Toum – Recipe for Middle Eastern Garlic Sauce. Use on Shawarma, Falafel, Grilled Foods. Vegan, Garlicky, Creamy and Flavorful
I’ve been wanting to post this recipe for a while now, but it took some time to develop it and get it just right. Either the texture wasn’t quite right or the flavor wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be. I can proudly say that finally, I’ve cracked the code. This toum recipe is da bomb. It’s smooth, creamy, garlicky and deliciously potent.
The key was using a big food processor (8 cups or more), making a large batch (big enough for it to easily emulsify in the food processor), using sunflower or canola oil (these mild oils work best for flavor and texture), and chilling the oil. Sound strange? The chilled oil is magic, it helps to keep the sauce from separating. Come on, don’t you trust me yet?
If you’ve never had the pleasure of trying toum, it’s a creamy garlic dipping sauce that is often served in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean restaurants. It’s similar to aioli or mayonnaise, but made without eggs.
It’s utterly fabulous on falafel, shawarma, grilled chicken, fish, and vegetables— really, anything that calls for a creamy garlic accompaniment. Be warned, this sauce isn’t for the faint of heart. Toum packs a powerful punch.
Raw garlic contains some pretty incredible health benefits, and has been used as both food and medicine for thousands of years. Ancient Olympic athletes used to eat raw garlic to boost their strength and stamina. It’s a great source of antioxidants; it also has anti-inflammatory properties.
Some studies have shown that eating garlic may help lower high blood pressure and high cholesterol. So toum is not only tasty, but it’s also good for you. Although I can’t promise it will have a very positive effect on your breath. Don’t go kissing anybody after a serving of this stuff!
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Garlic Sauce (Toum)
Ingredients
- 4 cups sunflower oil, avocado oil or canola oil, chilled (You may need less oil - detailed instructions below. For Passover safflower oil may be used)
- 1/2 cup garlic cloves peeled
- 1/2 cup lemon juice divided
- 1/2 cup ice cold water divided
- 1 3/4 teaspoons salt
Instructions
- Please Note: this recipe must be made exactly as written, and it relies on a balance of ingredients with very specific amounts and temperatures. Please do not alter the number of servings, or your sauce may not emulsify properly. Before you begin, place your oil in the freezer or refrigerator so that it is chilled, but still liquid. While the oil chills, remove the ends from your garlic cloves, split them in half and remove any green layers from inside. In a food processor, combine garlic cloves, salt, 1/4 cup of the lemon juice and 1/4 cup of the ice cold water.
- Process until smooth, then stop and scrape the sides of the food processor with a spatula.
- Turn the food processor back on and drizzle the chilled oil through the top as SLOWLY as possible, one cup at a time. If you don't have a steady hand I suggest putting the oil in a squeeze bottle and drizzling it in that way. After each cup of oil, add 1 tbsp each of the lemon juice and cold water.
- Scrape down the sides of the food processor as necessary. Be sure that your processor does not get too hot, as this can cause your sauce to separate.
- Only add oil until you've reached the texture you desire - you may only need 3 1/2 cups to achieve the proper texture. The final result should resemble a soft mayonnaise. This recipe makes about 5 cups of sauce, a serving is calculated as roughly 2 tablespoons. Store toum in an airtight container in the refrigerator. This recipe makes a pretty big batch, but it should keep for up to 4 weeks and it can be used on so many things. You'll be happy you have extra. Enjoy!
NOTES
Nutrition
I love toum…wish it worked though. Even froze the garlic in advance to try and reduce the spiciness of it. 🙁
I’ve added more ice water as one of the othee comments suggest, and nothing. Egg whites didn’t revive it either.
I’ve made toum plenty times before, but was looking for a recipe that gives more than a 50% success rate.
For this recipe, I’m guessing that dumping half the lemon juice and half the water into the garlic at the beginning did it in…most other recipes chop all the garlic first, then add the lemon juice and oil alternating in thin streams. This recipe however, never thickened up or for fluffy. It was eternally garlic-lemon water…Guess I have tons of chicken marinade now…….
Ironically, I was also looking for an eggless toum recipe, but added half an egg white in a desperate attempt to make it fluff up. 🙁
Sorry to heat that! Toum is definitely tricky. Better luck next time!
Turned out pretty well in the end but not as much kick as the Middle Eastern place we like. Next time I’m gonna increase the garlic. As did other reviewers, I encountered trouble with wateriness and not emulsifying. But I tried a tip I had read Serious Eats about what to do if homemade mayonnaise is watery after blending: I put the mixture in the fridge for a while to allow it to separate… then hit it with a stick blender on high. Voila!
Great tip Michele, thanks for sharing!
Made it tonight. Added a little lemon and water more often than each cup of oil though. More like every 1/4 cup. It came out fluffy like a soft mayo. YAY! Forwarded this recipe to my aunt who has had her recipe separate twice already. Thanks!
For anyone wondering if the recipe can be halved – YES! Turned out perfect for me. I used 1/2 of each ingredient. For the oil I used 1 3/4 cup. I think the key is making sure the oil and water are really cold.
