If you've ever had a good seafood boil, you already know the sauce is the real reason you keep going back. That glossy, garlicky, butter-soaked pool at the bottom of the bag is the best part of the whole thing, and a good Seafood Boil Sauce is so easy to make at home that a boil stops being a special occasion. Ours is built on a LOT of good butter, a homemade spice blend, a few shakes of Louisiana hot sauce, and a splash of beer for a little malty depth, and it comes together in one saucepan in about fifteen minutes. We pour it over crab legs, dunk shrimp in it, toss it with pasta, and brush it onto toasted bread until the loaf is gone.

Hand dipping a butter-glazed jumbo shrimp into a ramekin of Cajun garlic butter sauce, the sauce dripping back into the dish, with crab, potatoes, and corn behind.

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🧈 Disclosure: This post is a paid partnership with Plugrà Premium European Style Butter, our official butter partner for 2026! This sauce is mostly butter, so better butter really does matter here! 😍 As always, all opinions are our own.

We Build the Whole Meal Around This Garlic Butter Seafood Boil Sauce 🦀

Our favorite memories from eating our way through South Louisiana over the years almost always involve a seafood boil, and here's what we figured out after making them ourselves at home: you can put all your effort into the seafood and still end up underwhelmed if the sauce is an afterthought. So now we work backward. We make a big batch of this first, use some of it to cook everything in, and keep the rest on the table for dipping. Chamere always lets me drag the last piece of bread through what's left, and that's how I know it's love. 😂

It starts with our salt-free Seafood Boil Seasoning, which is the move that makes this sauce easy to nail. Because the blend has no salt in it, you're in full control of how the butter lands, and you season to taste instead of crossing your fingers. From there, it's a few shakes of Louisiana hot sauce, fresh lemon, and a splash of beer for a malty depth that water just can't give you. It's the sauce we set out for dipping whenever we do a big Cajun Seafood Boil for a Crowd.

A hand dipping a saucy shrimp into a bowl of garlic butter seafood boil sauce, with a Plugrà European-style butter box and a jar of seasoning in frame beside a loaded seafood platter.

🧈Ingredients You Need For Seafood Boil Sauce

This is a short list, and that's the point. Good butter, a lot of garlic, our seasoning blend, lemon, hot sauce, and a splash of beer.

Labeled ingredients for garlic butter seafood boil sauce on a warm terracotta background, including Plugrà European-style butter, garlic, Cajun seafood boil seasoning, kosher salt, lemon, Louisiana-style hot sauce, parsley, and beer.

How to Make Garlic Butter Seafood Boil Sauce ✨

One saucepan and about fifteen minutes. It comes together fast, so have everything prepped before you start. Let's go. 🧈

A stick of Plugrà butter melting in a skillet alongside already-melted golden butter, the start of the garlic butter sauce.

Step 1: Melt the Plugrà butter gently in a saucepan over low heat. You want it to melt, not sizzle or brown, so keep the heat low and let it go slow.

🧈 This is where the better butter shows up. A sauce that's mostly butter has nowhere to hide, so the quality of what you start with comes through in every bite. Plugrà's higher butterfat (82%) makes the finished sauce noticeably richer and glossier than a standard stick, which is exactly what you want when it's pooling at the bottom of the bowl.

Garlic softening in melted Plugrà butter in a skillet, pale gold and fragrant, a fish spatula stirring it through.

Step 2: Add the minced garlic and cook it low and slow for three to four minutes, stirring often, until it's soft and fragrant and just barely turning gold.

🧄Keep a close eye on the garlic! Stir it constantly, and keep the heat low. Garlic that browns turns bitter, and since it's such a big flavor in this sauce, burnt garlic will throw the whole thing off. Pale gold is as far as you want to take it.

Garlic and seasoning blooming in melted butter in a skillet, deepening to a rich red-brown, a fish spatula stirring it through.

