Traditionally made from mayonnaise with garlic and cilantro, this garlic sauce is the quintessential dressing in Venezuela. It is used as the default seasoning in many of its meals, especially in barbecues. In addition, it is essential in appetizers, as pecking is known. Surely if you have tried the tequeños in a typical restaurant, they were accompanied with this sauce. Keep reading because here we tell you everything you need to know to prepare it.
Before starting, we want to comment on a couple of points to take into account when preparing. The first, which makes making the garlic sauce extremely quick as well as extremely simple, has to do with the mayonnaise, which is the base. You can go with the recipe using ready-made mayonnaise (from a boat, come on). However, if you dare with your own homemade mayonnaise, we have a very complete guide with details and tips so you don’t cut yourself.
The other important point is the amount of garlic that we are going to put in this sauce. There are those who like it to be spicy, but there are also those who prefer a mild flavor. In addition, we must bear in mind that if we let the sauce rest, the garlic flavor will be more pronounced, so we recommend that you always keep this in mind. If you are looking for a very specific point and, of course, you want to avoid ending up with a sauce to go hunting vampires, you will see that in the explanations we emphasize that you add the garlic little by little. That’s the secret to not going overboard!
- Preparation time: 5 minutes
- Cooking time: 5 minutes
- Total time: 10 minutes (plus 1 hour of rest)
- Servings: 10, 300 g
- Category: sauces
- Type of cuisine: Venezuelan
- Calories per serving (kcal) : 215
Garlic Sauce Ingredients
- 3 or 4 cloves of garlic
- 300g mayonnaise
- Fresh cilantro to taste (or parsley in its absence)
- olive oil (optional)
- A few drops of lemon juice (optional)
- ground black pepper (optional)
- salt (optional)
How to make garlic sauce
We are going to start the preparation of the garlic sauce by peeling about 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, depending on its size and how strong we want the sauce. We cut the dry part of the stem and, in addition, we remove the germ to make it more digestible. To do this, cut each clove of garlic in half lengthwise and remove the germ from the center. Finally, we chop them up a bit.
Peel the garlic and remove the germ
Then we continue with the recipe taking 300 g of mayonnaise, either prepared or freshly made. We put it in the glass of the blender. You can use both the glass mixer and the hand mixer.
Pour the mayonnaise into a bowl
Add the garlic into the glass along with the mayonnaise. We can add only part of the garlic so as not to overdo it and rectify it in the next step.
Add the garlic to the mayonnaise
Now we grind everything together until the garlic has been well integrated with the mayonnaise. This may take a couple of minutes. We will also see that, when beating, the mayonnaise takes on a creamier consistency. We taste and if we consider it necessary, we add more garlic, bearing in mind that when it rests the flavor will be more pronounced. We crush.
Blend the garlic with the mayonnaise
Once well integrated, we are going to season our sauce with fresh coriander or, failing that, parsley. First, we rinse it and dry it very well. Next, we remove the stems and add just the leaves to the garlic mayonnaise.
Add the coriander
Again, we give it a little blow with the mixer, just enough so that the coriander is finely chopped and that we see that the sauce takes on a slight green color and with bits of coriander still visible. Likewise, we rectify the amount of cilantro at this point.
Blend with coriander
Finally, taste the sauce and, optionally, season to taste with a little olive oil, a few drops of lemon juice, salt (little), and pepper. Although it can be consumed directly, we recommend letting it rest for at least 1 hour in the fridge so that the flavors are well integrated.
Rest in the fridge
Easy Preparation Overview
- Peel the garlic, remove the germ and chop them
- Put the mayonnaise in the blender jar
- Add the garlic to the mayonnaise
- Blend everything together for a couple of minutes
- Add coriander to taste
- Shred again a bit
- Adjust with oil, lemon, pepper, and salt if desired, and leave to rest for 1 hour in the fridge
