Easy Tzatziki Sauce

Name: Easy Tzatziki Sauce
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Cuisine: Greek
Ingredients: 1 cup plain full-fat Greek yogurt; 1/2 cup shredded, peeled seedless cucumber, squeezed of all excess water (or you can finely dice it); 1 tablespoon minced fresh mint; 1 tablespoon minced fresh dill (sub: 1 teaspoon dried dill, crushed in hand); 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (about 1/2 small lemon); 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil; 2 garlic cloves, minced; 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste; 1/4 teaspoon pepper, or to taste

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By: Rachel TiemeyerPosted: 9/10/24Updated: 4/29/25

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Our easy Tzatziki sauce is incredibly simple to make at home. Don’t worry, we didn’t cut corners on flavor either. This Greek-inspired condiment will be a delicious addition to our Greek Pitas, grilled meats, or as a dipping sauce for pita chips or fresh veggies.

Easy tzatziki sauce in a white bowl with fresh dill on top.

Table of Contents

What Exactly IS Tzatziki Sauce?

In its simplest form, Tzatziki (pronounced tah-ZEE-kee) sauce is a yogurt & cucumber dip. It’s light and creamy at the same time. It often includes a combination of olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt, and fresh herbs.

Authentic Greek Tzatziki is most often made with sheep or goat yogurt, but since those are hard to find, our tzatziki recipe calls for plain, full-fat Greek yogurt (made with cow’s milk).

How to Make Basic Tzatziki Sauce

Find our specific recipe below but this is the basic method:

Peel, seed, shred your cucumber, and squeeze as much water out of it as you can. I find that the easiest way to do this is place the shredded cucumber in a tea towel, wrap it up and squeeze it over the sink.
Finely chop your fresh herbs–we suggest mint and dill–and mince or grate the garlic cloves. Fresh herbs really make this dish, so try to find them if you can.
Stir together the Greek yogurt, cucumber, fresh herbs, lemon juice, olive oil.
Season with salt and pepper to your taste.

Make Ahead & Storage Tips

Like with our Homemade Ranch Dip, we’ve found that this Tzatziki Sauce actually gets better as it sits. That being said, try to make it in advance and store it in the refrigerator for at least a few hours or even a day before eating. The flavors will meld together and infuse the dip. You’ll be amazed at how easy Tzatziki really is!

The sauce will last about 3 days or so in the refrigerator. It will NOT freeze and thaw well, so we don’t recommend that.

Tzatziki dolloped on top of a Greek pita.

What to Serve With Our Easy Tzatziki Sauce

As you can see from the pictures, one of our favorite ways to serve it is on top of a Greek Pita with Pulled Pork. It would be delicious to serve alongside some of these other meats as well:

Grilled Steak or Stovetop Steak
Pork Tenderloin with Seasoned Rub (or try our grilled version)
Mediterranean Shrimp
Honey Garlic Chicken Kabobs

Or, serve it as an appetizer with fresh veggies, pita chips, Homemade Pita Bread!

Can You Freeze Tzatziki?

In our decades of combined freezer cooking experience, we’ve found that dairy-based recipes typically don’t work well to freeze and thaw. The consistency gets pretty gnarly in this particular recipe, and the cucumbers would release all of their liquid making it even more watery.

So, as freezer cooking experts and cookbook authors, our answer to the question, “Can you freeze Tzatkiki Sauce?” is no. Sorry!

Tzatziki sauce in a bowl with Greek pitas next to it.

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Rachel Tiemeyer

As co-founder of Thriving Home, Rachel dreams about creating recipes (literally) and uses her husband, her 3 kids, and even the neighbors as guinea pigs several nights a week. She believes that good food has the power to bring families and friends closer together and continues to wake up excited about her job each day, even after 10+ years!