Authentic Greek Tzatziki Sauce Recipe (From a Restaurant That Has Made It Since 2009)
We have made tzatziki every week in three restaurants since 2009. It goes on a gyro that was named the best in America. Here is the recipe, the ratio, the mistakes, and everything the five-minute versions leave out.
Jump to: The recipe · Five mistakes · Tzatziki for gyros · Storage and day two · Questions
What tzatziki actually is
Tzatziki is salted strained yogurt mixed with cucumber, garlic, salt, olive oil, and usually an acid — red wine vinegar, lemon juice, or both — finished with fresh herbs.[1] In Greece it is eaten as a cold meze with bread and olives, as a side dish, and as the sauce on souvlaki and gyros.[1]
That is the whole thing. Six ingredients, no cooking, no equipment beyond a box grater and a bowl.
Which is exactly why it is so easy to get wrong. There is nothing to hide behind. A watery tzatziki, a bitter one, or one that tastes only of raw garlic cannot be rescued by anything else on the plate. The difference between excellent tzatziki and mediocre tzatziki comes down to a handful of decisions that most recipes never mention, because most recipes are written by people making one bowl rather than by a kitchen making it in volume, week after week, and watching what happens to it on day three.
We have been doing the second thing since December 2009.
The recipe
This makes about two and a half cups, enough for eight to ten servings as a dip or roughly twelve gyros.
Ingredients
| Ingredient | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Whole-milk Greek yogurt | 2 cups (16 oz) | Full fat only. See below. |
| English cucumber | 1 large (about 12 oz) | Thin skin, few seeds |
| Kosher salt | 1 tsp, divided | ½ for the cucumber, ½ for the sauce |
| Garlic | 1–2 cloves | Grated, not chopped |
| Extra virgin olive oil | 2 tbsp | Plus more for finishing |
| Red wine vinegar | 1 tbsp | The traditional acid |
| Lemon juice | 1 tbsp | Fresh only |
| Fresh dill | 2 tbsp, chopped | Or mint, or both |
| Black pepper | To taste | Freshly cracked |
Method
1. Grate and salt the cucumber. Grate the whole cucumber on the large holes of a box grater, skin and all. Toss it with a half teaspoon of salt in a colander set over a bowl and leave it for twenty minutes. You will see liquid pooling underneath almost immediately.
2. Squeeze it dry — then squeeze it again. Gather the grated cucumber in a clean kitchen towel or a double layer of cheesecloth and wring it hard over the sink. You should get somewhere between a third and a half cup of liquid out of one large cucumber. When you think you are finished, twist once more. This single step separates good tzatziki from soupy tzatziki, and it is the step people rush.
3. Grate the garlic. Use a microplane rather than a knife. Grated garlic disperses evenly through the yogurt; chopped garlic sits in pockets, so one bite is mild and the next is punishing. Start with one clove. You can always add the second.
4. Combine everything except the finishing oil. Yogurt, squeezed cucumber, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, the remaining half teaspoon of salt, the dill, and black pepper. Stir until just combined. Do not whip it — aggressive stirring thins yogurt.
5. Rest it for at least thirty minutes. This is not optional and it is the most commonly skipped instruction in every recipe on the internet. Tzatziki eaten immediately tastes like yogurt with things in it. Tzatziki that has rested for thirty minutes tastes like tzatziki. The garlic softens, the salt draws the flavors together, and the dill releases. Two hours is better than thirty minutes.
6. Taste and correct, then finish with oil. After resting, taste it. It will almost always need more salt than you expect, because yogurt mutes salt. Adjust, then pour a tablespoon of olive oil over the surface just before serving. Do not stir it in. Oil on top is the first thing the tongue meets; oil stirred through disappears.
