lobster and even air fried frozen fish!

Talk about the perfect sauce for Dungeness crab! When we bring home fresh caught crab, we love to whip up this sauce on the side. Crabbing season is such a special time for our family, as our kids not only love the adventure or harvesting crab, but they especially love enjoying it for dinner.

I always say that our kids see us crabbing, clamming and fishing more often than they have seen us in a grocery store. True story! I couldn't be more thankful for that.

When it comes to choosing between butter and olive oil as the primary fat for this crab dipping sauce recipe, I can't choose. We often bounce back and forth for numerous reasons, whether it's our guest's dietary restrictions, or accessing our sides for dinner.

Either way, choosing between olive oil and butter is mainly dependent on our mood, and what we feel like enjoying our fresh caught Dungeness crab with. We patron both equally, as of yet, I would say.

This seafood sauce is full of fresh lemon juice and garlic to compliment most seafood. You won't need to hunt down extra lemon wedges any longer.

How to dip crab in this sauce

You only need a small amount of dip to get the flavor you're looking for. I love a flavorful sauces, and go after more lemon and garlic than most sauces out there.

Lemon and Garlic

I love these two ingredients so much. If I could put them in nearly every dish, I would. For this crab sauce, I created the recipe in the beginning of our crabbing days. I sure don't like to dip crab in a bowl of butter or oil. I need flavor! So, naturally created my own prior to looking elsewhere and came up with this sauce that speaks to my typical Mediterranean cuisine. Full of lemon and garlic. The perfect compliment to Dungeness crab!

Make in advance

If you crab often or plan on making this sauce in advance, you can double the recipe and place in your fridge for up to 5 days. On occasion we will make double the batch and keep this crab sauce recipe in our fridge during crabbing season.

What goes well with seafood sauce

Fresh Cooked Crab (here's how to cook crab)
Fresh Oysters (here's the easiest way to open oysters)

RELATED RECIPES

Try our boiled crab recipe!

The Perfect Seafood Dipping Sauce

This Perfect Seafood dipping sauce is made of fresh lemon and garlic. It's the one sauce you'll need for all seafood! Using extra virgin olive oil or butter, garlic, lemon, and a hint of salt.

5 from 3 votes

Cuisine: Pacific Coast

Course: sauce

Prep: 5

Servings: ½ cup

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Equipment

Mixing bowl
Small pot

Ingredients

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil or butter
¼ cup lemon juice
4 cloves garlic finely minced
½ teaspoon seasoning salt johnny's or lawry's

Instructions

In a small sauce pan on medium-low heat, stir in all the ingredients except for lemon juice.
Heat for a minute or two. Just until the garlic is fragrant.
Mix in lemon juice and pour into a shallow bowl to serve.

Notes

Both olive oil and butter are great options for this recipe. We have tried both numerous times and bounce back and forth depending on our mood, or our guest's dietary restrictions.

Enjoy this recipe with our Boiled Crab Recipe!

Keywords: crab dipping sauce, crab sauce, dipping sauce, seafood butter sauce