Vegan Garlic Sauce - Toum (2024)

Toum is the buttery garlic sauce from Lebanon. It goes great with grilled meat to French fries to pita chips. In other words, it is very versatile- use it to make meat marinade, make salad dressing, as a spread and so on. Think of it like a garlicky aioli, but without the eggs. Vegan, Nut Free, Gluten Free

You have the garlic, oil, and lemon juice plus a pinch of salt. These ingredients get transformed into a fluffy spread that I personally love with French fries. We spread this liberally on a pita wrap. I will slather it on chicken and make garlicky roast chicken.

Why Do I Love Toum

• Vegan – I can safely leave it on the counter for the little monsters in the house to munch on and not worry about food poisoning.
• Versatile – Add a few herbs and slather it on a slice of French bread and toast. Voila, you have garlic bread !
• Mix herbs and spices and use a garlicky marinade for roasts – potatoes roasted with this sauce is absolutely delicious.
• Fun to make – especially with kids. Watch them go from “gross garlic” to “ummm that’s yum” :-).

What Makes It Fun To Make WithKids?

Here is why – Toum is essentially an emulsion. You have ingredients that are not at all similar – liquids that don’t mix and a solid. There is no cooking involved and yet you end up with a fluffy spread that seems nothing like the ingredients you started with.

These are all the ingredients that go into this sauce – garlic, water, lemon juice, oil, and salt. This here is your vegan alternative to mayonnaise. It spreads like mayonnaise, but with quite bold flavors. Isn’t it very different?

Transformations like these capture the children’s imagination, and it is something different f rom decorating cupcakes or making sugary treats.

What Is An Emulsion ?

An emulsion is essentially a mixture of two or more liquids that are normally immiscible (unmixable) – think oil and water. To get a stable emulsion, one that does not separate immediately you need something to bind the different types of liquids together. This “something” is your emulsifying agent. It creates a chemical bond with the different liquids and becomes a bridge between them. And in this case, it is garlic.

The fluffy sauce in the picture does not look anything like the ingredients that go into it. To get to this texture we have to use the ‘mayonnaise method’. Essentially we mix the liquids so much that the molecules are dispersed randomly within each other. In this case, the lemon juice molecules are trapped by the oil with the garlic acting as the emulsifier. Think of it this way – the oil and lemon juice want to separate, so they try to repel each other while the garlic tries to keep them together. All that opposing forces give it the fluffiness and the binding forces of garlic give it the stability.

Yes, it is science!!! For those with active imaginations – two other commonly used emulsifying agents are egg yolk and mustard. Maybe you can find a way to make a less garlicky version of toum.

How To Make Toum

What we attempt to do here is to make an emulsion by suspending the water and lemon juice in oil. Since water (or lemon juice) does not mix with oil we have to introduce it to the oil slowly making sure that it gets incorporated well before adding more. The emulsifier, garlic, in this case, has to be ready to bind both liquids together. So here is how it is done

• Grind garlic and salt into a smooth paste.
• Add oil to the mix slowly until a smooth mixture forms.
• Slowly start introducing water/lemon juice to it. Add more oil if needed.
• Go slow the mix will turn fluffy after a few minutes.

So here are some shots of Toum being made. This one was made with cold-pressed (extra virgin) olive oil, as I was looking for the olive and garlic flavors in it. As you can see the color is pale yellow.

For white Toum use canola or other neutral oils.

Here is the olive oil Toum on pita bread. The flavors go well here – as I was pairing it with grilled meat and veggies and olive oil flavors were quite a nice addition. If I were to add French fries to the wrap I would have preferred the all-white version.

Tips and Troubleshooting

• Remove any green parts from the garlic. Slit the garlic and remove any green shoots from the inside as well. The green garlic turns the sauce bitter.
• Grind the garlic to a smooth paste before adding oil.
• If the blender jar is large it may not process the garlic into a smooth paste. Use a small jar or double or triple the quantity in that case.
• The color changes depending on the oil used. With cold-pressed olive oil (EVOO) you get a pale yellow Toum, which I love. For the snow-white variety use canola oil or vegetable oil.
• Do not let the contents heat up. If the blender seems to warm up stop processing and allow for it to cool down before proceeding. This is where the cold water becomes beneficial.
• If it breaks, mix an egg white or 1 tbsp. of Dijon mustard and blend again. It won’t be the traditional Toum, but will still be delicious.

Interesting Tidbits

Here is a secret – Toum can be made with only garlic and oil! Why? because garlic has water and the emulsifying agents are released when the garlic is ground to a paste! So essentially garlic alone will suffice if it is fresh and has a good amount of moisture. The water and lemon juice are used to tone down the pungent garlic flavors.

Did you know that Toum was traditionally made using a mortar and pestle? No, I am not going to try that! But if you need another challenge in your life – go ahead try it with mortar and pestle! There is no issue with overheating when using mortar and pestle. As for me, I am happy with my blender.

Here is the recipe for Toum.

Want to know more about the science of emulsions These resources might help.

• BBC Science
• Britannica
• Cooks Illustrated

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