Make this and put it on everything! So good and addicting. I will have to try it with the avocado oil as someone suggested that sounds wonderful.
What’s a substitute for a food processor? Thank you!
You could try an immersion blender. Works for me.
I absolutely LOVE this recipe but couldn’t find a name for it or find out how to make it from home. I just bought the ingredients to make homemade pita, so I’m going to make this to go on it. My husband is going to nominate me for wife of the year.
.Is it really a consistency of like condensed milk or mine is a bit thinner than how you make it? I made it today and it taste so good.Thank you for sharing your recipe.
I’ve been searching this recipe…vry badly……i always have this garlic toum in saudi Arabia with Chicken broasted, shawarma, falafel, etc….i just love this garlic sauce
Just wondering if Grapeseed oil is OK as a sub?
Hi ladies. The first time I made toum, I also had the runny, watery issue. An egg white solved that. I don’t know if that goes against any religious food rules here, I’m not religious, but it worked very well and made the sauce light and fluffy.
Sorry, the liquid “gelled” right up…stupid auto spell correct.
I’ve had a couple of unsuccessful attempts at making garlic sauce and have a tip for those that have ended up with a liquidy goo at the end.
Try adding a tablespoon or two of ice cold water at the very end. It saved my last batch and in a few seconds the liquid grilled right up.
Hey Tory. Beautiful pics. But unfortunately my sauce didn’t quite look like that. I only added 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/4 cup water and barely 1 cup oil and my toum was quite liquidy. Didnt add any more oil worried that it will just become a garlic drink finally. Did it on my stick blender. Any idea how I can bring it back to the right consistency? Made it last night and hopes it would firm up in the fridge overnight, but it didn’t ?
Hi Shilpa– a stick blender probably won’t work here, unfortunately. You really need a strong traditional blender to get the right consistency. The stick blender will produce too much heat in the liquid and it will be difficult to make it emulsify properly.
I do like mayo myself, but the taste of toum is totally, totally not mayo-ish. The consistency yes (obviously) but the taste is more like whipped cream with garlic, if you know what I mean. The Spanish aioli is a sort of garlicky mayo, as it uses eggs. Toum doesn’t and that makes a big difference. And this recipe is well worth trying. Thanks, Tori.
N/b could you have a metric conversion somewhere. Being European I struggle with cups etc.
I really, really want to try this but am worried that it will taste like mayonnaise (which I absolutely hate…a strong word I know..but I do hate it). Can anyone tell me what this taste like? Thanks a bunch!
I too failed to get it to emulsify properly, so I looked up some other recipes on youtube. The ones I found did not include water at all. Some even warned me about water residue or moisture in the processor bowl, and condensation during refrigeration. Makes sense to me that it would be easier to emulsify oil and garlic without any water. Granted the lemon juice is still a watery type of liquid, but still. The acidity seems to do something to make up for it?
So why do you use water? Is it to get a slightly more pourable sauce, or is it there to help balance the flavours? Either way, would it be possible to carefully add it to the finished emulsion?
By the way, it still tasted great! I was a little bit scared, due to the insane amount of garlic. But a slight drizzle on the falafel, hummus and tahini sauce I just made using your recipes was absolutely lovely! <3
Thank you so much!
Hi Karin! Great question. I’ve always made this sauce with water, and yes it is for the proper consistency. It’s a very fussy sauce, not easy to make, so don’t be too sad if you didn’t nail it the first time. You could certainly try adding the water at the end, but it shouldn’t really make a difference. The key is really adding the liquid slowly, bit by bit, until you get the right consistency. Also make sure your processor doesn’t overheat, as that will break the sauce. Hope your next attempt goes better!
How can I thicken it a little bit?
You should only add oil until you reach the thickness you want. To add thickness back in you might try blending in a few more garlic cloves, however I’ve never tried that myself so I can’t promise it will work.
I suspect you could make a halved or thirded batch with a stick blender. It works great for making mayo (which I sometimes add garlic to) and I bet it would work similarly for toum.
actually, i did it painfully slowly, and what i think happened was because it was so slow it made the vita mix too hot the longer it runs the warmer the contents get.
That is entirely possible Serena, heat will really make emulsification difficult here. I’m going to try it with my Vitamix next time to see if I can replicate the issue. Meanwhile, I will stick to recommending the food processor as the appliance of choice here. Thank you for the detailed feedback!
followed directions to a tee…in a vitamix. what i got was a huge amount of liquidy garlic that i dont have a clue what i’m going to do with, because of the large quantity. never came close to a mayo consistency.
Serena, sorry you didn’t have a better experience. This likely means you didn’t drizzle the oil slowly enough. It really takes a light touch. You can use the liquid to marinate chicken and fish.
I made similar recipe in the Vitamix and it turned out beautifully, very thick consistency and it stayed like it for hours. I did not put the oil into the fridge though.
The key is as Tory said to poor the oil in very slowly. I used 1/2-1 cup of oil to start off with and only when it was thick, I slowly added more. To use up the whole oil, I actually had to use the tamper.