Sauces & dressings · Creamy sauces & dips

Tzatziki

Name: Tzatziki
Prep time: 15 min
Total time: 15 min
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups whole-milk Greek yogurt; 1/2 large cucumber, grated and squeezed dry; 2 cloves garlic, grated; 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil; 1/2, juiced lemon; 2 tbsp fresh dill, chopped; 3/4 tsp salt

Greece's yogurt-cucumber sauce, thick enough to stand a pita in: strained yogurt, squeezed cucumber, garlic and dill. The rare creamy sauce that's mostly protein and water.

Time: 15 min (15 prep + 0 cook)
Servings: 6
Per serving: 101 kcal
Protein: 6 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups whole-milk Greek yogurt400 g
1/2 large cucumber, grated and squeezed dry200 g
2 cloves garlic, grated8 g
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil20 g
1/2, juiced lemon20 g
2 tbsp fresh dill, chopped6 g
3/4 tsp salt4 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Grate the cucumber, salt it lightly, and squeeze it in a clean towel until it stops dripping. This step is not optional — unsqueezed cucumber turns tzatziki to soup within the hour.
Stir everything into the yogurt.
Rest 30 minutes in the fridge; the garlic mellows and the dill blooms.
Serve cold, with a thread of olive oil on top. Keeps three days and gets better for two of them.

What do I eat it with?

Grilled chicken and fish, roasted vegetables, or cucumber spears if you want the whole plate to stay where the sauce is. With pita it's still one of the best deals in the sauce world — check what the same spoonful of ranch or aioli costs.

Why this score

moderately filling

No single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

25% of kcal

79% water

3 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 606 kcal goes into the pot, 658 g of ingredients comes out as ~520 g of food → 117 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 117
Protein: (25%); 7 g
Fat: (56%); 7 g
Carbohydrates: (19%); 6 g
of which sugar: 3 g
Fiber: <1 g
Sodium: 326 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More sauces & dressings

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.