Basil Aioli

Basil aioli is an fresh herbaceous sauce that you can make quickly when you have a handful of fresh basil. With just a few other key ingredients, you’ll make condiment with a wide variety of uses, from a dipping sauce for french fries to a spread for sandwiches.

With this basil aioli recipe, we’re using store-bought mayonnaise, but you can also make your own mayonnaise from scratch very easily. (See the instructions for that below.)

Looking for other great sauce or dressing recipes? Try:

• Bacon Onion Jam
• Homemade Red Curry Paste
• Caramelized Onion Hummus

Key Ingredients

• Mayonnaise: You can use regular or low-fat mayonnaise. See below for directions on how to make your own mayonnaise.
• Fresh basil: Use several sprigs of basil, removing the leaves from the stem.
• Lemon juice: The lemon juice in this recipe will be from about 1/8 of a lemon, a basic lemon slice.
• Garlic: 3-4 cloves of garlic. With this recipe, you will roast the garlic to create a mild flavor. For a stronger, sharper garlic flavor, you can also finely mince and mash garlic cloves without roasting them.
• Lemon zest: Zest from about half a lemon.
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil (to coat garlic cloves)

How to Make It

First, gather your ingredients and a small bowl. Then, finely chop fresh basil leaves to yield about 3 tablespoons.

Then, roast the garlic cloves by placing them on a sheet of aluminum foil and coating them with a drizzle of olive oil. Seal the foil into a pouch and roast the cloves for about 25 – 30 minutes at 400°. You can also roast them on a baking pan, but making a little aluminum foil baking pouch is so much easier.

Then, in the small bowl, combine the mayonnaise, chopped basil, lemon juice, lemon zest and salt and pepper and mix it all together with a fork. Squeeze the roasted garlic cloves and mash and stir into the basil aioli and mix again.

Garnish with a sprig of fresh basil for a pretty presentation if you’re serving basil aioli as a side for dish for guests.

You can keep refrigerated for up to a week.

Homemade Mayonnaise

If you want to take your aioli completely from scratch, try making your own homemade mayonnaise! You’ll need an immersion blender, or one of those handheld mixers. Just add the ingredients to the blending cup and blend until you get the off-whitish condiment.

The ingredients to blend together to make homemade mayonnaise are: 1 whole egg, 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon of dijuon mustard, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of olive oil.

Then, you can use your homemade mayonnaise for the base for a range of different aioli sauces!