Toum (Garlic Paste)

4/15/2015

Fans of garlic will LOVE this recipe! Toum is a pungent (but super delicious) garlic paste that can be used as a great dipping sauce with grilled foods and pita bread. However you choose to eat it, I am sure you will absolutely love it.

To make toum, Eva uses this:

It’s called a Mortar and Pestle. It's used to crush and mince the garlic and mix in the other ingredients. I highly recommend that you purchase one to make your toum so that it will come out as delicious as Eva’s! You can easily find one online (or in a Walmart, Target or most kitchen stores) for as cheap as a couple of dollars. Toum is something you will want to cook more than once, so it is definitely worth it!

Ingredients:

5 medium garlic cloves, peeled
Salt (half teaspoon)
Lemon juice
Olive oil (or vegetable oil if you like a thicker dip)

Instructions:

Place peeled garlic into a bowl and add salt. Mince the garlic using a pestle
Once the garlic is finely minced, pour small drops of olive oil in circular motion around the bowl (rotate around bowl 3 times in same direction) and mix it
Repeat step 2 several more times (at least 3 times in between, add drop of lemon juice) to combine the minced garlic and olive oil
Add lemon juice in 1 rotation and mix it in
Pour into your desired bowl and drizzle on some olive oil for garnishing

Enjoy!

5 Comments

Shannon

4/26/2015 11:37:08 am

Thanks for posting! I love to add toum to EVERYTHING!

Bruno link

7/24/2016 12:51:40 pm

Hi, i have a question, is there any other way to do this?
i once had some toum that had a different texture, more like spreadable and even moldable since they served it with an ice cream scoop, do you know how?
Thanks in advance, love the blog!
B.

Eva's Lebanese Cooking

7/24/2016 02:30:09 pm

Hi there! All you have to do is substitute the olive oil with vegetable oil for a thicker paste. Hope this helps!

Avi

5/1/2022 08:29:33 am

Hi Bruno,
To get that gorgeous, fluffy consistency that you remember, you need to either make the toum in a food processor in order to emulsify the oil and lemon juice with the garlic, or if you don't have a food processor, it's still possible to make in the pestle and mortar, but you will need to spend a lot of time crushing the garlic to a very fine slush with the salt, transfer to a bowl and very very slowly drizzle oil, then lemon juice, oil then lemon juice, alternating frequently whilst whisking very fast (a bit like making mayonnaise). Just make sure you drizzle the oil very, very slowly in a long, thin stream and it should emulsify beautifully. A tip for the perfect flavour is to remove the green shooting parts (the germ) from the inside of each garlic clove. I suggest straining your lemon juice to avoid lumps too. Use a ratio of 1/4 the amount of garlic to the amount of oil you are using, so for every 100g of garlic that would be 400g of oil and around 80g strained lemon juice and around 3/4 teaspoon of salt for that amount. As Eva said, vegetable oil is what you need to get this consistency, but you could drizzle olive oil on the finished product.

Cory Shelton link

12/18/2020 07:32:36 pm

Thannks for writing

Toum (Garlic Paste)

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