Easy Homemade Tzatziki Sauce Recipe  (2024)

This creamy and cool sauce or dip is a favorite healthy side in our house. Not only is it great with freshpita bread, but it’s outstanding as a veggie dip, with some Mediterranean grilled meat or somefritters. You’ve probably had some store bought tzatziki sauce, but never thought to try making it on your own. It’s so easy to make this creamy cucumber sauce and such a treat if you’ve never made it yourself.

Great way to use those Cukes!

We’ve had quite the thriving cucumber plants this year and they’ve been growing at such a rapid speed that I’ve been needing to get extra busy making other dishes besides pickling cucumbers to keep up with our harvest. I found that making some tzatziki sauce is a great way to use some up fast. Also, if you have a plethora of tomatoes in your garden, you can toss this with some cut up tomatoes to use it as a thick creamy salad dressing.

Herb it Up!

If you want your homemade tzatziki to taste like some of the store bought tzatziki sauce you’ve enjoyed you really need to use both dill and mint. If you only use dill, I really think you’re missing that extra pow factor in the flavor. I actually always thought just dill made the dip until I realized mint was missing. The mint addition finally gave it that perfect tzatziki taste. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have not traveled to Greece and tried authentic tzatziki sauce (I really hope to some day), but comparing it to the sauces I’ve tried in great Mediterranean restaurants, it seems the taste is pretty darn good for a copy cat.

Tzatziki Zing

To give your tzatziki that extra zing, that extra deliciousness, make sure you use real ingredients. Use good full fat plain Greek yogurt. Don’t ruin this fantastic sauce with a fat free or low fat yogurt. Please….for the sake of your taste buds and your body, use the real deal. It’s already been proven that low fat food, especially dairy is worse for us. Saturated fat is not what’s making us fat! It’s the low fat/fat free “diet” food that’s highly processed and screwing with our bodies. It’s been all overhealth newsin recent years. Low fat dairy means they have to take out the good stuff and replace it with bad stuff, like sweeteners or chemicals to give it better flavor. We’ve made the switch to full fat dairy and haven’t gained a pound, if anything we’re in better health than before, plus our food tastes better.

Regarding the texture of this tzatziki sauce or dip, it’s a matter of preference. I often make a chunky version, but a smoother version with grated cucumbers is what most people prefer. Some tzatziki is smooth and blended, but we prefer this sauce to have a bite to it and not perfectly smooth. If you prefer it super smooth just blend up the final product.

How to Make Tzatziki

I start out by peeling about half the skin off the cucumber. At this point you need to decide if you want your tzatziki a little chunkier or not. I sometimes dice my cucumber really small, but I prefer it grated overall. You can grate it with a box grater, rotary grater (my personal preference) or use a food processor. Then I add the cucumber to a fine mesh colander and add about 1 tsp of kosher salt, stir it up and allow it to sweat and drain excess moisture for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, you can gather up and prep your remaining ingredients in a small bowl.

Once the 30 minutes is up on the cucumbers, I rinse them off really well and then squeeze out as much excess water as possible. Then I add them to the bowl with the yogurt, zest, lemon juice and herbs.

Homemade Tzatziki Ingredients

For the best tzatziki you want the best ingredients like good quality Greek yogurt and fresh herbs.

• Cucumber– I’ve made this recipe with all sorts of cucumbers, including pickling cucumbers we’ve grown ourselves. If you’re using store bought, Persian or English cucumbers are great for this since they have less seeds.
• Greek Yogurt– I only use whole milk creamy Greek Yogurt for this recipe. If you’re low on yogurt you could substitute with some sour cream. A good quality plain thick Greek yogurt is the best for this though. It is after all a yogurt-based dip, so the proper yogurt is highly recommended. Standard plain yogurt will not have the same sourness and texture of Greek yogurt.
• Lemon– For the best flavor, I like to use fresh lemon juice and zest. If you don’t have a lemon on hand, some bottled lemon juice will suffice.
• Garlic– A couple fresh garlic cloves for this recipe is ideal, but if you don’t want raw garlic, you could use granulated garlic, but it honestly won’t be the same.
• Salt– I prefer coarse Kosher salt, but coarse sea salt is fine as well.
• Dill Weed– fresh dill is essential for a great tzatziki. Sometimes it is hard to find, so you can use dried if that’s all you have.
• Mint(Optional)- Fresh mint is optional, but I think it gives the cucumber dip an extra cool edge.

Give this awesome sauce or dip a try let me know how it turns out for you!

Try some of our other Mediterranean Recipes!