Dairy-Free Tzatziki

I can't argue with a gyro. It's like a sandwich but with an excuse to spread it with garlic. What more could you want? Of course, the medium of choice for garlic in a gyro is usually tzatziki, a yogurt-based sauce, and not everyone in my house can eat yogurt. What's a lazy cook to do?

The answer is substitution.

Sour Supreme is a fantastic soy-based sour cream substitute. As it turns out, sour cream tastes almost exactly like yogurt. For real. I can't make this up. Around where I live, it can be found at any major grocery store, which is why I'm naming it specifically. Hopefully your local store has it as well.

Tzatziki is a fairly simple sauce. Overall, it contains yogurt (or in our case, sour cream), cucumber, dill, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil.

Nobody wants a runny tzatziki, so we need to start by reducing the amount of moisture we put in. To do this, slice one cucumber straight down the middle lengthwise. Take a spoon and remove the seeds. They're mostly moisture and they're not very flavorful. Toss 'em! Lay the cucumbers out and give them a nice heavy sprinkle of kosher salt. This will help suck moisture out of the cucumber, thickening the resulting sauce.

I regularly drained the accumulated water and re-salted as appropriate. I would have liked to let it dry out for an hour, but I'm impatient...

Let's begin making some tzatziki! I will be using a food processor (the best thing ever), so if you don't have one, be prepared to chop very, very finely.

When the cucumber is dry, drain the reimaining liquid and coarsely chop the cucumber into slices. If you're not using a food processor, weep softly while you chop the cucumber into tiny bits, then chop it finer still. Toss the chunks in the food processor.

Chop up 2-3 cloves of garlic. I like garlic, so I used three. Again, if you're using a food processor, coarsely is fine. If you're not... You get the idea. Toss into the bowl of your food processor.

Next up comes some fresh dill. I suppose dry would work, but where is your sense of adventure? I chopped about 1.5 tsp of dill. (If you only have dry, 1/2 tsp should do.) Into the food processor with it! I usually reserve about 1/2 tsp of this for later if I'm doing it in the food processor.

Now that you've got a few things in the bowl, pop on the lid and process until the cucumbers are very fine, almost pureed. If you're chopping by hand, feel superior over the people who stooped to the level of using modern conveniences while you mix the ingredients in a bowl.

Remove the cucumber mix to a bowl large enough to also contain the sour cream. Add the reserved dill, the whole container of "yogurt," (about 1.5 cups) and a tablespoon each of extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice. Mix, then add salt and pepper to taste. Usually you'll want at least 1-2 tsp of salt.

At this point, taste test on some pita crisps or other crackers to make sure you haven't made any terrible mistakes. Assuming all has gone well, toss the whole works into the fridge for an hour to thicken and combine flavors.

Enjoy on gyros, pita chips, or your sandwich. It's good stuff.