5-Minute Cilantro Lime Sauce

This zesty cilantro lime sauce is the perfect dipping sauce, dressing, or marinade and comes together in just 5-minutes! It's packed with flavor from fresh cilantro, lime juice, garlic, and has a creamy smooth texture thanks to greek yogurt.

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Why We Love This Recipe

What's not to love about a vibrant & fresh sauce that comes together in a matter of minutes?

It's packed with acidity, saltiness, fat from the greek yogurt, and an optional bit of spice from a jalapeño; a combination of flavors that is famously addicting.

Cilantro and lime are popular ingredients in many Puerto Rican recipes. Because of this, this recipe is a wonderful pairing for using as a dipping sauce/topping, dressing, or marinade.

We especially love serving it with tostones, pinchos de pollo, and empanadillas.

Ingredients

Here are the ingredients you will need to make this sauce:

• Cilantro, rinsed and towel dried
•  Limes, juiced
• Clove garlic, peeled 
• Avocado or olive oil
• Greek yogurt or sour cream
• Salt
• Pepper
• Optional: jalapeño or serano, with seeds removed

See recipe card for quantities.

Step by Step Instructions

Enjoy as a dipping sauce, dressing, or marinade!

What to Eat it With

This sauce goes well with so many different cuisines and dishes.

A few of my favorites being tacos, savory rice dishes (like this arroz con gandules), beans, grilled meat (try these pinchos de pollo) and seafood. It also makes a wonderful dressing on salads, especially coleslaw!

You can also try it out with these reader favorite recipes:

Substitutions & Additions

This sauce is very easy to modify. Here are some fun ideas on how to make it your own:

• Add more herbs - Throw ½ a cup of the dark green part of some green onions in the blender and enjoy an additional fresh, herbaceous bite in the sauce.
• Swap greek yogurt for sour cream - Feel free to use sour cream instead of greek yogurt if that's what you have on hand or prefer!
• Vegan alternative - To keep this recipe plant based, you can use a plain vegan yogurt or sour cream.

You can also experiment with adding some additional spices to this recipe (like sazon or adobo seasoning) to amp up the flavors.

Equipment

You will need either a traditional standing blender or an immersion blender to make this cilantro lime sauce.

I really enjoy using my immersion blender This post contains affiliate links., as it creates less dirty dishes and comes together quickly.

Ninja Blender

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Immersion Blender

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This post contains affiliate links.

Storage

This sauce should keep in the fridge for up to 5 days, when stored in an air tight container or jar.

Marinade Tip

This cilantro lime sauce works beautifully as a marinade on chicken, red meat, and shrimp.

If using as a marinade, be sure to let it sit on the protein for at least 1 hour before cooking.

More Sauces We Love

Enjoy,

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