Step 3: Stir in the seasoning and let it bloom in the hot butter for thirty to sixty seconds. This quick step makes a big difference! Warming the spices in fat wakes up the paprika and everything else, so the sauce tastes deeper and more developed instead of just dusted with seasoning.

🧂 You're in charge of the salt here. Because our seasoning blend is salt-free, this is where you season to taste. Add your salt a little at a time, tasting as you go, so you land it exactly where you want instead of oversalting in one pour.

🌶️ Want it hotter? The sauce as written is balanced and smoky-warm rather than super fiery. If you like real heat, stir in a quarter to half teaspoon of cayenne right here while the seasoning blooms, or add an extra splash of hot sauce at the end.

A hand grating fresh lemon zest from a microplane into a skillet of garlic butter sauce.

Step 4: Stir in the lemon zest and let it perfume the butter for about thirty seconds.

Garlic butter sauce in a skillet after the beer goes in, deep red with minced garlic visible, a fish spatula resting in the pan.

Step 5: Pour in the beer and let it simmer for one to two minutes. Don't skip the simmer or rush it. That bit of cooking burns off the raw alcohol edge and lets the flavor settle into the butter. We tested it both ways, and adding the beer off the heat left the sauce tasting flat. Just don't reduce it down to nothing, you want it pourable.

🍺 What beer to use (and how to skip it). Our favorite is Abita Amber, an amber ale brewed in Louisiana, so it feels right at home in this sauce. Any amber or pale ale works beautifully here. The goal is a little malty depth, so steer clear of anything too hoppy or bitter.

Not a beer drinker? No problem. Swap in seafood or chicken stock for savory depth, or just water to let the seasoning shine. And if you're making a boil alongside this sauce, a ladle of the seasoned par-boil water is our favorite swap of all, since it's already packed with all that Cajun flavor (sometimes we add beer AND the boil water!)

Hand squeezing a lemon overtop of a skillet with Cajun butter sauce and fresh parsley.

Step 6: Take the pan off the heat, then stir in the lemon juice, hot sauce, and fresh parsley. Doing the lemon juice and hot sauce off the heat keeps them bright instead of cooking them dull. Give it a taste and adjust the salt and lemon until it's right. It should be pourable but coat the back of a spoon, glossy and red-orange, and flecked with green.

🌶️ A quick word on the hot sauce. We use Crystal here, a Louisiana-style hot sauce that's brighter and tangier than blow-your-head-off hot. It adds a vinegary lift that wakes the whole sauce up, so it's doing as much for flavor as it is for heat.

That's it. Use it right away while it's warm and silky! 🤤

Platter of cooked shrimp, crab, potatoes, sausage, and corn with fresh corn, orange rounds, beer and buttery dipping sauce on the table.

🥣 Want it pourable? As written, this sauce is rich and thick, which is perfect for dunking crab legs and shrimp. But if you want to spoon it over a whole boil and let it run into every crevice, just thin it with a splash of warm water, broth, beer, or that seasoned boil water until it pours the way you like. We do this almost every time we drizzle it over anything!

A ladle drizzling garlic butter sauce over an assembled foil packet of snow crab, corn, potatoes, and seasoning before sealing.

Ways to Use This Seafood Boil Dipping Sauce 🦐

This sauce was made for dipping, and it's perfect alongside baked snow crab legs or spooned over a sheet pan shrimp boil. But it's far too good to keep to seafood, so we use it for plenty more than that. Toss it with pasta, drizzle it over roasted vegetables, spoon it onto a steak, or just brush it onto toasted bread and call that dinner. It keeps in the fridge for three to four days, so we almost always make the full batch and find reasons to use the rest all week.

This is the exact sauce we use in our Seafood Boil Foil Packets for Two, where it gets tucked right into the foil and bakes with the shrimp, crab, and corn, and then, of course, is served alongside.

Two open foil packets of Cajun garlic butter seafood boil with snow crab, shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes on a sheet pan, garnished with parsley and lemon wedges.

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