Creamy cilantro that doubles as a salad dressing and dipping sauce is made with yogurt, sour cream, garlic, jalapeno and lots of cilantro! This magical sauce will become your new favorite sauce and is great for dipping, on salads, tacos, and grilled meats. 
I always have a bottle of homemade cilantro sauce in the fridge and I use it almost every day on just about anything. It’s been featured a couple of times as a dipping sauce and dressing in a couple of my recipes and I’ve received a ton of requests for the recipe so here it is! This creamy cilantro sauce is EVERYTHING you want from a sauce and much more. If I had to pick one sauce/dressing to use forever this is it, you guys.
It’s super easy to make and lasts a good week in the fridge. It’s versatile and can be used as a dipping sauce for veggies and fries, or as a salad dressing, on tacos or grilled meats, burrito bowls and on just about anything!
To Make Creamy Cilantro Sauce & Dressing You Will Need:
- Cilantro
- Greek Yogurt
- Sour Cream
- Jalapeno
- Garlic
- Olive Oil
- Lemon or lime juice
Making the dressing is as simple as adding all the ingredients to the food processor and blending for 1 minute or until the sauce is chunky and the cilantro and garlic are finely minced. If you would like the sauce super creamy and green, go ahead and blend it until desired Consistency is reached!
How to Store Cilantro Sauce
To store the cilantro sauce/dressing after you’ve made it, transfer into a glass mason jar, dressing bottle, or air-tight container and refrigerate for up to one week in the fridge.
The BEST Creamy Cilantro Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 cups cilantro leaves and stems, about 1 small bunch
- 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
- 1/2 cup sour cream, can sub with Greek Yogurt
- 3-4 cloves garlic
- 1/4 cup lime or lemon juice
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin, optional
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 jalapeno, deseeded, optional
Instructions
- Add all the ingredients to the food processor, season with salt and pepper. Blend until smooth and creamy. Taste and adjust salt and pepper to taste.
- Transfer to a dressing bottle or air-tight container and store in the fridge for up to 1 week.
- Use on salads, tacos, burrito bowls, as a dipping sauce or on rice and grilled meats.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I made this and mine came out perfect. I squeezed one lemon and was just shy of 1/4 cup. It made it the perfect tart! I plan on using on salad and fish tacos.
The best recipe so far! Thank you!
This is one of the best sauces I’ve ever tried, we too use it on everything Super delicious,
I used equal parts zero fat greek yogurt, light sour cream, and light mayonnaise to equal 1/2 cup. The mayo really balanced out the acidity and was delicious.
So delicious I made this sauce for the 1st time for my fish tacos amazing flavor, I also used sauce with fried plantains, fried chicken, salad, recipe is on my top list of sauces!!! Thanks for sharing!’
We love this sauce and make it whenever there’s leftover cilantro. So so good and put it on everything!
I substituted Cacique’s Fresca Mexicana crema (Mexican Fresh cream) instead of Sour cream, used half lemon/ half lime and it was spatula lickin’ good!
Can this be stored in the freezer?
I haven’t tried freezing it!
Works great as a cole slaw sauce. I didn’t make this for that, but realized I had half a head of cabbage left, so what the heck. I put cilantro and lime in my slaw but had used them for this. Yummy version of slaw.
I made a mistake making this that turned out to be surprise. I pulsed the cilantro, garlic and lime for about 3-5 seconds then put in the sour cream and yogurt only to realize the yogurt was vanilla flavored. Oh crap! I was able to scoop out 1/4 cup of yogurt and then add more sour cream. I added pinch or two of cayenne and it turned out really good. It had good garlic taste up front and then a heat and slight sweet from the cayenne and vanilla yogurt.
Thanks for the inspiration! I buy a condiment sauce from Trader Joe’s called Zhoug. Almost exactly the same ingredients except for a few spices, so added some organic sour cream and yogurt for a wonderful dressing, and sauce for quesadillas!
Yum! Zhough is a traditional Yemeni sauce used for topping on rice and many other dishes. My family is from Yemen so I try to add some traditional spicy flavors to my dishes 🙂
It would be nice if you had answered Claire’s question…….can this be frozen. Why ask for comments, if you don’t give back info requested on your recipe. Not a good way to do business. Bonnie crim I see where you are trying to not accept this by saying that I’ve made this comment before. No I haven’t.
Personally I wouldn’t freeze since it has dairy in it 😊
It’s too tart for my 92yr mom. Any suggestions?
Trisha – replace either the yogurt or sour cream with mayo and see if that helps. Also reduce the amount of citrus.
It would be nice if you had answered Claire’s question…….can this be frozen. Why ask for comments, if you don’t give back info requested on your recipe. Not a good way to do business. Bonnie crim
excellent!
This SAUCE was so delicious ! Iused it on taco salad but would also be yummy on fish tacos or beef tacos!
For a better taste, this should be strained
Tried this out as a copy-cat for the salad dressing at a local restaurant and this came very close. i did half lemon and half lime juice. I had to add about a teaspoon of sugar to even out how tart it was. very good as a salad dressing with that little modification!
Would you be able to freeze this? I have a TON of fresh cilantro and I would love to make lots of this sauce!
Claire and Bonnie, I too have a ton of cilantro. It freezes well with olive oil. (So – freeze it until you are ready to make any sauce or anything with it).
I hope this helps.
Nathalia
amazing! its so good I could almost drink it!
great sauce!!! i loved it.
This looks amazing! Thank for sharing you’re creativity
It looks DELICIOUS! I’m going to try this recipe