The Pantry · Five Minutes · Makes about ¾ cup

Lemon Vinaigrette

Name: Lemon Vinaigrette
Total time: 5 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 60 ml fresh lemon juice; 2 g lemon zest; 4 g Diamond Crystal kosher salt; 1 g black pepper; 5 g Dijon mustard; 3 g garlic; 120 ml extra-virgin olive oil

Lemon, good olive oil, and a spoon of Dijon shaken in a jar — a bright, creamy dressing in five minutes that ruins bottled for you permanently.

5 min total No-cook method 1 week keeps

Spoon cost

Time ●○○○○ Anytime

VeganGluten-Free

Servingsmakes about ¾ cup — dresses a big salad for 6

Units

Ingredients

Dissolve the salt in the lemon juice before the oil goes anywhere near it. Salt dissolves in water and not in oil, so if everything goes into the jar at once the crystals get coated in fat and just sit there — you end up with a dressing that's gritty and somehow both bland and salty. Lemon, salt, pepper, Dijon and garlic first, shaken until the salt is gone; then the oil. That order is the difference between a dressing and an oil slick.

Easier, if you like

The jar is the shortcut. No whisk, no bowl, no drizzling oil in a thin stream while you whisk with the other hand. You shake it, and it stores in the same jar you made it in — nothing to wash but a lid.
One cube of frozen crushed garlic (Dorot, freezer aisle) drops straight in and saves the peeling and the board — it's raw garlic, so it holds up here.

Method

Cook's notes

The Dijon is the glue, not a flavour. Oil and lemon juice don't mix; mustard is an emulsifier, so it holds them together in suspension long enough to eat. Leave it out and the jar separates before it reaches the table. One teaspoon does the job without tasting of mustard.

Fresh lemon, and no arguing about it. Nothing here gets cooked, so there's nowhere for a shortcut to hide — bottled juice tastes flat and gives you no zest, which is where most of the lemon smell comes from. This is one of the few places on this site where we'd tell you to go to the shop.

The ratio is yours. This is 2 parts oil to 1 part lemon — bright and sharp, on purpose. The classic French vinaigrette is 3:1; for that, go up to ¾ cup (180 ml) of oil. Add it a splash at a time and taste as you go. Sharper cuts through rich food; milder is friendlier on a plain green salad.

It will separate, and it isn't broken. Give it 20 seconds in the jar and it comes back every time. Keeps a week in the fridge — where good olive oil goes cloudy and semi-solid, which is a sign it's good olive oil. Leave it on the counter 10 minutes, then shake.

Make it your own: a finely minced shallot (steeped in the lemon for 10 minutes first, which takes its bite off) · 1 tsp honey or maple to round the edge · a handful of chopped soft herbs · a spoon of grated parmesan for a Caesar-adjacent version.

Where it goes: any green salad, the pear, apple and fennel salad, over steamed broccoli while it's still warm, on roast chicken thighs, or spooned over white beans with a little parsley for a five-minute lunch.

Naturally vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free

Vegan / vegetarian / gluten-free: lemon, oil, mustard, garlic — naturally all three as written. (If you sweeten it, use maple rather than honey to keep it vegan.)

No Dijon? Whole-grain mustard works and looks handsome; yellow mustard will emulsify but tastes of yellow mustard. A teaspoon of mayonnaise is the emergency emulsifier — it's mostly egg yolk, which does the same job.