found the amount of vinegar a little too aggressive.
But you can easily replace some of the vinegar with
water to tone it down—or, if you want to bring a bit
of a meaty bite to your salad (I often do), replace
part of it with soy sauce.
As for the best emulsifier for the job, mustard is
the most common surfactant, and it works best when
you have at least 1 teaspoon per tablespoon of
vinegar (you can add more if you’d like).
Mayonnaise works even better, easily forming a
creamy sauce, though it lacks the pleasant tang of
mustard. For a sweeter dressing (say, on a beet
salad or an asparagus salad), honey also works very
well. Try adding honey and toasted crushed nuts to a
basic vinaigrette. It rocks in more ways than one.
As for mixing, some advocate slowly whisking in
the oil. Others shake it up in a jam jar. Still others
insist on the blender. Well, after testing, I found that,
not surprisingly, a blender will give you the tightest
emulsion, though it can cause your olive oil to turn
extremely bitter (see “The Bitter Blend,” here) while
the shake-it-in-a-jar version will be the weakest,
lasting for only 30 minutes or so. But the truth of the
matter is, your vinaigrette only needs to stay stable
for the length of time it takes you to eat a salad.
I put the ingredients for my vinaigrette into a 1-
pint squeeze bottle in the fridge and shake it up right
before I use it. Or, as is more often the case, I take it
out of the fridge and realize that, once again, my
wife has finished off all but the last drop, forcing me
nandana
(Nandana)
#1