Easy Tarator Sauce

Name: Easy Tarator Sauce
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon salt (or to taste); 2 cloves garlic (peeled * see notes); 1 cup tahini (raw blended white sesame seeds * see notes ); 1/2 cup lemon juice (fresh (juice from 2 large lemons)); 1/4 cup water (to 1/3 cup or as needed to create desired creamy consistency); 1/2 teaspoon sumac; 1 teaspoon cumin; 1/2 teaspoon paprika (or cayenne pepper to taste)

Published: Dec 17, 2015 · Modified: Aug 15, 2025 by HWC Magazine · 38 Comments

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Introducing your new favorite dip and party pleaser: Tarator Sauce! This creamy sesame tahini dip is perfect for drizzling, dipping, or slathering on your favorite healthy snacks like fresh veggies, crispy falafel, spicy shrimp, and more. With just 5 minutes of prep and 4 simple ingredients, you can whip up a tangy lemony classic or spicy sauce for your favorite Middle Eastern dishes. The texture so light and fluffy it transforms any dish into a swoon worthy bite.

Spoon of Tarator sauce in brown bowl showing how thick and creamy it is.

We love Middle Eastern dips like Red Pepper Hummus and Traditional Baba Ghanoush, but we are totally addicted to tarator sauce. Ok, there we said it! That is the first step is to admit the addiction, right?! As a matter of fact, we are snacking on celery sticks and tarator sauce whilst we are writing this recipe post.

This Lebanese-inspired dip has a deep nutty flavor with a pop of lemon and a kick of spice that keeps us craving it every day. In addition, tarator is vegan, gluten-free, low carb, and paleo approved. This easy appetizer or condiment is big on flavors and low on effort so let’s get started!

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Here is What You Need to Make It
How to Make a Middle Eastern Dip?
Recipe Tips
Classic Vs Spicy Tahini Dip
Frequent Asked Questions (FAQ's)
What To Serve with Tarator Sauce?
Easy Tarator Sauce

Here is What You Need to Make It

Ingredients to make an easy Tarator sauce laid out on a light gray blue table.

Tahini paste – contains only one ingredient, raw white sesame seeds. They are stone ground into a smooth and silky consistency. Unlike our homemade black sesame paste that is made with roasted black sesame seeds, tahini paste is made with RAW white sesame seeds. The flavor is nutty and less sweet compared to a Chinese sesame paste using roasted sesame seeds.

As a part of our recipe testing, we made a batch of tarator sauce with black tahini. Personally, we did not like it as much as with white sesame tahini paste. Black sesame seeds have a stronger flavor than white because it includes the hull of the seed.

You can purchase tahini in many regular grocery stores down the nut butter isle. Alternatively, you can purchase it online or in a Middle Eastern grocery store.

Tahini paste is delicious in salad dressings and can even be used in baked goods. Try our roasted cauliflower steaks with tahini sauce for a delicious vegan entrée.

Fresh Lemon Juice – Feel free to adjust the amount to your flavor profile. We like to use one lemon for every half cup of tahini.

Garlic – but of course, right?!

Salt – We used freshly ground sea salt.

Water – to thin the tarator sauce to your liking.

Spices and Aromatics – (Optional) This is where you can add a little spice and an extra pop of flavor. Try adding dried ground cumin, smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, chili powder or aromatics like coriander or sumac which has a bright and tangy flavor. Of course, just the plain classic flavor is so good you’re going to want to eat it by the spoonful.

How to Make a Middle Eastern Dip?

Crushing garlic and salt in a mortar and pestle.

Add salt and garlic to a mortar and pestle and crush into pulverized.

Adding lemon to garlic and pour in the thin tahini sesame paste into the bowl.

Squeeze the lemon juice into the salt and garlic mixture.
Pour the tahini sesame paste into a bowl.

Showing optional spices showing how the tahini paste starts to seize up and get thick after you add the lemon juice.

Stir and watch the mixture turn from a thin runny sauce to a thick and clumpy sauce. This is normal.
Season with dried ground cumin, smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, chili powder or aromatics like coriander or sumac, if desired.

