Toum Recipe — Lebanese Garlic Emulsion for BBQ | The Rub Kitchen
Toum is the Lebanese garlic emulsion — white, airy, and intensely flavorful. It's the universal accompaniment to grilled meats in Levantine cuisine: with shawarma, with kebab, with grilled chicken, with grilled vegetables. Anyone who has ever eaten at a Lebanese restaurant knows it — that white creamy garlic sauce that's so good you'll be scooping it up with bread long after the meat is gone.
What is toum?
Toum (Arabic: ثوم, pronounced "toom" — literally "garlic") is an emulsion of garlic, oil, lemon, and salt — similar in technique to aioli or mayonnaise, but without egg. The stability of the emulsion comes purely from the garlic and the technique. The result is a stable, airy, white sauce with an intense garlic flavor that is surprisingly less sharp than raw garlic — the emulsification tempers the pungency.
Toum recipe — basic recipe
For approximately 400 ml toum (lasts up to 4 weeks in the refrigerator):
- 100g garlic cloves — fresh, peeled, germ removed (the green germ makes the sauce bitter)
- 300 ml neutral oil — sunflower or grapeseed oil. No olive oil — too pronounced in flavor and emulsifies less well
- 3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 3 tbsp ice-cold water
- 1 tsp salt
Preparation method (food processor method):
- Grind the garlic with the salt in the food processor until a fine paste — stop regularly to scrape down the sides
- Begin adding the oil in an extremely thin stream (drop by drop at the beginning) while the processor is running
- Alternate: oil → a little lemon juice → oil → water → oil. This prevents the emulsion from breaking
- Add the oil slowly over 5–8 minutes in total — haste is the enemy of toum
- The sauce is ready when it is white, airy, and thick — comparable to whipped cream in texture
Common mistakes
- Adding oil too quickly — the emulsion breaks and the sauce becomes an oily liquid. Solution: start over with fresh garlic and add the broken sauce as "oil" to the new batch.
- Germ not removed — the green germ in the center of the garlic clove causes bitterness. Halve each clove and remove the germ.
- Using olive oil — gives a yellow color, too pronounced a flavor, and emulsifies poorly. Always use neutral oil.
- Warm ingredients — cold water and room temperature garlic. Never warm.
What to use toum with?
- Shawarma — the classic accompaniment. Indispensable on a shawarma wrap.
- Grilled chicken — toum as a marinade and as a sauce. Rub chicken with toum before grilling — the garlic-oil emulsion creates an excellent crust.
- Kebab and kofta — as a dipping sauce alongside the skewers
- Grilled vegetables — toum on grilled cauliflower, eggplant, or potatoes
- Bread — simply with warm Lebanese flatbread. You don't need an excuse.
Rub combination
Toum + Shawarma BBQ Rub is the ultimate Levantine combination: rub chicken thighs with the rub, grill on high heat, and serve with a generous scoop of toum and warm flatbread.