Don’t be the only one who eats this. If you’re on a date, or cooking for a significant other, make sure you both have some. Otherwise there’ll be no kissing going on. Your breath will reek.
Oh, it’s totally worth it, but no one will want to be around you for the rest of the day.
Ingredients
16 ounces plain yogurt
1 medium cucumber
4 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
5 to 6 mint leaves
pinch kosher salt
Directions
It would be really easy to make this sauce too runny. So the first step is to drain the yogurt a bit. The traditional method is to put the yogurt in a piece of cheesecloth, pull the corners up, and suspend it over a bowl in the fridge.
I didn’t have any cheesecloth handy, and I have no idea what I’d use to suspend it anyway. So I put a colander in my pasta pot and lined it with two paper towels.
Pour the yogurt into the colander. You can see that there’s already liquid starting to separate before I opened the container.
Peel and mince the garlic. You can see right here where the stank-breath will be coming from.
If you’re measuring your pinches of salt, you’re more uptight than I am.
Pull the mint leaves off the stem.
Stack all the leaves up and roll them up tight.
Chop lengthwise down the roll of leaves, then crosswise to get a fine dice. Then keep going through the leaves until you’ve got a really fine mince.
Add the oil and vinegar and give it a stir. The garlic and mint will start infusing into the vinegar while you work on the cuke.
Peel the cucumber and dice it really small. Some people take the seeds out, I didn’t bother. To dice it, slice the cuke into thirds vertical and horizontal.
Don’t cut the pieces completely apart. If you leave them connected at one end it’s easier to hold everything together.
Put the diced cuke on a tea towel or a couple of paper towels. Press firmly to get most of the moisture out.
Once the cuke is drained, add it to the other ingredients and give it a mix.
Once the yogurt has been draining for an hour or two, add it to the cucumber mixture.
You can see how much moisture drained out of the yogurt.
And that doesn’t even include the paper towels that were completely soaked. If all that moisture were in the sauce it would be very watery.
Stir the yogurt in without crushing the cukes.
And that’s it.
Let’s see … yesterday was pita bread … today is tzatziki sauce … gosh, I wonder what I’m going to post tomorrow?
Okay, it’s up now. And — surprise! — it’s gyros.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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18 Comments
I’m loving the “How To Cook Like Your Grandmother from the Old Country.” You need some of my lamb now to make the perfect gyro. I wish we still had cucumbers . . . oh wait. There IS that whole section of the grocery store where they have vegetables. What’s that called again?
Hey, no fair giving away the surprise!
Oh, and I believe it’s called the “produce section”.
I’ve never left the seeds in when making tzatziki and I always salt the cucumbers to really draw out the moisture. Adds a lot of work and if this one worked out for you I’ll have to give it a try.
Thank you so much for this! I have been wanting to try it!
Yumminess. I adore Tzatziki and since I am in a gyroless part of the country, after growing up in Chicago, I shall wait with baited breath till tomorrow. (after that no one will want to be near my breath.) LOL!
Man I *love* tzatziki. When I was a kid we lived near a Greek orthodox church that would do a yearly fundraiser. One of the things they did was gyros. So freaking good. Cant wait for tomorrow!
Sweet bird, keep in mind that I’m not Greek. It’s possible they’re as particular about their tzatzki as Southerners are about their berbecue. I have the luxury of loose standards.
Meg, Lalycairn and Bob, you might want to invite friends over. This makes quite a bit, and a little goes a long way. I’m trying to convince my wife to have them again this week.
I didn’t even know I liked Gyros until this time last year. Now they’re one of my favorite meals.
Wow, up to 8 comments so far and no argument has broken out about how to pronounce “gyro”.
Interesting twist! I usually use a bunch of dill instead of mint and balsamic instead of red wine vinegar, delicious alternative!
More garlic! I adore tzatziki and don’t mind the breath. Stay well clear for a day or two, though!
More garlic? Are you insane? This had so much it was “hot”. This is plenty for me, thanks.
Well then Drew, you’re just gonna have to taste different kinds of garlic to find an un-hot yet stank kind, eh? About four or so years ago a SLEW of garlic types came in from Eastern Europe, and you can find softneck, hardneck, sweet, strong, spicy, hot, etc etc etc types now. Yeay!
Because really this is just garlic suspended in cuke binder. I worked with greeks in a greek restaurant, ok? I got street greek cred. And Mr. Molopholous was very particular: slice the cukes in half, seed, grate, and then salt and press to drain. Then greek yogurt (it makes a difference – sharper, probably takes the place of the vinegar) and massive amounts of the mildest stanky garlic you can find. Oil to make it happy, and stir. Sometimes herbs, depending on what was fresh.
And it’s YEER-ros. Roll the R. Sorry for being all uptight about it, but you really don’t want Mr. Molopholous mad at your pronunciation, he becomes “ver’ dis’pint’d” and talks really slowly for the benefit of those who are greek-impaired.
PT, if you’re ever in Cleveland, feel free to serve me the “correct” version and show me the error of my ways.
you are the best. i like the way you make and post the picture to make gyro& sauce.thank you very much
This more of a recipe for Arabi/Middleastern yogurt sauce. Taztziki uses sour cream instead of yogurt and a lot of garlic
I’ve never been to the Middle East, but friends of mine in Europe have told me that what we call sour cream doesn’t really exist there. They have creme fraiche, which is close, but not exactly the same. I had assumed yogurt filled the spot in Middle Eastern cooking that we use sour cream, and Europeans use creme fraiche.
I meant to say Taztziki does not use a lot og garlic.