Adding water and stirring the tahini dip. Showing how it turns from a dark beige to a light beige.

Pour in a water a little at a time while stirring the dip. First it will start to get thicker. Then, as you add more water it will change from a dark beige to a light beige.

The tarator sauce turning into an emulsion, thick, airy and almost the texture of a fluffy whipped cream.

Finally, it transforms from a dodgy looking seed paste into a thick, luscious blend, becoming airy and creamy, like a velvety whipped topping.

Recipe Tips

Stir the Tahini sauce before making tarator sauce. Tahini may separate when stored. The sesame oil raises to the top and the thicker seed mixture goes to the bottom of the jar. This is normal. It’s kind of like what happens to natural peanut butter.
Mash and pulverize the garlic well so you don’t have lumps in the tarator sauce. Alternatively, feel free to use dried ground garlic if that is all you have on hand.
Don’t panic if your dip starts to separate and look dodgy as you add the lemon juice and water! This is completely normal. However, with continued stirring and slowly adding water it will whip more air into the sauce and it will be light and fluffy.

Recipe Tip: The perfect Tarator Sauce should be thick and creamy like yogurt. It should pour slowly from the spoon while still holding onto ingredients.

Add water to your desired thickness level. If serving as a dip for fresh vegetables, ground lamb kabobs or firecracker shrimp, we like it quite thick. However, if you want to drizzle it over air fryer carrots you would probably want it a little thinner.
Tarator Sauce thickens as it sets. If you make the sauce in advance, you may need to add a little more water to get it loosened up again.
Alternatively, you can make this easy tahini dip in the food processor or high-speed blender. It only takes 5 minutes to make in a bowl with a fork or whisk. This way you don’t have to haul down the appliance and be cleaning blades and such. But you do you!

Ready to eat Middle Eastern dip in a handmade brown pottery bowl garnished with sesame seeds.

Classic Vs Spicy Tahini Dip

Traditional or classic Lebanese inspired tarator sauce is made with tahini sauce, garlic, lemon juice, salt and water and is NOT spicy. You know we love to jazz things up but keep it healthy. Explore your spice drawer. It really depends really on how you plan on serving the tarator dip and your personal preference.

Personally, we like a classic or plain tarator sauce when serving with spicy foods to highlight the difference in flavors. However, if we are serving up a mild flavored Mediterranean veggie wrap, we like that little extra kick of spice. We would start out with a dash or ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper or chili powder spice and add more to achieve your desired heat level.

For aromatics like cumin or sumac, we usually add a teaspoon to the recipe. Coriander, we start out with a half teaspoon and go from there.

Serving the dip with spicy shrimp and fresh carrots and cucumbers as an appetizer.

Frequent Asked Questions (FAQ's)

Why does Tahini Sauce Seize up when you add water or lemon juice?

First and foremost, it is completely normal for tahini sauce to seize up when liquids such as lemon juice and water are added. The seizing up of the tahini sauce is just a temporary problem that is quickly rectified with the slow addition of more liquid and stirring.

So why does this happen? Tahini sauce is classified as an emulsion because it is a mix of oil and sesame solids. As you know, oil and water do not mix well. It’s the lemon juice (mix of water and citric acid) that starts the separation of the oil causing it to clump and look dodgy. If you add water too quickly the tahini sauce will seize up even more. However, if you add more water SLOWLY it forces the clumps to break apart, the oil droplets begin to surround the water droplets, and finally the stirring and addition of water stabilizes the mixture until you have a smooth and creamy tahini sauce.

Can you Prevent Tahini sauce from Seizing up?

You can’t prevent tahini sauce from completely seizing up but there are a couple of hacks to reduce this problem.
Temperature Regulation – If the tahini sauce, lemon juice and water are all at room temperature, it reduces the seizing when making a dip.
Add the water slowly to the tahini sauce while continuously stirring. This allows time for the water to coat the oil to coat the water molecules to ensure a smooth and creamy tahini sauce.

What To Serve with Tarator Sauce?

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