The Many Faces of The Lebanese Garlic Sauce, Toum

More than a condiment, toum has become a staple in my cooking.

Toum, served alongside chicken at Los Angeles’ Kismet Rotisserie.

While I was cooking for the dinner I hosted for Chobani and La Colombe a few weeks back, I made about four times too much toum than I needed. The first time I had the silky, whipped garlic condiment, it was as a prudent accompaniment to chicken at Kismet Rotisserie. I ate it countless times before realizing it was really just garlic and oil, whipped until light and spreadable. If you’ve made aioli, it’s a similar process. With aioli, egg is the emulsifying ingredient that magically coaxes two liquids to bind and thicken. With toum, puréed garlic releases hidden proteins that act as a vegan stabilizer, transforming oil, lemon, and lots of garlic into a thick, homogenous sauce. (I used this recipe from Serious Eats).

Before we go too far, I have to admit that I have an exceptionally high tolerance for garlic, both its digestion and its persistent lingering. I have never once been put off by garlic breath -- not by my own, nor by that of my fellow man. This is curious since I am otherwise known to be a “super smeller,” plagued by the waft of synthetic candle, the residue of Downy detergent on a pillow, and the faintest evidence of mildew on a towel. Don’t even get me started on the ubiquitous, Mrs. Meyer’s products (I travel to vacation rentals with my own dish soap). Yet somehow, while the rest of the world navigates a menu to evade garlic breath, I relish the aromatic souvenir of a good time. 

Considering the likelihood that I’ve been blasting the world with my own allium oral exhaust, I grew compelled to rebrand raw garlic for polite society. A recent visit to my naturopath, Dr. Michelle Gerber, bolstered my cause when she urged me to eat as much raw garlic as possible. “Raw garlic can help improve cholesterol, lower cardiovascular inflammation, and it can help to decrease unwanted microbes in favor of the beneficial ones,” she advised. As someone who spends considerable time eating street tacos in Mexico, I welcome antimicrobial anything. So I embraced the vat of toum taking up valuable space in my fridge, and found new ways to put it to good use. Doctor’s orders!

Over the last month, I have found myself dipping into my reserve to lend body and garlic goodness to dips, salad dressings and soups. Add a dollop to tahini and whisk with water to make an instant tahini drizzle. Add a teaspoon of toum to a blender with anchovies, lemon juice, Dijon and olive oil to make a quick garlicky salad dressing. But what about using it in cookery? 

Ever since Samin Nosrat wrote her piece about garlic for the New York Times Magazine in 2017, I have had nightmares about the ignominy, the disgrace, and lost opportunities that might result from burning — hell, from just browning garlic. The scourge of that acrid aftertaste! I shudder every time I peel a clove.

Nosrat advises against chopping and instead, instructs her reader to, “pound raw garlic into a paste that can dissolve into food. Like an intoxicatingly perfumed woman who left a party before you arrived, it’ll leave behind only a faint rumor of its presence.”  So, it makes sense that a smooth, silky toum would be a cook’s best friend. I started adding it to the hot pan with a little extra olive oil in place of minced garlic, and found it to be impossibly resilient against the heat, melting into the dish with grace. The oil and the moisture dispersed throughout the sauce add a protective layer to what otherwise promises to be the most volatile step in your recipe.

Making toum is work on the front end (admittedly, I used pre-peeled garlic since I was working at scale, removing the inner germ. That step is not necessary if your garlic is super fresh). But, I set myself up for a month when I could bypass the peeling, mincing, and smearing garlic into a paste by hand every time I cook. Weekday meals are faster, and, much tastier.

My lunch today was a fried egg on top of an assortment of leafy garden greens cooked down with a spoonful of toum, finished with olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of chili. Need a dip to get the kids to eat some veg? Add a dollop of toum to Greek yogurt with some minced herbs. Getting a soup started? Sweat the onions, and add the garlic whenever, it won’t burn! And the best part is, the toum seems to last forever (recipes place its shelf life at 4-6 months).

For my recipe for Warm Potato Salad with Garlicky Sauce Gribiche (made with toum!), upgrade your subscription.