Tahini Yoghurt Sauce: Quick and Easy Dip or Dressing
An easy peasy five-minute tahini yoghurt sauce recipe. It’s smooth, creamy, tangy and garlicky – a deliciously nutritious all-rounder. Use it as a sauce or dip and pair it with just about anything. Dress it up with spiced oil, fresh herbs, toasted pine nuts or more for an extra flourish.
Although I’ve included tahini yoghurt sauce in a few recipes here on Tin and Thyme, it’s so good it really deserves a post of its own. It’s such a useful recipe to have in one’s repertoire, that I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to give it the attention it deserves.
Dive Right In
- Why You’ll Want To Make This Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
- Super Useful Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
- Ingredients, Additions And Substitutions
- How To Make Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
- Spice Infused Olive Oil
- Vegan Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
- Other Tahini Recipes You Might Like
- Keep In Touch
- Pin It
- The Recipe
Why You’ll Want To Make This Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
- Customisable – keep it plain or dress it up with herbs, spices or toppings such as toasted pine nuts or chilli oil.
- Easily made vegan – just use plant-based yoghurt for a dairy-free version.
- Full of flavour – creamy, tangy, garlicky and satisfying.
- Nutritious – packed with healthy fats, protein and probiotics (from the yoghurt).
- Made from pantry staples – uses everyday ingredients.
- Pairs with nearly everything – perfect for grilled or roasted vegetables, grain bowls, salads, falafel and wraps.
- Quick and easy – ready in just five minutes with minimal prep needed.
- Useful for meal prep – keeps well in the fridge for several days.
- Versatile – use as a dip, drizzle, spread or dressing.
Super Useful Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
You’ve got to love a good sauce. They can turn an okay meal into a seriously delicious one. I’d be lost without them. This one is similar to tahini sauce, but creamier, less rich and with more body. It’s used widely in the Middle East and enhances many a meal.
The fresh tangy yoghurt balances out the earthy bitter notes in tahini and you get a gorgeous zing from the lemons and a little pungency from the garlic.
One of my favourite ways to use it is as a bed for roasted vegetables, as you can see in the above image. All you need are some good flatbreads to scoop it all up and you have a nutritious and delicious meal with very little effort required.
Tahini yoghurt sauce is a must for these vegan arayes. The “mince” and sauce are such a good combination. It’s also good with falafel, grain bowls and as a stand alone meze dish.
Roasted vegetables such as this cauliflower or these Mediterranean vegetables also benefit. Alternatively, use it to dress salads. It makes a fabulous dressing for a potato salad, especially with lots of finely chopped dill mixed in.
If I make this recipe as a dip rather than a sauce, I like to top dress it with spiced oil, toasted pine nuts and finely chopped parsley. Mint or dill also work, as do pomegranate seeds.
As a dip, it’s a natural pairing for crudités, toasted pitta or potato wedges.
Ingredients, Additions and Substitutions
You only need five ingredients for this yoghurt tahini sauce and one of those is salt. However, you can dress it up with various toppings, if liked.
Tahini
Tahini is a Middle Eastern paste made from ground sesame seeds. It’s most commonly used to make hummus and baba ganoush, but has a wide variety of other uses too.
It comes in two types: light and dark. Light is best for this recipe as the dark one is quite bitter. The light version is made with hulled sesame seeds whereas the dark is made with the whole sesame seed.
Yoghurt
Use Greek yoghurt for a thick sauce suitable for using as a dip or bed for roasted vegetables. For a runnier sauce or dressing like consistency, use ordinary plain yoghurt.
Either way, make sure the yoghurt is full fat. You won’t get either the richness or gorgeous creamy texture with a reduced fat one.
How To Make Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
This is a very simple sauce to make and takes all of five minutes, if that. But if using as a dip and you’d like to add toppings, factor in a couple of extra minutes.
Please refer to the recipe card at the bottom of this post for cooking temperatures and quantities of ingredients used.
