For those who don’t know it, tzatziki is a type of Greek sauce very easy to prepare, made with yogurt and cucumbers. It’s perfect for a fresh aperitif or starter served with raw vegetables, crostini or pita, as a condiment for meats or fish, and also as a tasty light sauce to fill a traditional hamburger instead of mayonnaise. It’s a cold dish with no cooking required and needs very few ingredients (basically yogurt and cucumbers); for this reason they must be the “right” ones and very fresh.
This is a simple recipe but, to achieve it perfectly, you must follow a few essential steps that I will reveal in the recipe instructions. I confess that several times I’ve tried to buy it ready-made out of laziness, although, as I said, it takes just a moment to prepare; the aroma of homemade tzatziki is a different thing altogether, and you can adapt it to your personal taste—for example by adding more or less garlic or flavoring it with different aromatic herbs. Finally, remember that tzatziki is very tasty when served well chilled, and the more time it spends in the refrigerator, the better it will taste because it will gain more aroma, so feel free to prepare it in advance; it will improve in flavor.
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Inexpensive
- Preparation time: 20 Minutes
- Portions: 4-6 people
- Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients
- 2 cups Greek yogurt
- 2 cucumbers (medium size)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 lemon (juice)
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- to taste Salt
- sprigs mint leaves
- sprigs dill leaves
Preparation
Wash the cucumbers well and grate them using the larger round holes of your grater; they should remain in coarse pieces to keep their crunch when mixed with the yogurt. At this point, place them in a colander sprinkled with a little salt for about an hour so they can lose their excess water. The first trick to achieving a perfect sauce is exactly this: remove the excess liquid from the grated cucumbers so the yogurt won’t become too diluted, which would alter both the taste and the texture of the sauce. If you don’t have time to wait for the cucumbers to release their liquid naturally, squeeze them inside a clean kitchen towel. Once squeezed, try to remove any remaining seeds from the cucumbers.
Transfer the cucumbers to a large bowl, add the yogurt, the grated garlic, the lemon juice and season with salt. Mix well with a spoon and finish with the extra virgin olive oil. Your sauce would already be ready, but you can flavor it with some chopped mint leaves or chopped dill, as the original recipe suggests.
Mix the tzatziki again and let it rest in the refrigerator covered with plastic wrap for about an hour before serving. In fact, the longer it rests, the more it flavors and improves, so my advice is to prepare it the day before.
Serve tzatziki to accompany a crudité of vegetables with toasted bread or with traditional Greek pita, or pair it with meat skewers, grilled shrimp, or calamari.
Notes
I’ve already given you some tricks for a perfect sauce in the recipe; another important point is the choice of yogurt: it must absolutely be Greek yogurt, whose dense and compact consistency will allow you to obtain a thick sauce, as tradition requires.
Here are some variations on the original recipe:
• With or without garlic: Although garlic together with cucumber gives this sauce its intense flavor, not everyone likes it and some find it hard to digest. In these cases there are two solutions: for a more digestible version that still respects the traditional recipe, simply remove the garlic’s core and you’ll be “kiss-proof.” If you really can’t stand garlic, omit it from the recipe and flavor the sauce with some chopped mint leaves.
• Vegan version: for those who don’t eat animal products, simply replace Greek yogurt with soy yogurt. In this case the consistency will be a bit more liquid, but you’ll still prepare a perfect dressing to season salads, accompany vegetables, meats or fish.
