Mint and Thyme Labneh with Marinated Tomatoes

Mint and Thyme Labneh with Marinated Tomatoes, The Saison.

To trace the lineage of labneh is to follow a faint line drawn not through cities or empires, but across desert winds and salt-white stones.

This soft, strained yogurt—tangy, thick, resilient—is among the oldest cultivated foods in the Middle East. And yet its longevity is rarely remarked upon. Like the Bedouin who carried it in goatskin pouches across the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, labneh has endured by being underestimated.

For the nomadic Bedouin tribes, whose lives hinged on motion and austerity, labneh was less a delicacy than a necessity. It required no fire, no granary, no fixed dwelling. Milk from sheep or goats was left to sour and thicken in the heat, then strained through woven cloth until firm enough to shape and salt. What emerged was a kind of portable preservation: high in protein, slow to spoil, and compact enough to carry into exile or battle. It was sustenance at its most distilled—caloric density without luxury, flavor forged from scarcity.

That such a food should survive into modernity, let alone find its way into brunch menus and mezze platters in Brooklyn and Berlin, is less surprising than it seems. Labneh answers a very old human desire: not just for nourishment, but for transformation. In straining yogurt to its essence, the process mimics that of the Bedouin cosmology itself—paring away the inessential until only the durable remains.

And yet, to speak of labneh merely in terms of survival would be to miss its cultural radius. In Bedouin society, milk was not simply food; it was honor, economy, and social contract. A guest offered laban or labneh was not just fed but welcomed into the fragile ecology of trust that bound families to one another in a land where rainfall was both calendar and fate. Among Bedouins, hospitality was not a metaphor—it was an ethic encoded into the food itself.

Modern labneh, now often machine-strained and factory-packed, carries with it echoes of this past, though they have been muted. The olive oil swirl, the dusting of za’atar, the clay dish in which it is served—all of these are gestures of memory. But the real inheritance is in the texture: the way the spoon drags slightly through it, the way salt reveals itself slowly. It is a food that seems to remember something.

In a century that has valorized speed, labneh’s appeal may lie in its slowness. It demands time to make and patience to taste. It is, in this sense, an act of resistance—not just to industrial food systems, but to forgetfulness. The Bedouin, now largely sedentary or displaced, have seen their culture fragmented, their routes paved over. But labneh, modest and quietly enduring, remains a map of a world not yet erased.

Mint and Thyme Labneh with Marinated Tomatoes, The Saison.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of labneh yogurt, see directions below if unavailable

• 1/2 cup of fresh mint, minced, plus more for garnish

• 4 cloves of garlic, grated

• 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme, minced

• Lemon zest from 1 lemon

• 1 cup of grape or cherry tomatoes, sliced

• 1/2 cup of olives, pitted and sliced

• 1/2 tablespoon of dried oregano

• Olive oil

• Salt and pepper

Directions

1. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the labneh, mint, garlic, and thyme. Season with salt and pepper and set inside the fridge for 1-2 hours.

2. In another medium-sized bowl, combine the tomato, onion, oregano, and lemon zest. Cover with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Set inside the fridge for 1-2 hours.

3. Spoon the labneh into a bowl or onto a plate. Add the marinated olives and tomatoes, drizzling with olive oil and garnishing with any remaining mint.

4. Serve with pita, crackers, or vegetables.

Serves four.