Toum – Lebanese Garlic Sauce

Hey garlic lovers! Do you love garlic? Do you love mayo? Then you’ll love toum – a delicious, creamy, garlicky dip that you’ll never tire of eating! It’s a Lebanese garlic sauce that whips up like mayonnaise. It’s easy to make, keto, dairy-free, eggless, gluten-free and vegan too!

Total Carbs 1g (per tablespoon)

This season I received extra garlic after helping out with the garlic harvest at MEVO Fresh Roots Farm. The farmers told me to make Toum. I’ve never heard of toum, though I now realize that’s the yummy garlic sauce I’ve been eating with my shawarma all this time, I just didn’t know what it was called.

What is toum?

Toum (pronounced “Toom”) is a fluffy, savory, whipped Lebanese garlic sauce used as a condiment. The best way to describe Toum is that it is like an eggless mayonnaise where the emulsifier is garlic, rather than egg. It is a keto-friendly, vegan-friendly, vampire repellant and tasty food you definitely must try.

Recipe Ingredients for Homemade Toum

This is what you need to make toum at home. Toum is made with 4 simple ingredients:

• fresh garlic
  Use fresh garlic for best results. You need the kind that sticks to your fingers and knife when sliced.
• salt
  Use a course, abrasive salt like Kosher salt or sea salt. This is perfect for pulverizing the garlic.
• oil
  Use a neutral flavored oil such as safflower, canola, vegetable or sunflower oil. Do not use olive oil as it has a bitter flavor profile that will dominate the garlic whip.
• lemon juice
  You’ll need a bit of acidity from the lemon juice to both brighten up the whip, preserve it and help stabilize the garlic and oil emulsion.

How To Make Toum

The secret to making toum is to use fresh garlic and take your time! It’s worth it and lasts a long time.

Start by breaking down the garlic into a paste by processing it with course salt. This breaks down the garlic’s cell walls which releases emulsifiers. This is what helps the ingredients bind and whip together into a mayonnaise-like fluffy texture, instead of an oily sauce!

Although easy to whip up, toum does require a bit of time and patience. Do not use a blender, as it requires too much liquid up front to get the paste started and this will prevent emulsification. Use a food processor and add liquid in tiny amounts, pulsing as you go, alternating between lemon juice and oil. If you add all of the liquid up front, the emulsion will not take and the sauce won’t whip together like mayo, but be liquid like sauce. Avoid leaving the food processor running since that will generate heat and this can also prevent or break emulsification.

It’s gonna take time

A whole lot of precious time

It’s gonna take patience and time, mmm

To do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it

To do it right, child

George Harrison -Got My Mind Set on You

Things You’ll Need:

• Food Processor
• Spatula
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Cutting board
• Knife

How To Fix Broken Toum Emulsion

If your toum comes out more like a sauce than a mayo, then that means that the emulsion is broken. You can solidify it by removing most of the garlic toum from the food processor. Then process a chopped cooked potato with a bit of that toum. Add a little toum at a time back into the potato/toum mixture while pulsing the food processor until incorporated into a thicker paste.

Serving Suggestions

What do you eat with toum? Toum is so versatile:

• Enjoy it with chicken or lamb shawarma in a lettuce wrap.
• Toum’s bold, spicy garlicky flavor is great straight up as a dip for pita, pita chips, veggie dippers like radishes, endive spears, carrot sticks, cucumber slices, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, sliced peppers, tomatoes and any vegetable you like!
• Add a dollop of toum on top of steak for dairy-free garlic butter.
• Toum is a great spread for grilled meat, fried fish, and sandwiches.
• Mix toum into omelettes.
• Mix toum into dips like baba ghanoush, tzaziki, hummus, sour cream sauce, and guacamole.
• Season salads with toum. Use it in 3 bean salad or spicy tuna salad or chopped salad.
• Use toum in marinades, salad dressings and sauces.
• I recently used it to make Teriyaki sauce for my steak. I ended up with creamy Teriyaki sauce! Yum!
• I even made Caesar salad dressing with toum. Just add lemon juice, anchovies, Parmesan cheese and lots of freshly cracked black pepper.
• Mix toum into soups to give soup a good kick of flavor!
• Use toum anywhere you want to add flavor and combat bland food.

Storing Toum

Store in the fridge

Store in a sealed container (such as a jar) in the fridge for 2-4 months.

Store in the freezer

Store in small sealed containers in the freezer for up to 6 months.

Frequently Asked Questions

Print