Vegan Garlic White Sauce for Shawarma

Top-9-Free Adaptations

The perfect sauce can take a rather boring dinner and make it extraordinary. This dairy and egg-free, garlicky white sauce is perfect for shawarma bowls or to add a punch of garlicky goodness to anything. This recipe is adapted to fit our allergies from the white sauce recipe in the Halal Cart Chicken and Rice recipe from Moriyban.com.

Here is the original recipe I have adapted to meet our allergies. Her chicken shawarma recipe is outstanding! https://moribyan.com/halal-cart-chicken-and-rice/

As with any recipe, I show products and ingredients that are safe for our particular allergies or available where I live in the United States. Use this as a guide to help you make amazing recipes that are safe for your allergies. In place of the sour cream, I used Tofutti Better than Sour Cream, which is my son’s favorite dairy-free product. If you can’t have soy, use whatever dairy-free substitution works best for you. This recipe is really very versatile as the garlic, lemon, and pepper bring the bulk of the flavor! I LOVE the Simple Truth Organic dairy-free sour cream found at my Kroger affiliate store, which is soy-free and contains no top allergens (it does contain coconut oil). To make this egg-free, I used our favorite vegan mayo, Hellmann’s vegan. Usually, we use regular Real Hellmann’s in our home, but I wanted to make sure this recipe is as amazing for those who need it egg-free as well. It totally is! If you do not have access to a safe, vegan mayonnaise, here is a link to the soy-based vegan mayo recipe I used for years.

Toum:

The key ingredient in this recipe is garlic in the form of toum. I hadn’t heard of toum until making Moriyban’s recipe for shawarma, but was fascinated with learning more about it! If you’ve never heard of toum, it is a Lebanese dip made from garlic that is emulsified with oil, lemon, and salt. It is delicious, but strong for those who don’t love garlic. It is the perfect ingredient to add some garlic flavor to various dips and sauces. While I have read many recipes and watched tutorials on how to make toum, I decided to take the shortcut route this time. Here is a great tutorial I found on making toum. Trader Joe’s sells a garlic dip, while not labeled as toum, is essentially same thing. There is also a brand of toum called Toom, which I’ve seen being sold at multiple stores near me, including Costco. Note: If you are gluten-free, then research the products made by Toom, as the garlic dip from Trader Joe’s is NOT labeled gluten-free at the time of this writing (March 2025).

Comparison:

I did a taste test between Toom and the garlic spread sold by Trader Joe’s. Both have almost identical ingredients, and unless you need something specifically labeled gluten-free, I see no reason to buy one over the other. The taste and texture are very similar and while not identical, in this application any differences would not be noticeable. I have found the version at Trader Joe’s to be cheaper than Toom at my other grocery stores, though.

In my adapted recipe, I list a range for quantities of ingredients for the seasonings. My family is more sensitive to garlic so I use the lower-end quantity for both toum and black pepper. I recommend you start adding both ingredients from the lower end of the range and add more to adjust for your taste.