Tzatziki Dip – Quick and Easy

Tzatziki dip (also known as tzatziki sauce) is such a quick and tasty dip to make. Perfect for a Greek feast or a light snack. It adds a burst of freshness to any meal.

Tzatziki Dip

The slight acidity from the yogurt and lemon coupled with the coolness from the cucumber makes this a great dip to accompany foods that are on the saltier side. Tzatziki dip (also called tzatziki sauce) is super quick to put together. This makes it a great last minute side or sauce.

This recipe is vegetarian friendly. However, instead of using normal Greek yogurt you could easily use a vegan natural yogurt, making it also vegan friendly.

This tzatziki recipe uses a Lebanese cucumber but you should use whatever cucumber you have available to you. If the cucumber is too large, cut off the appropriate amount to match the size of a medium Lebanese cucumber. You ultimately want about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of grated cucumber.

Making Tzatziki Dip

To make Greek tzatziki dip, start by cutting your cucumber in half lengthwise and scooping out all of the seeds from the inside. Feel free to save the seeds for use in a juice or something else.

If you don’t remove the cucumber seeds your dip will get too much liquid in it and be too runny. Grate the, now seedless, cucumber. If there is still too much liquid in the grated cucumber you can pat it dry with some paper towel or let it sit in a strainer to drain off some of the excess liquid.

Now that you have the cucumber grated add it to a bowl. Now add in minced garlic, Greek yogurt, juice from a quarter of a lemon, 1 teaspoon of dried dill and a pinch of salt (about 1/4 teaspoon) and mix until well combined.

I use dried dill in my tzatziki recipe as I don’t often have fresh dill. But if you do have fresh dill then I do strongly recommend using it. This recipe can be made ahead of time (and in fact tastes better if made at least a few hours before).

Substitutions and Changes

This tzatziki dip recipe is made without mint. However, if you are looking to use mint then feel free to sub out the dill for it. If you really need to, then this recipe can be made without both dill and mint. Some flavor will be lost without it, but there is still lots of flavor from the lemon, yogurt, garlic and cucumber.

Leave the garlic out of the dip if you are garlic sensitive, the one clove does still pack a decent punch of garlic. You can also mess around with how finely to grate the cucumber to change the consistency slightly. If you do have lemon then consider adding lemon zest from it to the tzatziki, for some extra lemony flavor.

Bottled lemon juice can work as a replacement to fresh, however some bottled lemon juice can be too sweet. If making it without lemon then I recommend substituting in white wine vinegar.

This tzatziki recipe is made without olive oil. However some people like tzatziki with a bit of olive oil. If you would like to add some olive oil then add 1 tablespoon to the normal recipe when mixing.

As you can tell there are quite a lot of variations that can be made. 1 or 2 changes should work fine but if you change too many things then it will probably end up quite different to what you are expecting.

What to eat with Tzatziki

This tzatziki goes great with lamb or with chicken gyros, either as a small amount on the side of the plate or dolloped over the top of the food. My favorite way to eat tzatziki is to dip bits of toasted or fresh pita bread in.

Tzatziki is also good with veggie sticks. Dip sticks of carrot, cucumber or celery into the tzatziki and enjoy and healthy work or school snack.

Storing the Tzatziki Dip

To best store tzatziki put it in a clean air tight container. Stored like this it will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days. This means you can make it a day or 2 ahead of time.

Tzatziki can also be frozen. It will keep up to 3 months in the freezer. However, whilst it will be safe to eat during that time, the consistency of the dip may be affected.