The Garlic Sauce I Can't Stop Buying

All hail Toom.

Hello!

I cannot believe it is March already! It’s a great month to eat some good vegetarian and vegan sandwiches — I covered 10 of my favorite in Los Angeles for the LA Times. Speaking of the number ten, I also put together a list of my top 10 restaurants in Los Angeles for Goop a few weeks ago. This is by no means a complete list of my favorites, but I do think it covers a decent range of the bounty that LA has to offer. I will drop a more robust personal list in this newsletter soon and also a newsletter with all the secrets about how these lists actually get made.

I also forgot to mention that Better Homes & Garden kindly covered my cooking bingo post. Have you made one yet? It’s not too late! I am very behind on mine and plan to really change that this month now that a major project i’ve been working on is almost done (and I hopefully will have more to announce on that front soon!)

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Toum/Facebook

Okay! Time to talk about toum. I am obsessed with the the ridiculously addictive, obscenely garlicky Lebanese sauce that I will never stop eating. Traditionally made with just four ingredients — garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt — it always seems to surprise people to learn that toum does not contain any mayonnaise, given its creamy texture. It’s a powerful condiment — and a little goes a long way. Though there is technically no spice in toum, depending on just how much garlic is packed in,

While it’s most commonly served with chicken kebabs, to only do that would be a disservice to the versatility of toum. I find that it’s basically a souped-up garlic aioli and wherever aioli works, toum does too. This is especially great for people who don’t eat eggs or are grossed out by the fact that aioli contains mayo which is typically made with eggs.

I grew up an hour away from Dearborn, Michigan, home to some of the best Lebanese restaurants in the country and have been eating toum since I was a child. I like to call it Detroit’s Ketchup because of how common it is on menus there. Honestly, that’s a great name for a toum cpg brand. So is Toum Raider (though that’s also a great food truck name.)

For the longest time, I would have to pilfer tiny to-go containers of toum, which means garlic in Arabic, from restuarants because it was not a condiment I could easily find in stores. I also refused to make it given just how much garlic and patience it requires to make it. But I started noticing a brand in stores in the last couple of years called TOOM which is working to bring toum to the mass market — and its now available at places like Whole Foods. Costco, and Target.

The brand did send me a tub to test out and im surprised by two things — 1) how garlickly it manages to be 2) the giant size of the tub (16oz) because again, a little goes a long way. The toum from TOOM is thinner than the toum I steal from restaurants, but that also makes sense seeing as they advertise it as a “garlic dip,” though fully dipping anything in this is risky if you plan to speak or stand by another human ever again.

It’s so fun to see toum go mainstream though because I find myself reaching for the tub constantly.

— The other night I baked a potato and spread a layer of toum before melting on some cheddar and adding a mountain of sour cream.

— Yesterday morning I made breakfast tacos and spread some toum on the hot tortillas before layering on soft scrambled eggs, feta, raw red onion, and some hot sauce.

— I made the BEST tea sandwiches for a galentines brunch I hosted using TOOM. I cut the crusts off of two slices of squishy white bread. One slice is spread with a layer of whipped cream cheese, the other slice with a thin layer of toum, and then I layer slice cucumbers onto the cream cheese side, plust some salt and pepper before topping with the other slice, toum-side down. Cut into triangles or rectangles!

the aforementioned toum tea sandwiches

— I started adding a swipe of toum to the inside of my grilled cheese and now cannot go back. It does more for a grilled cheese than pesto, aioli, or mustard ever could. I still use plenty of butter (and a pinch of salt) on the outside of the bread. This is best when making a grilled cheese with sourdough.

— I recently was making a caesar dressing and folded in a spoonful of toum for some punch and it was amazing if you want a stupidly garlic-forward dressing.

— My favorite use might just be as part of a deranged garlic bread I started making (and will post a video of on my IG very soon!). It’s a triple garlic, garlic bread. I spread ciabatta with a layer of confit garlic cloves. Then goes on a layer of garlic butter. Then a layer of toum before tossing it in the oven. Most garlic bread does not have enough garlic flavor for me, and this completely remedies that.

Would love to know how you like to use toum! I think I might bake some into a loaf of focaccia next or folded into egg salad!