5 Ingredient Toum (Fluffy Garlic Sauce)

Today we’re making a Lebanese garlic sauce called toum that comes together with 5 simple ingredients: garlic, water, lemon juice, oil, and salt. It’s whipped to fluffy perfection in a food processor and makes a wonderful addition to sauces, dressings, dips, garlic breads, and just about anywhere you’d use garlic.

Get ready to smell like garlic nonstop because this fluffy garlic sauce is totally addicting. Once you’ve made a batch, you can keep it in the fridge for months and use it wherever you like using garlic.

I use toum in stews, soups, pasta dishes, with bread, potatoes, you name it! It’s a luxurious plant based sauce that’s like a cross between soft butter and mayonnaise, with an even fluffier texture.

The whipped texture is a key feature of this ingredient, giving it a signature creaminess that’s fabulous to serve on it’s own with meats like these grilled lamb chops and Moroccan kefta.

An entire cup of garlic cloves are complimented perfectly with lemon juice, salt, and a neutral oil, resulting in a blend that goes well with just about any cuisine. I find myself adding this Lebanese sauce to many of my favorite Middle Eastern and Moroccan recipes.

While this recipe does require a little bit of patience while peeling the garlic and waiting for the garlic and oil to emulsify, you’ll be left with months worth of toum in under 30 minutes.

It’s one of those ingredients you’ll be eager to share with friends, in equal parts because of how much one batch makes and because of it’s impressively fluffy texture and zippy bright flavor.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

• garlic cloves, peeled
• water
• salt
• neutral oil (avocado, safflower, grapeseed, sunflower, etc.)
• lemon juice

Find the full ingredient list with exact quantities in the recipe card below.

How to Make This Fluffy Garlic Sauce

Storage: Toum will keep in the fridge when stored in an air tight container for up to 3 months! It can also be frozen in ice cube trays for individual servings and kept for up to 6 months.

How much garlic are we talking?

As outlined above, this recipe requires 1 heaping cup of garlic cloves. If you’re headed to the grocery store wondering how many heads of garlic to buy, know that this will depend on the size of the heads of garlic and bulbs.

This recipe usually requires somewhere between 2-3 heads of garlic.

Where To Use Toum

My favorite way to use this garlic whip is anywhere I’d use fresh garlic! It’s an easy ingredient to use once you’ve got a batch in your fridge.

I love using it as a replacement for garlic in homemade hummus, garlic bread, mashed potatoes (any potato recipes really), pasta, and other sauces. It’s also delicious served as a garlic sauce on it’s own with kebabs, kefta, and pita bread.

Here are some of my favorite recipes to serve it with:

And if you’re looking for some additional inspiration on how to cook with it, here are some recipes I’d swap the garlic for a teaspoon or two of toum:

Garlic Peeling Tips

I’ve tried just about every hack there is when it comes to peeling garlic, and I’m here to keep things simple. All you need is a cutting board and a knife.

Here’s my go-to method:

• Separate the cloves on the head of garlic with a knife.
• Swiftly trim off the brown end of a clove of garlic, holding the knife against the side of the peel touching the cutting board while you pull the clove up.
• This should pull off one side of the peel, and from there the rest of the peel should come off easily. Push a finger nail or the tip of the knife under the remaining sides of the peel to pop off.

Why We Don’t Use A Blender

I do not recommend trying to make this recipe with a stand blender. The blade isn’t able to distribute evenly throughout the garlic and oil and emulsify the sauce, giving that signature fluffy texture.

You can make this recipe using an immersion blender and a wide mouthed glass jar, just know the texture will be slightly denser, but still fluffy and creamy, more like mayonnaise.

Because of all this, I really recommend using a food processor, if possible. The texture it results in is truly unmatched!

More Sauces We Love

If you enjoy making your own sauces, be sure to check these out:

Thanks for being here,

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