Five mistakes we have made so you do not have to
Using low-fat or non-fat yogurt. Fat is what carries the garlic and herbs and gives tzatziki its texture. Non-fat Greek yogurt makes a sauce that is simultaneously thin and chalky, and no amount of squeezing the cucumber will fix it. Whole milk, every time. If you can find sheep's milk yogurt — the traditional Greek base — it is better still.[1]
Not salting the cucumber first. A cucumber is more than ninety percent water. If you skip the salt-and-drain step, that water does not disappear — it migrates into your sauce over the next few hours. Tzatziki that seemed fine when you made it will be a puddle by dinner.
Chopping the garlic instead of grating it. Covered above, but worth repeating because it is the most common textural failure. It also matters for intensity: grated garlic distributes its heat evenly, so you can use less of it.
Serving it immediately. The thirty-minute rest is the cheapest quality improvement available in the entire recipe and it costs nothing but patience.
Too much garlic on day one. This one took us the longest to learn. Garlic in an acidic dairy environment keeps getting stronger. A tzatziki that is pleasantly garlicky when you make it will be aggressive by tomorrow and harsh by the day after. If you are making it ahead, use less garlic than tastes right at the time.
Tzatziki for gyros specifically
Most tzatziki recipes are written for dipping. Sauce for a gyro is a different problem, and if you are making it to go on meat in bread, three things change.
Make it slightly thicker. Dipping tzatziki can be loose. Gyro tzatziki has to sit inside warm pita against hot meat without running out of the bottom. Squeeze the cucumber harder, and if the yogurt is on the thin side, strain it through cheesecloth for an hour before you start.
Go heavier on the acid. A gyro is rich — seasoned meat, often fries inside the pita in the Greek style. The sauce is the thing cutting through all of that. When we make tzatziki for the line rather than for a meze plate, it gets more lemon.
Dill over mint. Both are traditional, and mint is lovely in a dipping tzatziki eaten with bread and olives. Against gyro meat, dill holds its own and mint tends to get lost.
For what it is worth, our tzatziki goes on a gyro that was named Best Gyro in America in the 2018 Best Sandwiches in America awards.[2] The winner is our Pepperjack Gyro, and the sauce is a meaningful part of why it works — it is the only cool, acidic element against the meat and the cheese.
If you want the full picture of what goes on the spit before the sauce goes on top, we wrote about what gyro meat is actually made of.
The olive oil is not a garnish
In a sauce with six ingredients, the oil is roughly a sixth of what you are tasting, and it is one of only two ingredients that carries flavor of its own rather than just contributing texture or heat.
Good extra virgin olive oil has three positive attributes that tasting panels actively score: fruitiness, bitterness, and pungency.[3] That peppery catch at the back of the throat is a compound called oleocanthal, and it is evidence of quality rather than a flaw. In tzatziki, that pepperiness plays against the cool yogurt in a way that a neutral oil simply cannot.
We use Glory Bound Extra Virgin Olive Oil in our tzatziki, our hummus, and our dressings. It is pressed in California by a family-run grower and miller we have bought from for years, and we bottled it only after using it in our kitchens for well over a decade. The full range is in the olive oil collection.
One variation worth trying: use our Garlic Infused Olive Oil in place of the plain oil and cut the fresh garlic to a single small clove. Because the oil is co-milled rather than steeped, the garlic is worked into the oil itself, which gives you a rounder and more even garlic note without the sharp edge raw cloves develop overnight. It is a useful trick if you are making tzatziki a day ahead.
Storage, and what happens on day two
Tzatziki keeps for three to four days in an airtight container in the refrigerator. It does not freeze — yogurt separates and cucumber turns to mush.
But "keeps for four days" undersells what actually happens, and this is the part no five-minute recipe covers.
| Day | What changes | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Best texture. Garlic still mild. | Serve as is |
| Day 2 | Peak flavor. Garlic fully developed, herbs infused. | Stir, taste, maybe more salt |
| Day 3 | Some liquid separates. Garlic assertive. | Pour off liquid, stir, add lemon |
| Day 4 | Noticeably sharp. Texture looser. | Use as a marinade or dressing base |
Day two is genuinely the best day, which is why making it the night before is a real advantage rather than a compromise. If a little liquid gathers on the surface, that is normal — pour it off and stir rather than mixing it back in.
