Toum substitutes

Half a cup of good mayonnaise, two to three cloves of garlic grated on a microplane, one tablespoon of lemon juice, a pinch of salt.

Best for

chicken shawarma and grilled chicken, fries and batata harra, sandwiches and wraps, a five-minute fix

The shortcut almost every home cook lands on, and it is genuinely good. What changes: mayonnaise contains egg yolk, so the sauce tastes rounder, richer and slightly custardy where toum is lean and startlingly clean, and it is a pale cream colour rather than snow white. Grate the garlic rather than chopping it, because grated garlic releases far more of the pungent compounds that make toum bite. Let it sit twenty minutes before serving so the raw garlic heat develops, and taste again then, as it gets noticeably stronger.

Ready-made emulsified garlic sauce, usually egg-based, sold in most supermarkets.

Best for

dipping, sandwiches, grilled vegetables, when you want zero effort

Structurally the right thing, an emulsion of oil with garlic in it, which is why it behaves like toum on a plate. Commercial aioli is tuned to be crowd-friendly, meaning much milder garlic, more sweetness and sometimes added herbs, so straight from the jar it tastes flat next to toum. One extra clove grated in and a good squeeze of lemon per half cup pulls it back into range. Read the label and avoid versions with sugar or roasted garlic, since roasted garlic is sweet and mellow and toum is the opposite.

Three tablespoons of chickpea liquid, four to six peeled garlic cloves, half a teaspoon of salt, two tablespoons of lemon juice, and one cup of neutral oil added in a thin stream.

Best for

getting genuinely close to real toum, vegan and egg-free cooking, making a large batch, shawarma night

This is the honest best substitute, because it is an actual oil-in-water emulsion built around raw garlic, exactly like the original, and it comes out thick and white. Blitz the garlic, salt, lemon and aquafaba first, then dribble the oil in extremely slowly with the machine running. It is very slightly less stable than the traditional version and can taste a touch beany for the first hour, which fades. Use a neutral oil such as sunflower or grapeseed; olive oil turns bitter when whipped this hard.

Thick Greek yogurt or labneh with grated garlic, lemon, salt and a tablespoon of olive oil stirred through.

Best for

grilled lamb and kafta, falafel, lighter plates, anyone avoiding a mayonnaise-heavy sauce

It fills toum's slot as the white garlicky sauce and it is much lighter, but it changes the plate more than the others. Yogurt brings a lactic sourness that tastes tangy rather than sharp, and it has far less fat, so it does not coat dry chicken or chips the way toum does, and a wrap made with it can taste watery. The tablespoon of olive oil helps. Best where the meat is already fatty and you want relief rather than richness.

Greek garlic sauce thickened with potato or stale bread rather than emulsified with egg or aquafaba.

Best for

fried fish, roasted beets and greens, as a dip with bread, when you want fierce garlic without a mayonnaise base

Gets the raw garlic punch right, often just as fiercely as toum, and it is dairy-free and egg-free. The texture is the compromise: skordalia is starchy, dense and slightly grainy rather than glossy and light, so it sits on food in a heavy layer instead of coating it. In a shawarma wrap that heaviness is wrong, and it can turn gluey when cold. On grilled fish or vegetables it is excellent in its own right.

Tahini thinned with lemon juice and water, with grated garlic and salt.

Best for

falafel, fried fish, shawarma where a nuttier sauce is welcome, vegan plates

A completely legitimate Levantine sauce for the same dishes, so nothing looks out of place, and it does the fat-plus-acid job well. It tastes different in an obvious way: nutty, faintly bitter and earthy, where toum is clean and hot. Chicken shawarma with tahini sauce is a good sandwich but not the sandwich you were expecting. Add an extra clove of grated garlic if you want it to lean toum-ward.