A good sauce can take any meal from so-so good to fabulous. And this thick and creamy Lebanese Garlic Sauce (Toum) does just that. Spread it on warm pita bread or use it as a dip for grilled chicken or falafel. The best part is once made, this recipe will last up to three months in the refrigerator. But, if you love it as much as I do, you will eat it up long before that!
It is a bold, creamy garlic sauce and dip, Lebanese toum is easy to make at home with the help of a food processor and a little good technique.
With just 4 ingredients that are naturally vegan and gluten-free, this mayo-free Garlic Sauce is thick, creamy, and packed with flavor. Serve with grilled meats or warm pita.
WHY IT WORKS
Blending garlic into a smooth paste releases emulsifiers contained within its cell walls, which stabilizes the sauce without using eggs.
Alternating the addition of oil with a small amount of lemon juice and water prevents the emulsion from becoming overwhelmed with oil and breaking.
This Lebanese Garlic Sauce is pretty easy to make and stays fresh in the fridge for a month, so there is no reason to not always have a surplus. Ever since realizing this, I have been able to focus on more important things during dinner—like constructing the perfect bite of shish tawook, charred onion, and pickles on my fork.
This is a staple of Lebanese cuisine, and more than just another condiment. This garlic sauce is great for stirring into soups and pasta, marinating chicken, and tossing with roasted vegetables; it adds an energetic punch of garlic to anything without requiring the hassle of peeling and mincing. It is also a pungent vegan alternative to mayo and perks up any sandwich. This sauce has become a staple in my fridge, and since it requires only four ingredients and a food processor to make, there is nothing stopping you from also living beyond the limits of a few two-ounce containers.
This sauce is essentially a mayonnaise, but it is stabilized with garlic instead of egg, just like mayo.
Mayo is a stable emulsion because the lecithin and proteins in an egg are some of the most powerful emulsifiers around. One egg is capable of emulsifying one gallon of oil, resulting in a stiff and spreadable sauce. A properly made garlic sauce will be just as thick, and densely packed with billions of oil droplets, but it is all held together with the far less stable proteins and pulverized plant tissues of garlic. This makes bringing toum together a more delicate process than making mayo, but with some patience, you can avoid pitfalls.
