Channel your favorite Middle Eastern restaurant and prepare this easy toum recipe in the comfort of your home. Generous amounts of fresh garlic, oil, and lemon juice create the perfect condiment for kabobs, grilled chicken recipes, vegetables, sandwiches, and wraps. For another variation, prepare homemade Polish garlic sauce called sos czosnkowy.
If you’re a garlic lover like me, you’ll want to put this creamy garlic spread on absolutely everything! And all you need is four simple ingredients to make it– count me in! Like skhug, shatta sauce, or chimichurri with cilantro, the toum recipe is a great way to enhance your meals with bold flavor.
What is Toum?
Toum is a Lebanese garlic sauce similar to garlic aioli or mayonnaise made with simple ingredients. All you need is fresh garlic cloves, oil, and lemon juice – that’s it.
Restaurants serve the hugely popular Middle Eastern condiment with chicken, lamb, and beef kabobs or meals like chicken shawarma, falafels, and shish tawook.
And in case you’re wondering, the name toum, pronounced ‘toom,’ means garlic in Arabic which is pretty fitting given the flavor of the sauce.
Key Ingredients
- Garlic: I include a whole head of garlic (sometimes more than that), but measure with your heart. Cut the time and preparation in half by using a silicone garlic peeler.
- Lemon Juice: Freshly squeezed lemon juice adds bright flavor to the sauce. Select a lemon with a vibrant color that is heavy for its size. Bring it to room temperature and roll it between your palm and the counter to make it easier to juice.
- Salt: Taste and season toum with kosher salt.
- Oil: Use a neutral oil like canola oil, vegetable oil, safflower oil, avocado oil, or grapeseed oil to give toum its creamy texture and flavor. You can use olive oil, but it will change the color of the sauce.
Tools You’ll Need
Use an immersion blender, food processor, or blender to make the easy toum recipe. However, I highly recommend using an immersion blender when making sauces or dressing that require emulsification.
Use the blender cup provided with the immersion blender, a wide-mouth jar, or one of these meal prep containers to ensure the blender works properly and to avoid a big mess.
How to Make Toum
The full recipe with measurements is in the recipe card below.
Step 1: Peel the garlic and transfer the cloves to a blender cup, wide-mouth jar, or blender. Add the salt and lemon juice and process to mince the garlic.
Prep Tip
Use a silicone spatula to scrape the garlic bits off the sides of the jar or blender, as needed.
Step 2: With the immersion blender, food processor, or blender running, the food processor is running, slowly add a few drops of oil in a single stream.
Step 3: Pour the oil slowly into the cup or blender while processing until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Taste and season the sauce with salt, and enjoy.
Expert Tips
- Take the time to remove the small green spout or garlic germ from the inside of each garlic clove to produce a more flavorful sauce.
- Ensure that all ingredients are at room temperature before starting. Using cold ingredients can make it more challenging to achieve a proper emulsion.
- Add the oil gradually in a slow, steady stream while blending. The gradual addition helps to achieve a stable emulsion (the two liquids combine and don’t separate).
Tips for Emulsification
What is Emulsification?
Emulsification is a fancy term for combining ingredients that do not naturally mix, such as oil and water and helping them stay together using an emulsifier.
What is an Emulsifier?
An emulsifier acts like a bridge between two opposing ingredients, holding them together in a smooth, stable mixture. The best emulsifiers contain water and oil-friendly properties to help the ingredients combine. The most common emulsifiers are egg yolks, mustard, mayonnaise, soybeans, honey, garlic, and xanthan gum.
How to Create a Stable Emulsification
If you want to learn how to make homemade vinaigrette, dressing, hollandaise sauce, aioli, or mayonnaise, then learning how to create a stable emulsification is key.
- Choose an Emulsifier: Select an emulsifying ingredient based on what you are making.
- Combine the Ingredients: Mix the water-based ingredients with an emulsifier like garlic cloves.
- Slowly Add Oil: Add a few drops of oil to start, then pour the oil gradually in a slow, steady stream while whisking or blending the ingredients. The gradual addition helps to achieve a stable emulsion (so the two liquids combine instead of separate).
How to Save a Broken Sauce
Here is how to save the toum if it fails to thicken. Begin by whisking an egg yolk in a small bowl. Gradually incorporate some of the broken sauce into the yolk. Then, add the new egg mixture to the rest of the sauce and whisk to combine. You can mix the ingredients with an immersion blender or food processor instead of whisking by hand.
If you enjoy this garlic toum recipe, pair it with one of these dinner favorites!
Serving Suggestions
Toum is an easy way to flavor simple meals like rotisserie chicken because of its delicious garlicky flavor. For dipping, reach for warm pita, air fryer pita chips, or fresh vegetables like carrots and cucumber. The creamy Lebanese garlic sauce is my favorite way to enjoy falafels, chicken dishes, beef kabobs, rice pilafs, fries, and sandwiches or wraps.
What To Do With Leftovers
- Refrigerate: Store the leftovers in an airtight container or glass jar for 2-3 months. The sauce stays fresh for longer thanks to the fresh lemon juice and garlic.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does toum taste like?
Toum is a tangy condiment with a smooth texture and a robust garlic flavor.
What’s the difference between toum and aioli?
Toum and aioli have many similarities, but I think Toum has a stronger flavor. The traditional aioli recipe only uses garlic and oil, but most modern recipes also include egg yolks. In contrast, toum only requires garlic, oil, salt, and lemon juice.
What type of oil is best to use?
You want to use a neutral oil like sunflower, canola, vegetable, grapeseed or safflower oil.
More Sauce Recipes:
Toum
- 1 garlic bulb, about 12 garlic cloves
- 1-2 teaspoons kosher salt
- lemon juice, one lemon
- 1¾ cup neutral oil
- Peel the garlic and transfer the cloves to a blender cup, wide-mouth jar, or blender. Add the salt and lemon juice and process to mince the garlic.Tip: Use a silicone spatula to scrape the garlic bits off the sides of the jar or blender, as needed.
- With the immersion blender, food processor, or blender running, the food processor is running, slowly add a few drops of oil in a single stream.
- Pour the oil slowly into the cup or blender while processing until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Taste and season the sauce with salt, and enjoy.
- Take the time to remove the small green spout or garlic germ from the inside of each garlic clove to produce a more flavorful sauce.
- Ensure that all ingredients are at room temperature before starting. Using cold ingredients can make it more challenging to achieve a proper emulsion.
- Add the oil gradually in a slow, steady stream while blending. The gradual addition helps to achieve a stable emulsion (the two liquids combine and don’t separate).