Tzatziki Sauce
When our husband lived outside of Washington, D.C., we’d often get gyros and a platter of hummus and pita from a local restaurant and they were SO GOOD.
Even though we can get them readily from a gyro shop nearby, we have long wanted to try our hand at making gyros at home. We finally made it happen, and as everyone knows, the first step to great gyros is great tzatziki sauce.
This sauce is incredibly straightforward to mix, and the key is ensuring the cucumber is salted and drained before being thoroughly dried and chopped fine. This ensures that the cucumber has extracted its water before being mixed into the sauce. If you skip this step, the sauce will become watery.
Once the cucumber is taken care of, the rest of the sauce is mixed together with classic ingredients of Greek yogurt, lemon juice, garlic, and dill. (This is a fabulous recipe for that from-scratch Greek yogurt we whipped up a few weeks ago!)
This tastes best when it’s been refrigerated for at least an hour or two so that the flavors have a chance to meld together, but we dug in immediately; no harm, no foul :)
Be sure to serve it up with these memorable from-scratch gyros!
- Yield: 2 cups
- Prep: 40 minutes
- Total: 40 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeds removed and cut into large chunks
- 1½ teaspoons ( 1.5 teaspoons ) kosher salt, for draining cucumber
- 1½ cups ( 300 ml ) plain Greek yogurt
- 1 small clove garlic, grated
- 4½ teaspoons ( 4.5 teaspoons ) lemon juice
- 1½ teaspoons ( 1.5 teaspoons ) chopped fresh dill
Method
- Place the cucumber in a colander in the sink and sprinkle with the kosher salt. Let sit and drain for 30 minutes. Dry thoroughly with paper towels, then chop finely.
- Combine the finely chopped cucumber with the yogurt, garlic, lemon juice and dill. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving. The sauce can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to three days.
