Simple Garlic Toum Recipe | How to Preserve Garlic

Garlic toum! What is it? It’s a magical garlic emulsion that can preserve fresh, raw garlic for a long time! Easy to make in a big batch, keeps well in the fridge and has a TON of uses. Let me tell you everything I know about garlic toum.

How to preserve garlic

This year we grew a lot of garlic. Probably less than we use in a year, but definitely more than we’ve ever grown before.

I love getting better at growing our food, because this is an excellent problem to have.

What is toum?

Toum is a garlic sauce. Similar, if not the same, as garlic aioli. Toum is made by emulsifying fresh garlic with oil, lemon and salt.

How is garlic toum different than garlic aioli?

Really I think the difference is just a regional thing. Toum is from a certain area in the middle east. Garlic aioli is a French sauce. Both are garlic and oil emulsions. Even more so there are differences and variations in each region. What oil to use? Lemon or no lemon? Herbs added?

For the sake of this article I will call this sauce toum. That’s because I worked at a Lebanese deli when I learned to make it, and that’s what they called it.

How does toum preserve garlic?

Oil can be used as a preservative. So can salt. And lemon even has its place as a food preservative. So this seems like a match made in long lasting food heaven.

At the restaurant I worked at, I don’t think the owners and chef’s wouldn’t have referred to toum as a way to preserve garlic, but it most certainly is. They would have just said it was a delicious sauce and a great ingredient in many dishes, and they would be right!

Using my toum recipe to preserve my imperfect garlic was intuitive. The same way I know pesto is a way to keep fresh herbs in the fridge for months or even years!

How to make garlic toum?

Making toum is simple with our modern tools. Back in the day grandma’s were mashing this stuff up with a wooden mortar and pestle and some elbow grease. These days I’m thankful to be able to use my Cuisinart food processor. It makes for quick work.

This is the way I learned to make garlic toum, or better, it’s the way I remember to make garlic toum. My no means is this an authentic recipe from my tayta. I’m American and my mother’s side is Italian. I’m just lucky enough to learn some cooking skills from talented Lebanese women almost 20 years ago.

Toum ingredients

• Garlic
• Salt
• Lemon juice
• Oil

Equipment

• Food processor (this is the one I use in the video
• Spatula
• Cutting Board
• Knife
• Glass Jar with Lid

Method

Making toum is making a basic emulsion. Peel a lot of garlic, add it to your food processor and pulse it. Add your salt and pulse again. Then add some lemon juice and pulse again. See a pattern here?

Next is to drizzle in your oil really slowly as your food processor is running. This is a similar to technique as making mayonnaise or any other emulsion.

Watch the video

What type of oil should I use to make garlic toum?

There are choices here, and you can chose what works best for you. Most recipes call for a neutral, or flavorless oil, like a vegetable or canola oil. I do not ever use or cook with industrial seed oils. That leaves me with only a few choices for liquid oils.

The more I learn the less I want to use these liquid oils at all. My preferred cooking fats are butter, ghee, lard or tallow. Chicken fat and duck fat have their place in my kitchen as well. I also keep coconut oil, avocado oil and olive oil in the house. Recently I’ve been trying to stop using avocado oil, which does kind of stick because it’s too most neutral tasting out of all of those oils. I’m just not sure it’s a healthy oil.

We get enough crappy fats when we eat out or buy processed foods, if I’m cooking it I definitely want to chose something better. So here I settle on olive oil. No, I won’t use the “light tasting olive oil” or pomace oil as it’s sometimes called. I use good quality extra virgin olive oil. So how does that make my toum different?

When I worked at the Lebanese place, they used canola oil. It had no taste and yielded a pretty white product that smelled strongly of garlic. My toum is a more yellow or golden color, that’s from the extra virgin olive oil. It also has a smell or taste of olive oil, but that is barely noticeable because of the strong garlic flavor.

What does toum taste like?

Garlic toum is a super strong garlic dip. So strong it might even taste spicy. That makes it perfect for adding to other dips and sauces.

Toum will put hair on your chest, clear your sinuses and help you fight off the ickies. All the benefits of eating raw garlic but in this easy to store paste/sauce/dip.

What is toum used for?

Toum can be used for so many things. At my house I love to keep it in the fridge for times I want fresh raw garlic but I don’t feel like peeling and chopping fresh garlic cloves.

I use toum for:

• Stir fry sauce
• Marinades
• Dressings
• Dips
• Flavoring kefir cheese
• Quick garlic mayonnaise
• Sandwich spread
• Garlic bread
• Pasta
• Rice
• Tzatziki
• Dipping veggies

The most important thing to remember when using your garlic toum is that is has a low smoke point. Just just because of the oil, but because of the garlic. Garlic burns easily, and when it does it becomes bitter. No one likes bitter garlic.

To avoid scorching my toum I never add it directly to a hot pan, I always add it to warm with food that is already cooking. It can be added to any dip or sauce or marinade. Just remember that it may burn if place in direct heat. So don’t just rub it all over the stead before searing it, you know what I mean?

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