Rocking Ratios: Vinaigrette

Hey all, Chef Ted back with maybe a new little mini series. "Rocking Ratios" is something I was thinking about for this week where we use a lot of ratios in recipes to create certain outcomes with cooking, baking and life (work/life balance is technically a ratio right?). I figured this week would be a perfect start with vinaigrettes. At home, I recently (this is probably a few months now) gave my mom a rough ratio for a vinaigrette since she loves salads. I gave her the blueprint and now I dont know the last time I saw her buy dressing at home. She raids my stash of vinegars and oils to make new flavors each time and try new things and she has put out some delicous vinaigrettes! If this sounds like a fun series and you would like to know about any specific ratio please use my contact below and let me know and maybe I can make it the theme one week.

Let's start just with ratios themselves since this is the first in this series. Ratios is a comparison of two numbers or by parts usually written out with a colon like 2:1 where the colon means "to", 2:1 is read as 2 to 1 or 2 parts "X item" to 1 part "Y item". From here on out I will just use the colon system so I want to make sure we have a good foundation set.

Vinaigrette ratios, there are a few different ways to go and each will have an impact on your flavor. The classic ratio is a 3:1 Oil to Vinegar ratio which gives a nice well balanced taste and coating. At the classroom we like to use a 2:1 ratio which you will see in this weeks recipe​ and it gives a bolder more tangy flavor. This is great for hearty salads or if you want to use less total while still getting a lot of flavor. One the other end you have a 4:1 ratio which yields a more mild flavor. This works well wen you find yourself with a realy strong vinegar or maybe have some softer or mor mild greens like bibb lettuce.

For flavor customization of your vinaigrettes, once you know the ratio you want to use you can also swap out your vinegars, you can go to a nice olive oil shop and try different oils to customize your flavor, you can do add ins like onion, garlic, honey. Then if you have a baseline, you can do small tweaks, like maybe one week is balsamic, then next week you do white wine vinegar and a spash of lemon juice. 

Last thing is the mixing process, you can do this by hand or by blender, but when you take your base of vinegar and likely a little mustard you need to make sure your dressing is stable and that relies on the emulcification process. You add your vinegar in while whisking like crazy at a painfuly slow pace. It should be drops going in and not a stream. You need to allow the vinegar and mustard to grab on and connect to the oil and maintain it. If you mix too slow or add to fast your dressing will "break" and you will see the oil pool up. (Let me know if you are interested in a deeper dive on emulcifications and we can get real food nerdy about that too sometime in a post!) 

As always, I hope this helps you on your own personal culinary journey of deepening your knowledge and skills at home. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me via email at chef@sweetandsavoryclassroom.com. 

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