A lesson in emulsification

This weekend one of the most patient line cooks at work decided it was time for me to make a vinaigrette. Ever since I started working at the country club this line cook has taken extra time and care to make sure that my lack of culinary knowledge does not mean that I lose a finger or get yelled at for being an idiot. Every week is normally a new lesson of some sort and this week Alice(that would be the line cook's name, or fake name, you will never know) got that excited look in her eyes like she knew I was going to make the family proud. I of course saw the look as a new way for Emily to mess something up while Alice watched.

She handed me the recipe for Balsamic Vinaigrette and I measured everything out; that part went almost smoothly except part of the cap for the balsamic tends to fall into the container and one of the other cooks saw it had fallen in and poured an unmeasured amount of Balsamic into my container to get it out. That crisis was averted thanks to Rob helping me with a little math.

The hard part about making a vinaigrette is that you must create an emulsification. Now Alice rattled off an excellent cooking definition of emulsification, but I tend to not write down definitions of things when I'm at work, so I went to the Encyclopedia Britannica for an easy definition. "In foods, any of numerous chemical additives that encourage the suspension of one liquid in another, as in the mixture of oil and water in margarine, shortening, ice cream, and salad dressing." So the part of the definition we're working with is salad dressing and we were trying to emulsify the balsamic with the oil (2 gallons of it to be exact).

Since the invention of vinaigrettes, a technological advance has been made that makes this whole emulsifying process a smidgen easier. This advance is the burr mixer. A burr mixer basically does what your hand going faster than the speed of light would do with a whisk. It really is brilliant because if I had the whisk while we made balsamic my hand might have fallen off.

The burr mixer I was going to use for the Balsamic was around 4 feet tall, and me being the short Emily that I am put the bucket on the table and then decided it would be a good idea to put the burr mixer in the bucket making the top of the burr mixer almost out of reach. Alice came over and quickly decided this was a bad idea, putting the bucket on the ground. As I said before Alice is probably the most patient person I know and she used the mixer while I slowly poured in the oil. The idea of an emulsification is that the oil is suspended in the balsamic, which is done through the movement, the air which your bringing into the mixture, and the steady stream of oil. I think I did a pretty steady stream. The balsamic vinaigrette turned out wonderful and my family was proud.

If you're looking at a recipe for a salad dressing or vinaigrette, don't be scared. Grab a whisk and maybe a helper and patiently pour the oil while whisking it into whatever other liquid your mixing with it. If a Betty Baker like myself can do it anyone can do it.

Happy Eating!!!

Emily