What is Tzatziki Sauce?
A sauce made with Greek yogurt blended with garlic, lemon juice, cucumber and seasonings such as dill. It has a smooth texture and a sharp, rich taste. Tzatziki sauce is used with Mediterranean dishes such as grilled meats, souvlaki, falafel and gyro.
What does Tzatziki Sauce Taste Like?
Sour is one of the five main tastes. It is tart and bright, sometimes with a mouth-puckering quality. Sour is a naturally occurring flavor found in many foods, including citrus, vinegar, various dairy products, and certain fruits. Sour is used to enhance a dish or drink and is used as both a main and complimentary flavor.
Spicy is a flavor that brings heat and fire to food by creating a burning sensation in the mouth or sinuses. Spicy flavors come from hot peppers, horseradish, and wasabi. Spicy adds a kick and sometimes complexity to a dish and releases endorphins, creating a mildly addictive quality.
Ingredients
Greek yogurt is a dairy product made from milk fermented with healthy bacteria to thicken it into the product we know. With Greek yogurt and extra step is taken to strain all excess whey, creating a richer and creamier product. Greek yogurt is off white, or white in color and has a gentle tangy and milky flavor. The texture is thick and creamy without tasting very fatty. Greek yogurt can be eaten plain or incorporated as an ingredient into a dish.
The cucumber is a vine-growing vegetable with a shiny, smooth green skin and a long round body. Cucumbers vary in size depending on when they were picked and the variety of the vegetable. They can be a few inches, or over a foot long and are wide like a zucchini. Though smooth, they skin may be ridged, or have sparse and tiny rough spots. The flesh is a pale white green with a soft yet firm and crunchy texture that is full of water. Seeds run down the middle of the cucumber. This vegetable has a refreshing and mildly green and watery taste. Cucumbers are best eaten raw.
Lemon juice is made from the flesh of the pulpy yellow lemon fruit. The juice is squeezed from the flesh of the lemon and is a pale yellow color. The flavor is very sour and bright. Lemon juice is used in multiple cuisines around the world to brighten and enhance the flavors of the other ingredients. Lemon juice is used to make lemonade and goes well on fish. It has many uses.
Garlic is used in cuisines around the world and is extremely popular for its depth of flavor. The garlic bulb forms underneath the soil and is harvested once it reaches maturity. The bulb typically has thin, dry, white and flaky skin, surrounding the individual cloves. Often there are 10-12 cloves to a bulb/head of garlic. The cloves are cream colored with a strong smell and flavor that is spicy and sharp. Garlic takes on a nutty flavor in addition, when cooked. It is used in countless dishes, sauces, breads and more.
Salt is a mineral composed mostly of sodium chloride. It is the main flavoring used in food and is naturally occurring in certain foods, such as cheese, beets, meat and celery, plus many others. Salt is white and has finer granules than sugar. Many commercial salts include iodide, while others exclude it. Most salts are white, while some are naturally pale pink with minerals. Salt brings out the flavor of something and can create a tangy mouthfeel, if used in excess.
Sugar comes from sugar cane and sugar beets. The sugar is extracted from the juice of both plants and refined into the granulated substance known as sugar. Sucrose, the sweet substance of sugar is a combination of glucose and fructose. White sugar is composed of tiny white, dry granules. The flavor is sweet and neutral. Brown sugar is brown and has more moisture, with a richer flavor that hints at molasses. Sugar is used in both sweet and savory foods.
Fresh dill is a a fringed green herb, with slender stalks. The fringe of the dill is dried using mild heat or air, and is gently ground into tiny, short, thread-width pieces. The color is a muted green when dried and has delicate flavor of fennel and anise with a hint of bitterness. Dried dill is commonly used in egg dishes, savory herbed baked goods and with fish.
The peppercorn plant grows in tropical climate and produces tiny black fruit. The fruit is dried and become hard. At this point it is ground into a textured powder comprised of black and grey dots. It has a flavor that is spicy, pungent and sharp. Pepper is an extremely popular spice, especially in Western cuisines and lends a gentle heat to dishes. There are different varieties of black pepper and the flavor changes subtly because of this.
