It has a gracefully pourable consistency and a gorgeous, velvety-smooth texture. You’ll love it as a salad dressing, dip, or drizzle on your favorite Mediterranean meal. It’s ridiculously easy to make – whisk everything together – yet it’s creamy, versatile, and nutritious, and it is by far the most popular condiment in our home. Try it with hummus, warm pita bread, and falafel, or let it drizzle gracefully on chickpea fritters and lentil patties. Its heavenly creaminess will upgrade any salad, grain bowl, and meze platter. We recommend it with Shirazi salad, Tabouli, and our Mediterranean bowl for a perfect flavor-texture combination. Its rich dairy-like mouthfeel (there’s no dairy in it), distinct nuttiness from the sesame seeds, and very slightly bitter undertones balanced by the freshness of the lemon make it a charming and sophisticated addition to your dinner table. It pours so good you won’t be able to stop! It’s used as a condiment, usually mixed or diluted with other ingredients, in most countries in the Levant and Easter-Mediterranean regions and some North African countries. To make the best tahini sauce, use tahini with a light beige, sandy color, and a smooth, pourable texture. Avoid dark, pasty, and gritty tahini, as those are often bitter and not authentic. When buying tahini, read the ingredients list. Good-quality tahini should be made with 100% hulled sesame seeds, and no other ingredients should appear on the label. You can find high-quality tahini in ethnic food stores; Middle Eastern or Asian grocery stores are your best bet. Some supermarkets also keep imported tahini from Eastern Mediterranean countries like Lebanon, Turkey, and Israel. Those are usually the best! We tell you all this because we bought the “wrong” tahini for years. One that was pasty, dark, gritty, and bitter. Learning what to look for when buying tahini was the biggest game-changer in our Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cooking. We thought raw, unhulled, organic, and modern packaging were the things to look for. We were so wrong. Go for traditional if you can. Suddenly, recipes like this easy tahini sauce, hummus, baba ghanoush, falafel, tahini salad, and anything tahini-drizzled made so much sense. They went from bitter, gritty, and overpowering to silky smooth, lusciously rich, gracefully nutty, and I-want-to-eat-this-thing-with-a-spoon-like-Nutella feeling.
Lemon juice
We recommend freshly squeezed lemon juice.
Garlic
Garlic should be crushed, not grated or minced. The garlic flavor in tahini sauce is mild, and the sauce should be smooth; that’s why crushed garlic is preferable to grated garlic. The crushed clove infuses the tahini sauce with a mild garlic flavor without affecting its texture. If you grate the garlic in it, you will get a gritty tahini sauce, which is not ideal.
Salt
We recommend sea salt or kosher salt.
Water
Cold tap water is fine. Take our recipe as a starting point and add more or less water until you reach your desired consistency. Generally, tahini sauce should be drizzled with a spoon, but you can make it thicker or thinner based on your preference. Note: Although less traditional, you can customize your basic tahini sauce with herbs and spices. You can make variations with small quantities of ground cumin, sumac, garlic powder, finely chopped fresh parsley, chives, and fresh mint. Some bloggers even like to add honey or maple syrup and turn it into a tahini dressing.There is no need to blend the tahini in a food processor. You can make this simple sauce in a small bowl with a whisk in 1 minute. Whisk for a minute or until the ingredients turn into a smooth and velvety sauce. You’ll see the tahini change texture and go from thick to curdle to velvety smooth. The color will also change from beige to light beige. Tip: The ingredients will curdle at first, and that’s normal. Keep whisking until smooth. Then add peeled, crushed garlic, stir it in, and let it infuse for 5 to 10 minutes. Tip: To crush the garlic, use the flat side of your knife’s blade, pressing down with the palm of your hand. Avoid minced, grated, or pressed garlic because it’ll make your tahini sauce too garlicky and grainy. Taste and adjust the amount of lemon juice, salt, and water to suit your preferences. Remember that the sauce thickens slightly as it sits, so if you make it ahead, you might need to stir in more water when you serve it. We make a fresh batch every week, as having it ready in the fridge is handy. Here are some of our favorite pairings:
Hummus
Did you know that you can drizzle hummus with tahini sauce? It’ll change your life! Here’s the hummus recipe and the pita bread recipe to dip.
Falafel
Drizzle tahini sauce on freshly made falafel served on hummus and get transported to the Middle East. This is one of the best flavor combinations; we are sure you’ll love it. Here’s our easy falafel recipe.
Cauliflower
Cauliflower and tahini are simply delicious together. These are our favorite cauliflower recipes to serve with a generous drizzle of tahini sauce:
Whole roasted cauliflower Roasted cauliflower florets Air fried cauliflower Roasted cauliflower salad
Stuffed eggplant with couscous salad Roasted eggplant boats Grilled eggplants Air fried eggplants
Roasted vegetables
Okay, maybe we have a tahini sauce obsession and need an intervention, but we honestly love drenching most roasted vegetables in it.
Roasted carrots Roasted zucchini Roasted potatoes Mix roasted vegetables. Stuffed bell peppers Smashed potatoes
Bowls
Mediterranean Bowl Couscous salad
Wraps
If you want to try it in a wrap, we recommend a tangy and refreshing shirazi salad over a bed of hummus and topped with mashed falafel and pickled onions or beets. Drizzle plenty of the tahini sauce on top, and you are in for a treat!
Dip
You can also use it as a tasty and healthy dip to replace mayonnaise, queso, or sour cream. It’s delicious with oven-roasted or air-fried potatoes and fantastic with raw veggie sticks.
Salads
Piyaz or Turkish white bean salad Tahini salad Fattoush Farro salad Rice salad Cauliflower salad
Here’s our recipe for yogurt tahini sauce. Refrigerator: Store in a sealed jar in the fridge for up to 5 days. Stir well before serving. After a few days, you might want to add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice or a dash of water to thin it up. Freezer: To freeze tahini sauce, transfer it to ice cube trays and freeze it for up to 6 months. Thaw in the refrigerator overnight.
Vegan ranch dressing Chipotle sauce Vegan mayo Marinara sauce Tzatziki Cilantro lime dressing
