What Are Vinaigrettes?
There was a period, in the early to mid 2000s, when I ordered every salad with “butter and balsamic”. I sprayed them one at a time and then gently tossed them with a fork to distribute them evenly. It wasn’t good, but it made me feel like I could control my diet (and calories), which was very important to me in the early to mid 2000s.
In short, these salads were bleak, mainly because oil and vinegar work so much better together than separately. And when I say “together,” I don’t mean “on the same plate,” I mean “emulsified into a vinaigrette.”
This is really all that vinaigrette is – often a weakly stable emulsion of vinegar (an aqueous solution of acidic acid, and sometimes flavorings) and oil (fat). Water solutions and fats don’t like to hang together, but letting them separate (or pouring them separately, as I did in my youth) can wreak havoc on your salad.
It’s not just aesthetics. According to Serious Eats , unemulsified oil can literally ruin your greens:
It’s like this: lettuce grows outdoors in places where it rains. To protect themselves, lettuce leaves have a thin, waxy, water-resistant layer on their surface. In a culinary sense, this means that water-based liquids like vinegar or lemon juice drip off the leaves immediately, and oils tend to stick to them and cause them to soften and wilt.
However, mix the oil and vinegar together and the acid will remain suspended in the oil, which will stick to the leaves, giving them a scent.
Getting proper emulsification can be tricky, especially if you don’t add other ingredients or rely solely on the whisk. Fortunately, you only need two things to make a perfectly emulsified vinaigrette: mustard and a bricklayer’s jar.
Mustard helps on a chemical level. The mucus that is present on the outer shell of the seed is a natural emulsifier . It combines hydrophilic and hydrophobic, forcing them to get along and stay together. The higher the stickiness, the longer your dressing will remain emulsified. (Yellow mustard doesn’t work very well, but dijon and stone earth work wonders.) A good ratio is one part mustard to four parts oil and four parts vinegar.
The Mason’s Jar (or any jar with a lid) is another key player. Jars are my favorite tool for making vinaigrette for several reasons that I explained earlier , but I’ll explain it again, just to cover with the lid again:
Not only do you probably already have it, but by shaking the ingredients of the dressing together, they become emulsified, which is not possible even with the most vigorous whipping. You simply pour your favorite vinaigrette ingredients into a jar, close it, and shake until you have a smooth mixture. Then you pour it over your salad. Then eat your salad. Oh no, have you changed? It’s good that it’s already in a resealable container. Just put it in the refrigerator until you make another salad coming soon because you are taking very good care of yourself.
To be honest, forget about the whisk. Shake the vinaigrette and you’ll never go back to whipping or eating salads with non-emulsified oil and vinegar. (Seriously, this is such a grim practice. Let’s leave it in the early to mid-2000s where it belongs.)