By day four, if it has gone too sharp to serve as a dip, thin it with a little more yogurt and lemon and use it as a marinade for chicken. It is excellent for that.
How it is made elsewhere
Tzatziki has relatives across a wide stretch of the map, and knowing them tells you something about the dish.
In Turkey, cacık is thinner — water is added, and it is often eaten as a cold soup or even drunk, seasoned with Aleppo pepper and mint.[1] In Bulgaria, tarator is fully a chilled soup, usually with walnuts.[1] In Cyprus it is talattouri, with more mint and more lemon.[1] In Iran it is mast o khiar, and in South Asia the same instinct produces raita, made with yogurt, cucumber, salt, and cumin.[1]
The dish is older than any of those national versions. The Abbasid author Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq recorded three recipes for jājaq, yogurt salads, in his tenth-century Arabic cookbook, which the food historian Nawal Nasrallah identifies as the earliest known ancestor of the modern dish.[1] The modern Turkish term first appeared in print in 1844, in the first Ottoman cookbook, described simply as "yogurt with cucumber and garlic."[1] Greeks, meanwhile, had been eating yogurt condiments since antiquity — oxygala, mixed with honey or with olive oil and herbs.[1]
If that pattern sounds familiar, it should. It is the same Ottoman-to-everywhere story behind the gyro itself, which we traced in gyro vs shawarma. The sauce and the sandwich took the same road.
What to serve it with
Beyond gyros and souvlaki, tzatziki is the most useful sauce in a Greek kitchen. It goes with grilled lamb, chicken, and fish; with roasted or raw vegetables; on grain bowls, where it cuts starch better than anything else; alongside falafel and chickpea dishes; and simply with warm pita and olives as a meze.
It is also a good dip for hot fried food, which is why the Greek habit of putting fries inside the gyro works as well as it does.
Questions people ask
What is tzatziki sauce made of? Strained yogurt, cucumber, garlic, salt, olive oil, and an acid — usually red wine vinegar or lemon juice — with fresh dill or mint.[1] Traditional Greek versions often use sheep's or goat's milk yogurt.
What is the secret to great tzatziki? Three things: squeeze the cucumber far harder and longer than feels necessary, grate the garlic rather than chopping it, and let the finished sauce rest at least thirty minutes before serving. Everything else is seasoning.
Is tzatziki healthy? It is yogurt, cucumber, garlic, and olive oil, so it compares favorably to most creamy dips. Olive oil specifically runs 70 to 80 percent oleic acid and carries phenolic compounds at 50 to 800 milligrams per kilogram, and in the PREDIMED trial a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil was associated with a stroke hazard ratio of 0.60 against the control diet.[4] Using whole-milk yogurt makes it higher in fat than a low-fat version, but it also makes it better, and the fat is what carries the flavor.
What can I use instead of tzatziki? Nothing is a true substitute, but plain Greek yogurt with lemon, salt, and dill gets you most of the way in two minutes. Raita is the closest relative, with cumin instead of dill.
Why is my tzatziki watery? The cucumber was not squeezed hard enough, or you used low-fat yogurt, or both. Salt and drain the cucumber for twenty minutes, then wring it in a towel until no more liquid comes out.
Can I make tzatziki ahead? Yes, and you should. Day two is the best day. Just use slightly less garlic than tastes right, because it intensifies overnight.
Dill or mint? Both are traditional. Dill is standard in most of Greece and better against gyro meat; mint is common in Cyprus and Turkey and better in a dipping tzatziki. Using both is entirely legitimate.
Come taste ours
We make tzatziki in house at all three of our restaurants — Hattiesburg, Tuscaloosa, and Ocean Springs — and we have done since 2009. It goes on every gyro we serve, including the one that won.
Find the nearest location, or if you would rather make it at home, start with the oil we use.
References
[2] "The Absolute Best Gyros In The U.S." Mashed.