Easy Tzatziki Sauce
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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.
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.
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!
More Homemade Sauces You’ll Love
Easy Tzatziki Sauce
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 cloves garlic (minced)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper (or to taste)
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, stir together the yogurt, cucumber, mint, dill, lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic until well combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use, up to 3 days. (Do not freeze this sauce.)
Notes/Tips
- To squeeze out the water from the cucumber, place it in a tea towel and squeeze over the sink.
- This sauce is even better the next day, after the flavors have time to meld together.
- Fresh herbs really make this sauce pop. If you can find them, they are much better than dried!
Nutrition
This is easy to throw together and the taste is outstanding. I used my homemade yogurt, mint and dill from my garden. The punch of fresh flavors make this a winner.
Mmmm Dale, all the homemade/home grown ingredients just takes everything up a notch!
This was delicious. I did not have dill unfortunately, but it was still perfect addition to the gyros.
Glad to hear it Lo!