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!
Recommended Products:
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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 was super skeptical that I would be able to pull this off, so I thought I’d just add some garlic to mayo as a backup plan, but the recipe worked flawlessly and was so delicious!! I used an immersion blender and it worked just fine! Thank you for the wonderful recipe 🙂
Glad to hear it!
Can this be made with vinegar instead of lemon juice?
Hi Ariel, Tori’s assistant Ashley here. We have not made this recipe with vinegar, so i’m not sure how it would turn out.
Hi, thanks for sharing this recipe, i wanted to ask. If it is stored in the refrigerator, how long does it last?
Hi Calvin, Tori’s assistant Ashley here. This can vary, but it should last up to 4 weeks.
Can I use a blender instead of a food processor?
You can, but it’s easier to manage the texture in a processor. You’ll need to do a lot of scraping and re-blending to achieve proper texture with a blender, but it’s definitely doable.
Tori – You have an amazing website and recipes. This recipe is superb. Are you able to recalculate the serving size calories? You mentioned in a reply in the comments that a serving (2 tablespoons) is 44 calories. I am not sure how that can be with 4 cups of oil even with the other ingredients.
Hi Sarah, unfortunately I am not a nutritionist. I am relying on the calorie calculation that is built into my website, which is fairly reliable but not always 100%. I just went in and recalculated using a different calorie calculator available online. Assuming the recipe makes roughly 5 cups of toum, or 80 tablespoons of sauce (it is never exactly the same amount from batch to batch), for 40 servings it would be roughly 2 tablespoons per serving, which equals 196 calories per serving. The calorie count was calculated using sunflower oil. Glad you’re enjoying the recipes!
Hey tori,
Great recipe, but when I tried to make it the results were excellent except it tasted bitter any suggestions on what could be done to get rid of the bitterness?
Thanks
Just add more lemon juice
Did you make sure to remove all of the germ( when you split the cloves in half there is a center piece that can be white OR green make sure you remove all if the germ as that is what causes garlic to be bitter)in the garlic?
If your garlic has the green part in the center, that causes bitterness.
This really is an amazing recipe. I am vegan and always avoided this at restaurants because I thought it was mayonnaise. The recipe worked perfectly and I use this on falafel wraps and vegan BLTs. Yum!
Hey tori,
First of all l would like to thank you for sharing me such a wonderful reciepe. But I want to ask you one question. What could go wrong if we add a little mayonnaise in it?
Nothing wrong, it will just give it a creamy mayonnaise flavor. It also will make it easier to emulsify in the blender. If you like mayo, I say go for it!
Hello, Toria:
This is a nice food blog. I answered a question about toum on Quora yesterday that links back to your site, and so today I thought that I’d visit your blog. It’s interesting how we both use the term ‘elbow grease‘ to describe an essential ingredient in preparing toum if you choose to do so manually – it’s a lot of work! If you want to take some of the ‘rawness’ out of the garlic when you’re processing it, you can add some lemon juice to the garlic just before you press the ‘pulse’ button on the food-processor: this inhibits the presence of the allicin in the garlic (i.e., what gives garlic its ‘garlickiness’) when the cloves of garlic are processed.
Here’s my answer on Quora here, in case you are interested. As I mention in my answer, I pronounce the Arabic word ثوم as ‘thoum’ (the Gulf way) rather than as ‘toum’ (the Egyptian and Levantine way), but both are possible and correct – just a question of dialect.
https://www.quora.com/How-was-garlic-sauce-Toum-prepared-when-there-was-no-food-processor/answer/E%C3%B2ghann-Peadarson?share=e426d4c9&srid=jxxD
Best wishes
Eòghann
Interesting Eòghann! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Quick question about the nutritional info. It says it is 179 calories per serving, but what is the size of the serving? The recipe says it makes 6 cups.
Thanks,
Hi Sharon – the recipe makes roughly 5 cups of sauce (not 6) and a serving size is 2 tablespoons. I have updated the nutritional info to include serving size, it’s only 44 calories per serving. Enjoy!
I LOVE toum! I’ve only made it once and it turned out ok, but was a LOT of work since I attempted to make a small batch. You’re right, in order for it to mix properly, you need to add some weight to hold it at the bottom of the processor or it’ll climb up the sides, stick there, and not mix. So that translates to a large batch. Now, since I’m the only one in the house who eats it, and there’s no way for me to consume a huge portion, I’m really disappointed that it’s not freezable. That I know of.
