Skordalia: The Greek Garlic Sauce, Two Ways

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Skordalia is the Greek garlic sauce: raw garlic pounded to a paste with salt, then let down with olive oil over a base of potato, soaked bread or ground nuts until it is thick enough to spread. It is a meze and an accompaniment rather than a dish — it goes beside salt cod, fried aubergine and courgette, beetroot, or a plate of boiled greens. This makes enough for six.

Plate I · IllustrationRecord

There is no single correct base

The question people arrive with — potato or bread? — has no answer, because skordalia is a method rather than a fixed recipe.

Diane Kochilas lists the bases plainly: “Dried bread, boiled potatoes, and nuts, especially almonds, pine nuts or walnuts, may all be used”, with regional versions reaching for chestnuts in one part of the Peloponnese and pistachios in the Asia Minor Greek tradition, and island variants that bring in feta and mint or yoghurt and almonds. What holds across all of them is the garlic, the salt, the olive oil and the pounding.

Fig. I · Three bases, one methodDiagram

Potato500g floury, boiled whole in their skins

The smoothest and mildest of the three, and the most forgiving of a heavy hand with the oil. This is the version most people mean by skordalia, and the right place to start. Rice it warm: cold potato breaks down less easily, which helps, but takes up oil less easily too, which does not.

Bread150g stale and crustless, wetted and squeezed dry

Coarser, sharper and more rustic, and the older answer — what you make when there is stale bread to use and no reason to boil anything. Pounded in a little at a time, alternating with the oil and vinegar, it takes about ten minutes by hand.

Nutsalmonds, pine nuts or walnuts — not written on this page

Rich and mealy, and thoroughly traditional: one Peloponnese version uses chestnuts, an Asia Minor Greek one pistachios. Named here because the source names it; this page does not write it, so it carries no measures.

Constant across all threeRaw garlic pounded to a paste with coarse salt · olive oil worked in slowly · acid, vinegar or lemon · a mortar and a spoon, never a blade.

Potato is the version most people mean, and the easiest to get right: smooth, mild, forgiving of a heavy hand with the oil. Bread is sharper and coarser and reads as older — it is what you make when there is stale bread to use and no reason to boil potatoes. If you have never made it, start with potato, then make the bread one the following week and decide for yourself.

Why it turns to glue, and how not to

This is the failure everyone has had, and it has a mechanism worth understanding, because the fix is counter-intuitive.

Fig. II · Why it turns to glueDiagram

Potato starch sits in granules inside cells. Break the cells and the starch escapes, hydrates, and turns elastic. Every tool below is ranked by how many cells it breaks.

cells intactcells torn apart

Ricer, mouli, mortarUse these

Potato is pressed through or pounded rather than cut and whipped, and most cells come through whole. This is how the sauce gets smooth without getting elastic — and it is how it has always been made, potato by potato, drop of oil by drop of oil.

Wooden spoonFine, with a rule

The right tool for working the oil in — provided you stop the moment each addition has disappeared, rather than stirring on for smoothness.

Electric beaterTexture starts to pull

Fast, repeated shear ruptures cells in quantity. You can feel the moment it goes: the mixture starts to cling to the beater and stand in peaks.

Food processorGummy — the failure

"A food processor's blade is too swift and violent and results in a gummy skordalia." Cells are torn apart wholesale, the free starch hydrates, and nothing recovers it: you cannot stir glue back into a sauce.

The counter-intuitive part is that the smoothness you chase by working it longer is exactly what destroys it. Less work, not more.

A potato holds its starch inside cells, in granules. Cook it and those granules swell; rupture the cells and the starch escapes into the liquid around them, where it hydrates into something stretchy and adhesive. Mashing gently keeps most cells intact. Beating, and above all blending, tears them apart wholesale — which is why Kochilas warns that “a food processor’s blade is too swift and violent and results in a gummy skordalia”.

So: a ricer or a mouli, never a blender. A wooden spoon, not a whisk. And stop the moment each addition of oil has disappeared, rather than stirring on for smoothness — the smoothness you are chasing is the thing that destroys it.

