Toum

Lebanese-style garlic sauce, traditionally served with chicken, but with a wide range of other uses.

Originally Posted: March 19, 2022

Total Time: 20 – 30 minutes

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Intro

Toum is a classic Eastern Mediterranean condiment commonly used in Lebanese cuisine. It’s an oil-in-water emulsion, the same class of sauces as mayonnaise, hollandaise, and vinaigrette. Where mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil suspended in egg yolk, toum is oil suspended in garlic, giving it a much more piquant aroma and flavor.

I decided to practice making toum because of two Lebanese restaurants near me that I absolutely love. After having enjoyed it on Lebanese-style garlic fries for a while, I started noticing a few recipes pop up online.

This recipe may take some practice to get right, but if you go slow when adding the oil and if you use a spoonful of previously made emulsion sauce as a starter seed, you’ll have an easier time of it. If you’re unsure of your pouring technique, there are youtube videos out there that can help you.

Brief History

Toum is the Arabic word for “garlic”. In some places, the full name zeit wa toum or “oil and garlic” is used, which is reminiscent of the full name of hummus: hummus bi tahini, or “chickpeas with tahini”. In this context, I’m led to believe that the Spanish word for oil, aceite, comes from the Arabic zeit. While toum is technically pronounced “toom”, I’ve found that pronouncing it “tome” is a hard habit to shake.

It’s similar to other Mediterranean garlic sauces such as aioli (var. allioli, alholi, ajoaceite, ajolio, etc.), which translates to “garlic and oil”. However unlike many aioli recipes such as those in Provence, toum never contains egg yolk (this is apparently also true of forms of aioli found in parts of Spain).

It is commonly served with rotisserie chicken dishes such as chicken shawarma or shish tauok. Binging with Babish included a recipe for toum when he did a version of a Curb Your Enthusiasm meal (4:20 in the video; he also included it in his cookbook). It’s also commonly used as a topping or dipping sauce for fries (Lebanese garlic fries > other styles of garlic fries—at least for me).

Ingredients

• 1 cup (~150 – 160g) Garlic Cloves
• 3 – 4 cups (675 – 900 mL) of a neutral tasting Oil (such as Canola), depending on how much toum you want at the end
  • Note: Adding more oil will make the end result fluffier. I’m sure there’s a point of diminishing returns, but I haven’t hit it yet.
• ½ cup (125mL) Lemon Juice
• 2 tsp (5g) Salt
• A spoonful of Mayonnaise or a previous batch of Toum

Optional Additions

• Rosemary (leaves from 6 sprigs or about 19g)
• Powdered Wasabi (I originally tried using cream-style horseradish, but the end result wasn’t horseradish-y enough for my tastes)
• Basil (probably about 19g fresh leaves; I still need to do this one to find out)
• Sumac (to sprinkle as a topping)

A Note About Garlic Cloves

Most recipes for Toum that I’ve found over the years call for fresh garlic cloves, and if you’re new at making the stuff, I think that they’re the easiest form to work with. However, over the years I’ve also had success using lacto-fermented (pickled) garlic cloves and previously frozen garlic cloves.

The advantage of the lacto-fermented garlic cloves is that they’re probiotic, and even on their own they seem to last forever.

Equipment

• Food Processor (preferably with a drip attachment, but I think these are standard)
• Spatula

Written Instructions

Total Time: 30 minutes

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Add garlic cloves and salt to food processor and pulse until minced and mixed. Add a spoonful of mayonnaise, or a spoonful of a previously made batch of toum, then mix further. This helps to form a stable emulsion, helps prevent it from breaking.

Set the food processor to its low setting, then begin pouring oil into the drip attachment. Go slowly, especially in the beginning, to make sure that a stable emulsion begins to form. We’ll be adding ½ cup (about 112.5mL) of oil at a time.

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After adding the first ½ cup of oil, add about 2 tsp. of lemon juice. Alternate between adding ½ cup of oil and 2 tsp. of lemon juice until both are gone. In between additions, allow the emulsion to mix well. Stop and scrape down the sides with a spatula as needed.

If adding flavorful additions such as herbs, you can add them anytime between when the emulsion becomes stable, and the final oil/juice addition.

Once you’re toum is finished, spoon it into a food container. Store in the fridge, covered only with a paper towel for the first 12 hours or so. Maybe overnight. This helps pull out excess moisture that could otherwise cause the emulsion to separate in storage. Once you’ve done this, you can cover the container with an airtight lid.

I’m not sure of an official “use by” date for this recipe, so just use your own judgment from sight and smell. So far I haven’t had a batch of this stuff go bad on me.

Uses

General Replacement for Mayo

Sandwich spread (instead of mayo), chicken salad, tuna salad, potato salad, deviled eggs. A garlicky version of fry sauce (mayo-ketchup) or special sauce. I bet using it as a base for honey-walnut shrimp would be great too.

Instead of Butter/Mayo for Grilled Cheese

I began using mayo to toast my grilled cheese instead of butter several years back. The garlicky flavor of toum makes it an even better choice, resulting in a sort of garlic-bread grilled-cheese. An herbed toum using rosemary or basil add to the effect.

I’ve also used it to toast buns for burgers or for smoked brisket sandwiches.

Searing Meat

I first heard of people using mayo as an oil/crust/searing coating for steaks around the time I first started making Toum. For this one, my first instinct is to use a horseradish toum, because I love the way horseradish pairs with red meat. Lamb would be a promising choice too.