Looking to kick up your game with a tasty and healthy dip for your next get-together? This Yogurt Sauce For Chicken isn't really JUST for chicken! Whether you serve it as a dip with veggies, homemade pita bread, or with chicken shawarma, you'll score big with this healthy yogurt sauce recipe!
This recipe should not be confused with garlic sauce or toum (the Middle Eastern word for garlic). Although this recipe calls for garlic, it is a yogurt-based sauce that's more similar to Greek tzatziki sauce than toum.
Assyrians make a similar recipe called "
Treeda also describes other dishes in which stew, such as bamya, is served over bread chunks instead of vermicelli rice. If this idea sounds strange, consider how we serve spinach dip in a bread bowl with torn pieces of bread on the side. It's really kind of the same thing...
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😍 Why You'll Love This Recipe
This yummy yogurt sauce for chicken has too many uses to mention! It can be used as a salad dressing or as a dipping sauce to go with hot wings, fish sticks, or chicken nuggets.
Better yet, drizzle the yogurt sauce over a falafel wrap instead of garlic tahini sauce, or dip a slice of shawarma pizza into the addicting sauce, it's really up to you! All these options are possible and so many more! The only question is, how will you enjoy it?
🔖Ingredients & Substitutions
- Yogurt: Use homemade yogurt or a good quality Greek yogurt or Middle Eastern yogurt.
- Cucumbers: If possible, use Persian cucumbers or English cucumbers. Not only do they taste better, but they also have better texture and much smaller seeds.
- Herbs: Although I include dried dill weed in this recipe, it's the fresh dill that makes all the difference, so don't leave it out. If you don't have fresh mint, you can substitute it with dried mint.
- Optional Ingredients: Tahini sauce is often added to shawarma sauce. If you have tahini paste or tahini sauce on hand you can add it to taste. I would start with 1 tablespoon at a time until you achieve the taste you're going for.
- Garlic Cloves: Fresh garlic cloves should be used and not substituted with garlic that comes from a jar.
- Spices: Although some yogurt sauce recipes call for black pepper, I don't feel that it goes well in this recipe. If you like black pepper and want to add some, feel free to do so. Personally, I would add a pinch of cayenne pepper instead.
🍽 How To Make Yogurt Sauce For Chicken
Step 1: Pour yogurt into a large bowl. Add minced cucumber, garlic cloves, freshly chopped dill, fresh mint, scallions, dill weed, salt, fresh lemon juice, and lemon zest. Mix to combine.
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Optional: Mix a few tablespoons of tahini sauce into the yogurt sauce. Once plated, drizzle the yogurt sauce with olive oil.
🍗 Serving Suggestions
This yogurt sauce for chicken can be used as a chicken marinade, thinned to make a salad dressing, or drizzled over kofta kebabs or these yummy grilled skinless chicken thighs.
You can also serve it as a dipping sauce with veggies, pita chips, and more!
Serve the Yogurt Shawarma Sauce with pita bread, veggies, beef or Lamb Kabobs, or as part of a Shawarma Plate. You can also serve the sauce over grilled chicken breasts or chicken thighs.
Yogurt sauce makes an excellent marinade for chicken. Yogurt is mixed with spices to make tandoori chicken and is also used to make shawarma.
Shawarma garlic sauce is called Toum (the Arabic word for garlic) because the main ingredient is garlic. The pureed garlic sauce also includes lemon juice, neutral-tasting oil, and salt, and is thinned out with water.
The main ingredient in tahini sauce is tahini, which is made with ground sesame seeds. Besides tahini, you also need to add lemon juice, fresh garlic, olive oil, and salt. Water is usually used to thin out the sauce.
👩🏼🍳 Pro Tips
- Make sure you buy plain or unflavored yogurt; I have on more than one occasion accidentally grabbed vanilla instead of plain. I suppose this is another good reason to make your own yogurt?
- Instead of bottled lemon juice, choose fresh lemon juice instead. You'll also accentuate the lemon flavor by mixing lemon zest into the sauce.
- For a pretty presentation, you can sprinkle the sauce with some paprika powder before serving.
- Instead of serving this sauce with a chicken shawarma plate, you can make a shawarma wrap using lavash bread. Just load chicken shawarma into lavash bread and add any of the following: sliced tomatoes, onions, lettuce, fries, or Lebanese hummus, and drizzle with the shawarma sauce. Wrap and enjoy!
🥘 More Middle Eastern Recipes
📖 Recipe
Yogurt Shawarma Sauce
Ingredients
- 1½ cups Homemade or Greek yogurt
- ⅓ cup cucumber (minced)
- 3 cloves garlic (pressed)
- 1 tablespoon fresh dill (diced)
- 1 tablespoon fresh mint (diced)
- 1 scallion (diced)
- 1 teaspoon dill weed
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 2 tablespoon Tahini Sauce (optional)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil (optional)
Instructions
- Pour yogurt into a large bowl. Add minced cucumber, garlic cloves, freshly chopped dill, fresh mint, scallions, dill weed, salt, fresh lemon juice, and lemon zest. Mix to combine.
Optional
- Mix a few tablespoons of tahini sauce into the yogurt sauce. Once plated, drizzle yogurt sauce with olive oil.
Notes
- Make sure you buy plain or unflavored yogurt; I have on more than one occasion accidentally grabbed vanilla instead of plain. I suppose this is another good reason to make your own yogurt?
- Instead of bottled lemon juice, choose fresh lemon juice instead. You'll also accentuate the lemon flavor by mixing lemon zest into the sauce.
- For a pretty presentation, you can sprinkle the sauce with some paprika powder before serving.
- Instead of serving this sauce with a chicken shawarma plate, you can make a shawarma wrap using lavash bread. Just load chicken shawarma into lavash bread and add any of the following: sliced tomatoes, onions, lettuce, fries, or hummus and drizzle with the shawarma sauce. Wrap and enjoy!
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