The oil goes in slowly for a related reason. Poured in all at once it sits on the surface, and getting it to combine takes the very stirring you are trying to avoid. In a stream, alternated with the vinegar, it goes in with a fraction of the work.

How do you make it?

Boil the potatoes whole and unpeeled in salted water until a knife meets no resistance, about 25 minutes. Cut potatoes take on water through their cut faces, and water is the one thing this sauce cannot absorb.

While they cook, pound the garlic with coarse salt in a mortar until it is a smooth wet paste. The salt is doing the work of an abrasive; without it the cloves slide under the pestle.

Drain the potatoes, saving a cup of the water. Peel them while they are still hot enough to steam and pass them through a ricer into a bowl. Add the garlic paste. Then work in the olive oil in a slow stream, alternating with the vinegar, stirring firmly and briefly with a wooden spoon and stopping each time the liquid disappears. If it goes stiffer than a thick spread, loosen it with a spoonful of the cooking water.

Taste for salt and acid. It should be sharp, and it should announce the garlic. Let it stand for twenty minutes before it goes to the table.

For the bread version, wet 150g of stale crustless bread under the tap, squeeze it dry, crumble it, and pound it into the garlic a little at a time, alternating with the oil and vinegar — around ten minutes of work for something dense and spreadable.

Plate II · PaintingRecord

What to eat it with

Salt cod fried in batter is the classic pairing, and on 25 March and Palm Sunday it is close to obligatory in Greece. Beyond that: fried courgette or aubergine slices, roast or boiled beetroot with its leaves, cold boiled greens, or simply good bread. It also sits well beside our Greek lemon potatoes, and on a meze table next to dakos.

Which oil to use is worth a moment: 150ml of it goes in raw and is never heated, so the sauce tastes precisely of the bottle. A robust, peppery oil stands up to that much garlic in a way a mild one cannot.

Plate III · PhotographRecord

Where THYMELIA stands

THYMELIA is a UK house of Greek foods working two harvests: raw thyme honey from Chania in western Crete, and early-harvest extra virgin olive oil from the hill country above Kalamata in the southern Peloponnese. There is no shop yet, and we name no date for one. How we choose a harvest is at sourcing, what we will publish per batch is at testing, and the olive-oil world from the top is at olive oil.

Recipe · Skordalia: The Greek Garlic Sauce, Two WaysCard

Prep

20 min

Cook

25 min

Total

45 min

Makes

Serves 6 as a meze

Ingredients

• 500g floury potatoes, unpeeled — or 150g stale crustless bread for the bread version
• 4 to 6 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tsp coarse sea salt, plus more to taste
• 150ml extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar, or the juice of half a lemon
• 2 to 3 tbsp of the potato cooking water, if needed

Method

1. 01
   Boil the potatoes whole

   Put the potatoes in cold salted water, bring to the boil and simmer in their skins until a knife goes through without resistance, about 25 minutes. Whole and unpeeled matters: cut potatoes take on water, and water is the one thing this sauce cannot carry.

2. 02
   Pound the garlic

   While they cook, pound the garlic with the coarse salt in a mortar until it is a smooth, wet paste with no fragments left. The salt is the abrasive; without it the garlic slides rather than breaks down.

3. 03
   Rice the potatoes warm

   Drain the potatoes, keeping a cup of the water. Peel them as soon as you can hold them and pass them through a ricer or mouli into a bowl. Do not mash them with a beater and do not put them anywhere near a food processor.

4. 04
   Work in the oil and the acid

   Add the garlic paste to the potato. Then work in the olive oil in a slow stream, alternating with the vinegar, stirring firmly with a wooden spoon and stopping as soon as each addition disappears. Loosen with a spoonful of the cooking water if it stiffens past spreading.

5. 05
   Season and rest

   Taste for salt and acid — it should be sharp and unapologetically garlicky. Let it stand for 20 minutes before serving; the garlic settles and the texture tightens slightly.

6. 06
   The bread version

   For bread skordalia, wet the stale bread under the tap, squeeze it dry and crumble it, then pound it into the garlic paste a little at a time, alternating with the oil and vinegar, until dense and spreadable — about ten minutes by hand.