Easy recipe for homemade aioli from scratch. Aioli is a French/Spanish garlic mayonnaise sauce made from crushed garlic, egg yolk, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt.
Course Condiments, Sauce
Cuisine European, French, Spanish
Keyword Aioli, Garlic mayonnaise
Prep Time 30 minutesminutes
Total Time 30 minutesminutes
Author Nicolas Pujol
Ingredients
1egg yolk
4garlic clovescrushed
20clof olive oil(20 cl = 7 ounces = 0.875 cups)
1 to 2teaspoonsof lemon juice
A pinch of salt
Instructions
Tips and secrets for making homemade aioli from scratch:
There are many stories about making aioli being an exercise of faith: sometimes, the olive oil blends and solidifies with the egg, and sometimes it doesn’t, no matter how hard, long or fast the ingredients are whisked. It’s happened to us, and then we learned. Time to teach magic.
The success or failure of aioli comes in the first 10 minutes when the olive oil comes in contact with the egg and garlic.
The two factors that make it work are 1/ mixing the egg with very small drops of olive oil at the beginning. If you add too much oil immediately, the aioli is missed beyond repair. You can add more oil, beat it harder, chances are it will remain liquid and never catch on. The first drops of olive oil make the initial chemical bonds that solidify the sauce and set the foundation for everything else. You can add oil faster later, at about 2cl rate, every 2-3 minutes. You’ll see very quickly that from start to end, the sauce never gets liquid. If it’s liquid, it’s not aioli.
Now, time for the secret number 2: garlic has emulsive chemical properties that directly contribute to the consistency of the sauce. Crush it all and add it to the mix from the very beginning. The amount of garlic is therefore both a matter of taste and necessity. Aioli can be quite strong if you put too much of it, and if you put too little you’re risking upsetting the bonding process. Now you know the secret of making aioli and the preparation is a set of simple tasks.
French aioli preparation:
Separate the white and yolk of an egg by breaking the shell half open and gently dropping the yolk back and forth; the yolk must stay whole and not break during the process.
Put the yolk, salt and crushed garlic inside a small bowl
Add, as outlined above, very small drops of olive oil into the bowl and stir gently with a whisk; there is no need for an electric mixer or whisking particularly fast, just enough for ingredients to blend
About one minute later, add a few more drops, again in very small amounts, whisk between oil increments. Keep adding oil in tiny amounts for the first 10 minutes until you have a thick base.
The aioli, once 10cl of oil have been poured, becomes more solid and harder to stir. It may also get caught inside the whisk, which is fine. Carefully tap the whisk handle onto the bowl (holding the latter, naturally) and repeat occasionally to retain homogeneity of the sauce. You can add oil a little faster now, at about a 2cl rate.
At the very end, add lemon juice to your taste. This will help smothen the sauce and give it a crisper, fresher color.