Most people who are new to garlic aioli often confuse it with mayonnaise. That’s because both condiments are creamy and full of flavor. However, even though they look the same in white color, aioli is markedly different from mayonnaise. This defines aioli and explains how you can easily prepare it at home. Read on for more information about making this condiment using easy-to-implement recipes.
What Is Garlic Aioli?
The word aioli first appeared in Catalonia, Spain, meaning “garlic oil.” Traditionally, it refers to a sauce made from a mixture of olive oil and mashed garlic, prepared using a mortar and pestle. Even though it has some salt, the traditional garlic aioli doesn’t contain any egg yolk or acid, just some garlic in olive oil, forming a smooth emulsion.
It’s not easy to find the traditional garlic aioli in a restaurant nowadays since it’s labor-intensive to make and breaks easily. When in shattered form, the emulsion has visible droplets of oil that create a slimy, separated sauce.
Today, the word aioli is synonymous with mayo, meaning a simple mayonnaise with a garlic flavor. In essence, it means mayonnaise plus mashed garlic. Even though nothing more than improved mayonnaise, garlic aioli tastes good when spread on bread or used for dipping French fried or drizzle on vegetables.
In short, aioli can refer to many different things, including its traditional form, improved mayonnaise, or something experimental. You can produce homemade aioli by combining garlic and olive oil, two of the most significant ingredients in all aioli recipes.
Making garlic aioli is a simple process that mashes garlic cloves into a mortar and pestle paste. As you pound the garlic, you keep adding olive oil or extra virgin olive oil and whisk. The result is a white, creamy aioli dipping sauce. It is excellent for sandwiches, roasted potatoes dips, French fries, or dressing for seafood and grilled meat.
One of the essential ingredients in the garlic aioli recipe is coarse salt, bread, lemon juice, or egg yolk to aid emulsification. That’s because bread and egg yolks make excellent emulsifiers, making the olive oil and garlic mix much better.
Concerning flavorings, aioli is super versatile and can accommodate chipotle, sriracha, truffle oil, pepper, making it possible to create multiple flavors. Apart from being delicious, aioli’s nutrition information indicates it has several health benefits. For example, it comes with all the health benefits of olive oil, contains vitamin C, has no saturated fat, and fights some cancer types.
What Is Mayo?
Mayo or mayonnaise is more common than aioli. Mayonnaise is excellent in sandwiches, dips, sauces, and other homemade recipes. Despite their resemblance, mayo is made differently from aioli. Like aioli, mayonnaise is emulsification, the main difference being the ingredients used to make the two.
Making mayo involves adding bits of canola oil to egg yolk. As you do that, you should keep whisking the mixture until the two ingredients combine. As it emulsifies, tiny droplets of canola oil create a white, creamy color characteristic of mayo. The lecithin in the egg yolk holds the oil droplets in suspension, keeping them from returning to their original form.
As the canola oil and egg yolk mix, add vinegar or lemon juice for a distinctive flavor. As you whisk vigorously, consider adding salt or white pepper. While homemade mayonnaise is healthier than store-bought mayo, it doesn’t have a long shelf-life. Typically, homemade mayonnaise may last up to 4 days, kept in an airtight container.
Since it contains saturated fats, it is advisable to eat mayo in moderation. But that doesn’t mean that it lacks health benefits. On the contrary, it contains omega-3 oils and preps your body to absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K better.
You can add mayo to any pantry, use it in sandwiches, or as a sauce or dip—also, its services as a great salad and pasta base. A non-food use of mayo is as an agent for removing crayon marks and watermarks from the walls.
How to Make Garlic Aioli
Even though different recipes explain making garlic aioli, the most commonly rely on mayo as the base ingredient. Instead of mixing garlic and olive oil, as when making traditional aioli, the new recipes consist of mayo, garlic, and lemon.
You can either make your mayonnaise at home or use the store-bought mayo and add garlic and lemon. Our first aioli recipe addressed how to make garlic aioli from scratch – the traditional way.
This garlic aioli recipe is easy to follow and takes just a few minutes for you to have your favorite sauce ready. It is also one of the vegetarian recipes with the highest nutritional value. So would you please keep reading for directions on how to execute it?
Mix minced garlic with kosher salt and crush them together. While some people may prefer not having too much garlic in their sauces, others have no problem including as much garlic as possible. So, choose what’s just enough for you. Then, keep crushing until you get a consistent paste.
Put some lemon juice in a medium bowl, add garlic and let it marinate for up to 15 minutes. Before the end of the 15 minutes, the lemon juice adopts a garlic flavor. You can then decide if you want to remove some garlic or leave all of it in the lemon juice.
Add egg yolk, a little olive oil, and vegetable oil, and blend it up. The vegetable oil helps in neutralizing the strong flavor of olive oil. You can either use an immersion or standard blender to stir the mixture while adding a little oil at a time.
Keep blending the mixture until you attain the kind of consistency you want. If you want it a little thinner, you can add more lemon juice or a little water. Otherwise, add just enough lemon juice to give you a thick consistency like that of mayo.
How to Make Garlic Aioli from Store-Bought Mayo
One of the easiest recipes is to make garlic aioli using ready-made mayonnaise. The process starts with soaking minced garlic in lemon juice for up to 10 minutes. After straining the garlic, stir the lemon juice with garlic flavor into the mayo. Essentially, the mayonnaise lemon juice mixture should produce an emulsified mixture called garlic aioli.
You get a good garlic flavor without minced garlic floating around in the mayo by straining out the garlic. If anything, the presence of minced garlic only distracts the sauce’s creaminess and could end up adding too much garlic flavor with time.