So tonight, in lieu of finding a delivery place that has toum on the menu, I’m going for Afghan cuisine; chicken kabob with a side order of mast-o-khiar. Not a substitute, but good!
Thanks for the recipe. I’ll try yours (looks delish!), but I may have to have a dinner party to get it all consumed! :o)
I first enjoyed this delectable treasure at a restaurant in Anchorage that unfortunately went out of business. The proprietor was Egyptian, and a fantastic chef, making not only the food itself but his own ingredients as well. I quickly became addicted to his fare, especially the toum-laced shawarma.
Once the restaurant closed, I found myself wanting to reproduce this awesome flavor combination, so I started buying lamb, and finding recipes online to replicate the flavors.
I have since made a middle eastern lamb shawarma recipe every year for Passover (without the laffa, of course), and homade toum, tarator and other middle eastern sauces. Everyone who partakes of these delicacies quickly became addicted; so much so that last year when my wife and I were too ill to handle the making of these recipes for our ever growing group, I coached others on how to make them.
The toum recipe that I use is much simpler to make, and follows the same concepts. To date, I’ve had several versions of restaurant garlic sauce – all delicious – but none that I like as much as the simple hand made recipe I’ve been using for about 16 years now. My recipe is heavy on the garlic – about 20 cloves for a single batch, uses two tablespoons of Helman’s mayo, just a few drops of lemon juice, cardamon to taste, and 1/4 cup SESAME oil or more. I emphasize SESAME oil for a couple of reasons, one is that sesame oil is a middle eastern product that best fits with middle eastern themed meals, and because it’s flavor in a garlic sauce is superior to all other oils that I have tried, including but not limited to peanut, olive, canola, corn etc.
I crush the cloves in a hand garlic crusher into a bowl, add two tablespoons of Helman’s mayo, a few drops of lemon juice, lots of cardamon, a 1/4 cup of sesame oil.
Then I simply beat it with a tablespoon by hand continuously by hand until it thickens. Too thick? Drizzle in a little bit more sesame oil, and a couple of drops of lemon juice – from fresh lemons please, no lemon juice from a jar! – and beat with the tablespoon some more.
When the mixture starts to get ‘saucy’ enough that it falls off the spoon fairly easily, the product is finished. Add too much oil or lemon juice and it does indeed separate. Takes a little bit of practice, but the ingredients work every time! I’ve made double and triple batches just by tripling the ingredient amounts, and it works perfectly every time. Everyone who has tried this garlic sauce asks for the recipe, and asks for me to make it all the time.
Hope you give it a try! 🙂
Hi,
Is there a way to make this a little spicier? I mean, can we add chilies or hot sauce? Or do you think the chili seeds will make this separate?
Thank you!
I wouldn’t add anything until the sauce is fully thickened and emulsified. At that point you can blend in some hot sauce or sriracha if you want it spicier.
I ran out of lemon juice and so I substituted it with 1/4 cup of white vinegar (1/4 cup not 1/2 cup) and it turned out to be perfect! Serving it with mahi mahi fish, potato wedges, asparagus, and fattoush… can’t wait!
This was amazing ! I halved the recipe. Turned out perfectly
Thanks for the recipe.
I tried it and it came out very good, texture wise.
For me personally it has too much lemon, next time I make it, I will try with much less lemon.
Love this recipe, are usually use avocado oil. Wondering if grapeseed oil would be ok to use?
Thank in advance:)
Hi Christina, yes it should be fine.
Hi everyone,
This recipe is spot on but let me share a small trick I learnt from a Lebanese chef who works in a restaurant in London. Add a small piece of raw potato (about the size of a garlic clove), this prevents your Toum from splitting.
For the very white fluffy Toum you need to use egg whites but then it doesn’t keep too long.
Any good lamb shawarma recipes out there?
Cheers from South Africa!
When do you add the potato? At the beginning or the end?
Once I started with cup of garlic end up with 8 cups of Toum… Delicious
Is it important to add that much oil? I mean I want to use it in place of mayonnaise as an healthy substitute but in this recipe same thing happened.
What will happen if I put less oil into it?
Hi Manisha, Tori’s assistant Ashley here. The amount of oil used is very important to get the right texture and consistency for this recipe. Please also note that toum has a VERY potent flavor, so be sure to use much less than you would with mayo.