Toum is perhaps the most versatile Lebanese condiment; it consists only of fresh garlic, salt, oil, and lemon juice. When made correctly, it is light and fluffy – the consistency of a light mayonnaise – but packed with garlic flavour. It is good on meat, vegetables, in sandwiches – or even to dip French fries into. Because my family are garlic lovers, there is always a jar of homemade toum in our refrigerator. The word toum is simply the Arabic word (ثوم) for garlic.
Toum, while containing only four ingredients, is a labour of love to make. It requires peeling a good deal of garlic and slowly adding oil to the mixture to give it time to emulsify; add the oil too quickly and you’ll find yourself with a mix of garlic pieces and oil – delicious certainly, but not toum. The general rule for making toum is: you can never over-mix, so keep that food processor running. It can take some time to get the garlic fully blended, with repeated scraping down the sides and blitzing again and again before adding the oil, and so patience is needed -though I promise you will be rewarded for it.
My recipe makes a good deal of toum, but after you taste it you will be glad you made so much. It will keep in your fridge for about four weeks, though it will likely be eaten before then. Don’t be alarmed if your toum has a strong flavour at first – this is largely dependent on your garlic’s flavour (try to find the freshest garlic you can) – after a day or two in the fridge any sharpness will mellow considerably.
You’ll want to use the little cup in the top of your food processor – it’s equivalent to a half cup measure – and it has a little hole in the bottom, which allows the oil to flow through slowly and evenly so that your emulsion does not break (there’s nothing worse than your toum emulsion breaking!) Below I’ve documented the different stages of toum as you blend it.
The stages of making toum:
Place your garlic, salt, and lemon juice in the processor bowl. 
The garlic is almost small enough to add oil. Keep processing and scraping the sides until it’s almost a paste. 
Nearly there! Add just another half cup of oil to make it extra fluffy!
The salt is really key here, as that significantly helps boost the ‘fluffiness’ of the toum. As much as I try to steer clear of too much sodium, I’ve made the toum with less salt and it resulted in a creamy, more liquid toum than the one shown here – still tasty, but it lacked the fluffiness of a good toum. Plus, you’re using this as a condiment, right… Not eating it with a spoon…
Toum
Equipment
- Food Processor (Full Size)
Ingredients
- 1 cup fresh garlic, peeled roughly equivalent to 2-3 heads
- ½ Tbsp kosher salt
- 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1½-2 cups neutral flavoured oil safflower, organic canola, or sunflower are good here
Instructions
- Peel your garlic and place in the food processor with the kosher salt and lemon juice. Blend this together, scraping down the sides (this may take 5-6 times) until the mixture becomes a paste.
- Once your garlic is a soft, smooth paste, add a teaspoon of oil into the cup in your food processor (while running). Scrape down the sides after it is combined, and repeat this one more time.
- After adding the 2 teaspoons and combining thoroughly, run your processor again, adding a half cup of oil (the full processor cup – the little thing that slides in on the top with a hole in the middle) at a time.
- You will use between 1½ to 2 cups of oil, until the mixture takes on a thick, fluffy texture – like a fluffy mayonnaise. Once this occurs, you can remove and refrigerate the mixture.
Dawn Yukus
This is going to be life changing to make. Yum! My partner and I loooooove toum so much.
Question: Since we don’t own a food processor, do you know if it’ll work out decently in a Vitamix? I’m going to assume that if so, we’d have to scrape down the sides a bit more in the beginning than one would need to with a food processor.
Elisabeth
I’ve actually never tried it in the Vitamix, but I’m assuming if you scrape down the sides frequently then it would work! My only concern would be that the Vitamix might heat the toum so much that it falls / doesn’t reach the nice fluffy consistency. Even if that happens, though – you’ll still have a delicious garlic sauce to add to everything!
Chrissy
Would avocado oil be okay to use?
Elisabeth
Yes! I’ve used avocado oil many times and it works great – any neutral oil that won’t overpower the garlic (I would not use olive oil or coconut oil, for example) works perfectly.
Melissa
This was divine!!! I added quite a bit more lemon juice since I love it tangy, and will remove the germ next time to see if it reduces the garlic bite. It sat 4 days in my fridge before serving and it did mellow out quite a bit, as you said. Thanks so much for sharing, this is going in my personal binder 🙂
Jeannette Dempsey
Absolutely delicious!!!