Basic Vinaigrette and Variations

Salad dressing doesn’t get any healthier than this! The combination of raw organic apple cider vinegar and organic extra virgin olive oil nurtures your senses and your body. Add your favorite spices or try out new, fascinating ideas which I’ll give in the end of the post.

Ingredients on a plate.

Tips for making the vinaigrette

It’s easiest to prepare this vinaigrette in a jar with a tightly closed lid. Just put all the ingredients in the jar, close the lid tightly and shake vigorously. That’s it! So quick and so easy. You can also use blender for thicker, more homogeneous emulsion, if you like.

If you have some powdery seasonings, it’s best to either sprinkle them on top of the olive oil and vinegar mixture, or combine them first with the vinegar and shake vigorously, and after that add the oil and shake again vigorously. If you add the powdery seasonings to the oil, they tend to form lumps. If you use blender, you don’t have this problem.

One of my favorite additions to this vinaigrette is raw egg yolk. It gives volume, lightness and color, and makes the vinaigrette really thick, mayonnaise-like sauce. If you are concerned about using raw eggs, you can simply omit the egg yolk, or replace it with a hard-boiled egg yolk which you have mashed first finely with a fork. However, hard-boiled egg-yolk doesn’t bring that airy touch what the raw egg yolk does.

This vinaigrette gets better if the flavors can marinate for a few hours.

This recipe makes quite a small amount of dressing, 4 servings. For a bigger crowd, you can double or multiply the ingredient amounts.

Testing, testing… Delicious salad dressing-to-be, could you believe that?

My experiments with this vinaigrette

I developed this recipe last summer. I wanted to make a classic vinaigrette dressing. I browsed through different vinaigrette recipes. Mainly I was interested in the ratio of vinegar to oil. The classic ratio seemed to be 1 part vinegar to 3 parts oil. That’s also what I wanted to try out.

Since to my knowledge organic extra virgin olive oil is the healthiest oil and raw apple cider vinegar is the healthiest vinegar, it was natural for me to use those in my experiments.

But what to add for seasoning the vinaigrette? Salt, naturally. I prefer unrefined sea salt, since it’s the healthiest salt I know. Some pepper, too. Finely ground white or black pepper might suit well. A drop or two stevia, for rounding the flavors.

Vinaigrette with egg yolks.

My husband eats nowadays salad for lunch at work. I prepare that salad for him in the previous evening or early in the morning. That has been a great opportunity for me to try out different variations of this salad dressing. Those variations also bring some variety to his lunch.

Actually, every time I make this vinaigrette, I make a different variation. The possibilities are endless.

Variations (from the left): mustard and dill, strawberries and basil and garlic bread seasoning.