Tahini Sauce Recipe

Keyword: tahini, tahini sauce

Prep Time: 20

Servings: servings

Calories: 118kcal

Author: Maureen Abood

There's a must-know secret to making authentic tahini sauce and the answer is at your fingertips: ice cold water, an important ingredient to smooth out the naturally occurring seizing (clumping) that tahini does when mixed with liquids.

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Ingredients

Juice of 1 lemon
3 cloves garlic, minced, or 1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
1/2 cup tahini
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup ice cold water, and more as needed

Instructions

If using fresh garlic, in a small bowl mix the lemon juice with minced garlic. Allow the mixture to “steep” and marinate for about 10 minutes. Strain the lemon juice into a medium sized bowl and discard the garlic.
Whisk the tahini with the lemon juice, garlic powder if using, and salt. The mixture will seize and become clumpy.
Add the ice cold water one tablespoon at a time, whisking with each addition, until the mixture is smooth. The finished sauce should be thin enough to pour but thick enough to dip, comparable to the thickness of stirred sour cream or labneh.

Video

Notes

Know that tahini seizes when first combined with liquid. Seizing describes what happens to tahini when it is mixed with liquids such as must-have lemon juice. In cooking, seizing means the smooth liquid (tahini, or melted chocolate) gets stiff and clumpy.

Knowing that tahini seizes, and how to fix it, is the key to how to make great tahini sauce! Fix the seized mixture with the addition of ice cold water.

Pay attention to your garlic. To soften the garlic flavor and to make an ultra-smooth sauce, use it to flavor the lemon juice, then discard (or use elsewhere). Or, simply use granulated garlic powder instead of fresh garlic in your sauce.

Take it slowly. Add the cold water a little bit at a time, taking care so the consistency of the sauce is not too thin or too thick. Look for the consistency of salad dressing, or slightly thicker.

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