Here is a simple garlic aioli recipe using mayo as the creamy base:
Ingredients
- Five medium minced garlic cloves
- Two teaspoons lemon juice
- Sprinkle of salt
- ½ cup mayo
- ¼ teaspoon Dijon mustard, optional
Instructions
Step 1: In a small-medium bowl, combine lemon juice and roasted garlic. Stir to combine by spreading it into an even layer to create a magical juice. Sprinkle some light amount of salt and let the solution rest for 10 minutes to allow garlic flavor to dissolve into the lemon juice.
Step 2: Put a fine-mesh strainer over another small bowl. Scoop the contents of the first bowl using a rubber or silicone spatula. Use the spatula to press on the garlic to remove as much juice as possible. Discard the garlic residue.
Step 3: Pour the mayo into the bowl containing lemon juice and stir until they combine consistently. Taste to see just how much garlic flavor you have. If too much, add more mayonnaise and whisk with a tablespoon. The mixture can taste even good if you add some Dijon mustard and some lemon zest.
Step 4: Store aioli refrigerated in an airtight container. It can last there for not more than ten days, so that means you should find a way to use it quickly enough.
The Classic Garlic Aioli Recipe
If you have no problem making garlic aioli from scratch, then this is the method you should embrace. It is a quick any easy way of making aioli at home.
Ingredients
- Four garlic cloves
- One teaspoon lemon zest
- One teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
- Two tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- One large raw egg
- One egg yolk
- ½ vegetable or mild-flavored oil
- ½ cup olive oil
- Parley to garnish
Instructions
Step 1: Using a chef’s knife, crush four garlic cloves, remove peels, and mince them finely.
Step 2: Add one teaspoon kosher salt to the garlic and smash it in using one side of a chef’s knife. Keep going until you make a thick paste.
Step 3: Put the garlic and salt mixture into a bowl if you intend to use an immersion blender. Otherwise, put it into a regular blender. Add the lemon zest to the salt and garlic mixture.
Step 4: Add the lemon juice and Dijon mustard to the garlic and use a spoon to stir. Let it sit for up to 15 minutes for the garlic flavor to blend into the lemon juice.
Step 5: Use a filter to remove the garlic residue since the lemon juice already has its flavor. If you like lots of garlic flavor, don’t hesitate to leave it in the lemon juice. Removing minced roasted garlic from the mixture also ensures that the final sauce will be uniformly consistent.
Step 6: Add one raw egg and egg yolk and slowly drizzle olive oil and mild-flavored oil into the bow as you keep whisking. If you are using a regular blender, drizzle the oil into it while it’s running. Alternatively, you could use an immersion blender while drizzling olive oil slowly until you get an emulsion.
Step 7: Taste the sauce for garlic flavor and add enough salt and pepper. You could also add a little more Dijon or fresh lemon juice to taste.
You can vary any of the recipes above using roasted garlic instead of raw garlic cloves. First, spread up to five garlic cloves on an aluminum foil, drizzle olive oil, and warp it up. Next, put in an oven and roast at 400°F for 30 to 40 minutes until you can easily slide in a fork. After the roasted garlic has cooled down, use it to prepare garlic aioli as usual.
Also, you don’t need an immersion or regular blender to prepare garlic aioli – a traditional bowl should do the trick. Which all ingredients together until you reach the stage where you need to use the eggs. At that point, you need to add oil gradually while whisking until it fully emulsifies. Since olive oil has a strong flavor, you should consider using a little bit of neutral oil.
Nutrition Information in One Cup Serving
- Calories: 2054 kcal
- Protein: 10 g
- Carbohydrates: 8 g
- Fat: 227 g
- Saturated fat: 107 g
- Monounsaturated fat: 95 g
- Polyunsaturated fat: 15 g
- Trans fat: 1 g
- Cholesterol: 381 mg
- Potassium: 172 mg
- Sodium: 2422 mg
- Sugar: 2g
- Fiber: 1g
- Calcium: 80 mg
- Iron: 2 mg
- Vitamin A: 533 iu
- Vitamin C: 18 mg
What to Eat with Garlic Aioli?
You can eat garlic aioli with virtually any dish that requires a sauce or condiment. Here are some exciting ideas for your consideration:
- Sweet potato fries or French fries
- A sandwich spread that tastes much better than mayo
- Dipping sauce for fresh snap peas, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, and carrots
- Fried zucchini
- For dipping roasted artichokes
- Hamburger ditto
- Mixing into potato salad
- Drizzle into warm pasta
- Condiment for salmon cakes
- Dipping sauce for bacon-wrapped potatoes
- Mixed into tuna salad
When it comes to homemade aioli, the uses are as many as your creativity can allow. If you know any dish that does well with mayonnaise, then homemade aioli is a worthy substitute. If you choose to use it as a dipping sauce for French fries, why not? It is up to you to decide how to use your newly-made aioli sauce.
People Also Ask
Is Aioli Just Garlic Mayonnaise?
Yes, aioli is a type of condiment commonly used in Mediterranean cuisine. It is made by emulsifying garlic and oil, much like mayonnaise.
What Does Garlic Aioli Taste Like?
The garlic aioli has a delicious taste that is both creamy and pungent with a pleasing garlic flavor. The olive oil used in the recipe provides richness and depth to the sauce and balances out the garlic taste.
What is Garlic Aioli Used for?
Garlic aioli is a versatile condiment that can be used with a variety of dishes, such as sandwiches, burgers, fish, seafood, potatoes, salads, roasted vegetables, and fries. It also works well as a dipping sauce or spread for almost any type of food. For an extra kick, try adding it to pasta or noodles. Moreover, it can be used instead of mayonnaise as a dressing.
Sources
https://thefoodcharlatan.com/garlic-aioli/
https://cookieandkate.com/easy-aioli-recipe/