Step 1. Prepare
Finely grate the garlic into a medium sized mixing bowl. A microplane (affiliate link) is brilliant for this. It’s one of my most used kitchen tools.
Squeeze the lemon juice and pour over the garlic.
Top Tip
For a slightly different flavour profile, add some (or all) of the finely grated lemon zest to the bowl. Again, the microplane is good for this. Try to use an organic lemon, otherwise scrub very well.
Step 2. Mix
Add the remaining ingredients and whisk or stir everything together. Keep whisking until the sauce is smooth and well combined.
If you’re after a sauce consistency use ordinary plain yoghurt. And if it’s still not runny enough, thin it down with a little water. Whisk in a tablespoon, then add more if needed.
Use Greek yoghurt for a thicker consistency, more suitable for dipping or scooping.
Taste test at this point and add additional lemon juice or salt if you feel it needs them.
Top Tip
Stir the tahini well before taking it out of the jar as it has a tendency for the oil and solids to split. Ideally, it should be smooth and runny before using. I find a sturdy knife is best for this particular job.
Step 3. Serve
Scrape or pour the mix into a serving bowl or jug. If the tahini yoghurt sauce is destined to be a dip, give it an attractive swirl.
If liked, drizzle with spice infused oil (see the recipe below). You can also finish with chopped parsley and/or toasted pine nuts.
Without the toppings, tahini yoghurt sauce keeps well in the fridge for three to four days. Store in a sealed container and give it a good stir before using.
Other Topping Ideas
Swap the parsley for some finely chopped fresh mint or dill, drizzle on some plain olive oil instead of spiced oil or replace the pine nuts with pomegranate seeds.
Spice Infused Olive Oil
Blooming spices in some sort of fat is a good way to extract their flavour and enhance their fragrance.
Warm two teaspoons of olive oil in a small pan over a low to moderate heat. Add half a teaspoon of Aleppo chilli flakes, ground sumac, ground cumin, smoked paprika or hot paprika.
Let the spice sizzle for a few seconds until fragrant. Swirl the pan to mix thoroughly, then turn off the heat.
Drizzle the infused oil over the tahini yoghurt sauce whilst still warm.
Vegan Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
For a vegan take on tahini yoghurt sauce, just swap the dairy yoghurt in the recipe for a good quality vegan one. Make sure it’s a plain variety without flavourings.
Other Tahini Recipes You Might Like
- Black hummus (vegan)
- Caesar dressing without anchovies (vegan)
- Creamy tahini white beans (vegan)
- Dubai chocolate filo rolls
- Sesame halva biscuits
- Tahini date flapjacks (vegan)
Keep in Touch
Thank you for visiting Tin and Thyme. If you make this yoghurt tahini sauce, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. How do you like to use it?
Please rate the recipe too. And do tag me @choclette8 on Instagram with your images, I love to see your take on my recipes.
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If you’d like more sauce recipes, follow the link and you’ll find I have quite a lot of them. All delicious and nutritious, of course.
Choclette x
Tahini Yoghurt Sauce. PIN IT.
Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
Equipment
- microplane (affiliate link) optional
Ingredients
Sauce
- 9 tbsp natural yoghurt or Greek yoghurt for thicker consistency
- 3 tbsp tahini
- ½ lemon juiced
- 1 clove garlic crushed
- 1 pinch fine sea or rock salt
Optional Toppings
- warm spiced olive oil see recipe in main post
- pine nuts toasted
- fresh parsley mint or dill – finely chopped
Instructions
- In a medium sized bowl, whisk everything together. Keep whisking until the sauce is smooth and lump free.
- If you’re after a sauce consistency and it’s not runny enough, thin it down with a little water. Whisk in a tablespoon, then add more if needed.
- Taste test and add more lemon juice or salt, if required.
- Pour into a jug if using as a sauce or dressing. Alternatively, scrape into a serving bowl as a dip. Give it an attractive swirl and drizzle with the infused oil, if liked. You can also finish with chopped parsley and/or toasted pine nuts.