Easy Tahini Sauce

We use this creamy homemade tahini sauce recipe for absolutely everything! It takes less than 10 minutes to make, and once you taste this combination of tahini, lemon, and fresh garlic, you’ll find yourself making it again and again.

Since sharing our easy tahini recipe, we’ve been experimenting with more ways to use it. We’ve shown how to use it for homemade hummus, and we’re now obsessed with this lemon garlic tahini sauce. You’ll find a jar in our fridge at all times!

This creamy, dairy-free sauce is a popular condiment throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East for good reason. You’ll often see it served with falafel, pita bread, grilled meats, and grilled veggies, but it is also excellent drizzled over salads, fresh vegetables, and grain bowls. We can’t wait for you to try it! For a slightly less creamy salad dressing, see our tahini dressing!

Key Ingredients

• Tahini Paste: This paste, made from sesame seeds, is the base of our sauce. Before measuring it, give it a really good stir to make it runny and smooth. You can buy jars of tahini or make your own. Here’s how to make tahini in a food processor or blender (it’s super simple, we promise!).
• Fresh Garlic: To help it melt into the sauce, grate the clove with a microplane or mince it into a fine paste. We’ve shared some tips on how to do this below.
• Fresh Lemon Juice: This thins the sauce and keeps the flavor fresh and bright.
• Olive Oil: We use extra-virgin olive oil. It makes our sauce smooth and luxurious.
• Spices and Parsley: We love stirring in a little cumin, cayenne, and salt, then finishing the sauce with some chopped fresh parsley. These are all optional, but we highly recommend them!
• Warm Water: This is the secret ingredient for making the smoothest, creamiest homemade tahini sauce. Watch our video to see how water quickly transforms the tahini into an unbelievably creamy sauce.

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Tahini Sauce

Finely grate or mince your garlic. We don’t want big bits of raw garlic here, so either use a microplane to grate it finely, or use salt and a knife to turn it into a paste.

To make the paste with your knife, peel and finely mince the clove. Sprinkle with a pinch of coarse salt, then use the flat side of the knife to drag and press it over the garlic, scraping it across the cutting board’s surface. Pile up the garlic again, then repeat a few more times until it becomes a smooth paste.

Make the sauce. Whisk together the tahini, garlic paste, lemon juice, olive oil, and a pinch of salt in a bowl. It starts creamy, but then it might seize up and thicken (see the photo below). Don’t worry if it looks lumpy or stiff! We will fix that when we add the warm water.

Next, slowly whisk in warm water. As you whisk in the water, the sauce will miraculously relax and become super creamy. You can add as much or as little water as you like. It all depends on what you plan to use it for. For a thicker spread, add less water. For a more drizzly consistency, add a little more.

Finish with optional spices and herbs. You now have a tasty basic tahini sauce. We love adding a bit more flavor, though. In our recipe below, we include a slight earthiness from ground cumin, some heat from cayenne, and a fresh pop of color and flavor from chopped parsley.

Ways to Use Tahini Sauce

Once you make this creamy lemon garlic tahini sauce, you’ll always want a batch in your fridge. Use this sauce whenever you want to add a creamy (non-dairy) drizzle to your dishes. It works for salads, grain bowls, rice bowls, and wraps.

We especially love it tossed into this tahini kale bean salad or drizzled over roasted veggies, like our honey roasted carrots with tahini sauce. It even makes a fantastic drip for this garlic asparagus. We also it with homemade falafel, grilled chicken, and seafood, like baked salmon or cilantro lime butter shrimp.

More Mediterranean Recipes to Try

• Homemade Labneh
• Baba Ganoush (Roasted Eggplant Dip)
• Homemade Pita Bread
• Greek Salad
• Roasted Red Pepper Hummus