Toum Recipe (Garlic Sauce) (2024)

FAQs

How to reduce garlic taste in toum? ›

Lemon juice and ice water are important for balancing out the strong flavor of toum. To adjust the flavor or thin the toum into a sauce, whisk or blend in ice water one tablespoon at a time at the very end of the process, after the emulsion is set.

One of the big reasons that your toum is thin is because your ingredients got too warm while processing. All you need to do is take a tablespoon of ice cold water and drizzle it into the processor while it is on. Let it process and watch it thicken up. If it is still not thick enough, add another tablespoon of water.

The easiest way to fix a broken emulsion is to transfer the ingredients to a tall jug and add 4 tbsp of aquafaba (the liquid in a tin of chickpeas). Now use an immersion blender to blend it all together. Within a few seconds, it should emulsify into a smooth sauce.

Do be sure to use the freshest garlic you can find: Older garlic tends to result is a very spicy toum. If your toum is too spicy at first, it should mellow out after a couple of days in the fridge.

Certain ingredients can help to balance or neutralize the garlic taste. Acidic ingredients like lemon juice or vinegar can help to cut through the strong flavors of garlic. Adding dairy products like milk, cream, or yogurt can also help to mellow the taste and create a more balanced dish.

Acid Attack: Allicin bows down to the acidic might of citrus and vinegar. Marinating chopped garlic in lemon juice or a splash of vinegar before adding it to your dish mellows its bite while adding a touch of brightness.

Don't worry, you can harness the emulsifying powers of an egg white to bring it back together. Combine one egg white with a quarter cup of the broken emulsion and process until fluffy before slowly pouring in the rest.

If you enjoy toum in a thicker consistency, allow it to sit in the fridge for a day and it will thicken up. Another way to get thicker toum using the immersion blender is to use more oil. This recipe uses less oil than usual, and that's because I don't like toum tasting too oily.

Bitterness in toum is often caused by the garlic, especially if you've used older garlic or processed it too long. To avoid this, always use fresh garlic and remove the germ (the green sprout in the middle of the clove) as it contributes to the bitterness.

Add more liquid

If it is half-broken, add half as much again as the amount of oil that was used to break it in the first place. If it is completely broken, add equal volumes of oil and liquid. Start with a little bit and keep adding until the sauce comes back together into an emulsion. This may take a few iterations.

How do you fix broken emulsification? ›

You can do this by placing a teaspoon of lemon juice (or water) in a clean bowl and adding a small amount of the broken emulsion, whisking to form another, stable emulsion. Once that emulsion forms, drizzle in the rest of the broken sauce, whisking constantly.

Honey and garlic paste are two of the lesser-known emulsifiers in your kitchen. The former can serve as mustard's sidekick in a dressing, or even do the job on its own; the latter is the brawn behind Catalan's allioli, a garlic-and-oil mixture that has the consistency of a super-smooth aioli, without the egg.

The easiest way to fix a broken emulsion is to transfer the ingredients to a tall jug and add 4 tbsp of aquafaba (the liquid in a tin of chickpeas). Now use an immersion blender to blend it all together. Within a few seconds, it should emulsify into a smooth sauce.

CAVA | Garlic Dressing 🤤 Similar to toum, a Lebanese sauce that's both creamy and garlicky | Instagram.

Those all-important garlic enzymes are inactivated by heat, and the allicin compound is destroyed during cooking. So garlic mellows as it cooks, and is most pungent in it's fresh, raw form.

Using Acid

Puréeing a whole head of garlic with lemon juice results in a mixture with robust but mellow garlic flavor and aroma, and none of the acridness.

Eat produce like apples, spinach, or mint

If you're having a particularly garlic-heavy meal, eat apples for dessert or chew on fresh mint leaves. One study indicated that the chemical makeup of raw or heated apples, lettuce, and mint helped deodorize garlic breath. Hot green tea and lemon juice may also help.

Eat herb leaves

Chewing parsley after eating is an age-old remedy for garlic or onion breath. This herb cleanses the palate and masks unpleasant odors. Mint leaves have also been shown to significantly reduce garlic breath.