Balsamic Vinaigrette Recipe

Balsamic vinaigrette is the easiest vinaigrette to get right and the easiest to ruin with a bad bottle of vinegar. Done properly it is a thick, dark, slightly sweet emulsion that clings to a leaf instead of pooling at the bottom of the bowl, built on nothing more than good balsamic, good olive oil, a spoonful of mustard to hold it together, and a few minutes of whisking. There is no cooking involved.

The technique that matters is the same one behind every stable vinaigrette: the oil has to go in slowly while you whisk, not all at once. Rush that step and you get a thin, separated dressing that tastes fine for about thirty seconds before it splits again. Do it right and it holds together long enough to dress a whole salad. This makes a little over 3/4 cup, enough for four to six salads.

Equipment

A jar with a tight lid does the emulsifying work here nearly as well as a whisk and with far less mess, because shaking breaks the oil into droplets fast and the honey and mustard keep them suspended once they are there. I use the Le Parfait Super Jars with Wire-Bail Clamp Lid for exactly this, since the wire clamp actually seals under the pressure of hard shaking, which a screw-top jar often does not. If you would rather whisk it by hand in a bowl, the Stainless Steel Whisk Egg Beater is the right tool, and I set the Large Capacity Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl with Scale on a damp towel so it stays put while I pour oil with one hand and whisk with the other. The scale also means you can weigh the oil and vinegar out precisely instead of eyeballing a ratio that is easy to get wrong.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 small garlic clove, minced or pressed to a paste
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground

Ingredient Selection

The ratio here is about 3 to 1, oil to vinegar, which is the standard starting point for a vinaigrette and the right one for balsamic specifically, since balsamic already carries more sweetness and body than a wine vinegar and does not need to be cut as sharply. If your bottle of balsamic is on the thin, sharp, cheap end, you can pull the oil back to a 5-to-2 ratio to compensate; if it is a thick, aged, syrupy balsamic, you may want to add a splash more vinegar to keep the dressing from tasting flat.

Buy a balsamic vinegar you would actually taste on its own. The gap between a five-dollar bottle and a fifteen-dollar bottle is enormous here, because cheap balsamic is often just wine vinegar with caramel color and sugar added, and it tastes like it. You do not need a 25-year aged Modena balsamic for a salad dressing, but you do want one that tastes rounded and a little fruity rather than flatly sour.

The mustard is not just flavor, it is the emulsifier doing the actual work of holding the oil and vinegar together. Skip it and the dressing separates within minutes instead of staying loosely combined for the length of a meal. Honey rounds out balsamic's sharper edge; if you want the dressing without any added sugar, you can leave it out, but taste and adjust the vinegar down slightly if you do.

Mince the garlic fine or press it, because a whole raw sliver in a vinaigrette is an unpleasant surprise on a fork. If raw garlic is too aggressive for your taste, a small pinch of garlic powder in its place is a fair substitute and dissolves more evenly besides.

Method

Mise en Place

1. Mince the garlic and measure everything out: Press or mince the garlic to a fine paste, and have the vinegar, mustard and honey measured before you start, since once the oil starts going in you want to be able to move continuously.

Build the Base

1. Combine the vinegar, mustard, honey, garlic, salt and pepper: Whisk them together in a bowl, or shake them together in the jar, until the mustard and honey are fully dissolved into the vinegar with no streaks left. This base has to be uniform before the oil goes in, or the oil will separate around the undissolved lumps instead of emulsifying evenly.

Emulsify

1. Add the oil slowly while whisking, or shake hard in the jar: If whisking, pour the olive oil in a thin, steady stream while whisking constantly, so the oil breaks into small droplets as it enters rather than pooling on top. If using the jar method, add the oil, clamp the lid, and shake hard for a full 20 to 30 seconds until the dressing turns uniformly cloudy and dark with no visible layer of oil on top.
2. Check the emulsion: It should look thick, opaque and evenly colored, not glossy and separated. If it looks split, keep whisking or shaking; a vinaigrette this simple almost always comes together with another 10 seconds of work.

Finish

1. Taste and adjust: Taste on a piece of lettuce rather than off the spoon, since dressing tastes stronger straight than it does on greens. Add more salt if it is flat, more honey if it is too sharp, or a little more oil if it is too sharp and thin at the same time.

Serving and Application

This holds up to sturdier greens and mix-ins better than a delicate lemon vinaigrette does. It is the right dressing for a caprese-style salad, a spinach salad with strawberries or a chopped salad with cheese and nuts in it, where you want a dressing with enough body to actually coat rather than run off. It also works well as a finishing drizzle over roasted vegetables, grilled chicken, or a plate of sliced tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, where the sweetness plays directly against the acid.

Popular Variations

• Shallot balsamic: Replace the garlic with 1 tablespoon of very finely minced shallot for a softer, sweeter allium note that is less sharp than raw garlic.
• Herbed balsamic: Add 1 teaspoon of dried Italian herbs or a tablespoon of finely chopped fresh basil for a more assertive, herb-forward version.
• Balsamic-Parmesan: Whisk in 2 tablespoons of finely grated Parmesan after the emulsion comes together, for extra body and a savory edge. Best used within a few days since the cheese settles as it sits.
• Fig or berry balsamic: Stir in a teaspoon of fig jam or mashed raspberries in place of the honey, for a fruitier dressing that pairs especially well with a cheese board salad.

Make Ahead, Storage and Reheating

This is not a dairy or raw-egg preparation, so it is more forgiving than a creamy dressing, but it should still be treated as a perishable homemade food rather than left on the counter indefinitely. Store it in a sealed jar in the refrigerator and it will keep well for up to two weeks. The oil will thicken and cloud in the cold; that is normal, not spoilage, and it clears again once it sits at room temperature for ten minutes.

It will separate on standing, oil rising to the top and the vinegar-and-mustard base settling below. That is expected for a vinaigrette and not a sign anything went wrong. Shake or whisk it back together before every use; it comes back quickly since the mustard is still doing its job.

It does not freeze well. The emulsion breaks apart on thawing and does not fully recombine, leaving an oily, separated dressing no amount of shaking will fully fix.

Nutrition

An estimate, calculated ingredient by ingredient from USDA FoodData Central entries by hand rather than measured in a lab. The recipe makes about 3/4 cup, and the figures below are given per 2 tablespoons, a realistic amount of dressing on a salad rather than a share of the batch.

References

• FoodSafety.gov: Cold Food Storage Chart, on refrigerating homemade dressings at 40F or below
• Oregon State University Extension Service: Herbs and Vegetables in Oil (SP 50-701), on why homemade oil-based mixtures with garlic should be refrigerated and used promptly

Related Guides

For the same oil-and-acid technique with a sharper, herb-forward result, see Italian Dressing, which uses the same jar-shaking emulsion method. If you want to understand the ratios and structure behind every vinaigrette on this site, The Five Mother Sauces covers the emulsion principles this recipe is built on.

Thank You

Thanks for making your own instead of reaching for a bottle full of stabilizers. If you land on a ratio you prefer, sharper or sweeter than mine, I want to hear about it. Drop me a note through the contact page. More dressings are on the way, so tell me which one you want next.

Chef Alan
Wine Drop Cookery
35 years, Six Four Diamond Awards