Ever had ORIGINAL, AUTHENTIC, GENUINE Homemade Aioli?

Perhaps you’d be surprised at the MANY “knock-off,” el-cheapo, wanna-be, so-called “recipes” for AIOLI.

For some, it’s a Johnny-come-lately to the faux phood scene, a veritable “flash-in-the pan” — here today, gone tomorrow — and something, some trick of “the new and kewl” to attract, and FOOL, or DECEIVE, folks into believing that a great amount of effort, or love, went into making a food item.

Pretty pictures adorn all kinds of websites, magazines, and newspapers — online, and in print — that depict food as an artistic creation… and to be certain, there’s little doubt that some of it is. Certain cakes come to mind, for example.

The finished product… GENUINE, AUTHENTIC aioli.

But most food is not “art,” though it can, and should be, presented attractively. And the reason for that, the reason why food should be presented attractively, is that we FIRST ‘eat’ with our eyes. That is to say, that, what we see whets our appetite. However, for food made in a restaurant, the olfactory sensation is largely missing, because almost no one goes into any restaurant and smells the food cooking. It’s not like your grandma’s, or mama’s kitchen, wherein the savory aromas of food waft throughout the house, eagerly increasing your expectations as mealtime approaches.

But, back to the aioli.

At its essence, aioli is almost pure garlic in a spreadable form. I write ‘almost’ because it has olive oil in it, and cannot be made without it. And, there’s some salt, as well. But the amount, volume, quantity, etc., of salt is up to the maker. And though salt may not be 100% absolutely required, or a mandatory item like garlic or olive oil, it is HIGHLY recommended to be a constituent part of aioli. In other words, just put some in. Don’t neglect it.

Now, invariably, someone, some wisenheimer, will ask something like “Can I make aioli with corn oil?” To which I say, “Of course you can. And you can fry eggs in motor oil. But would you?”

You see, aioli is a time-honored, traditional Italian condiment that circulated around the northern Mediterranean. But here, in America, it seems that many, or even most, folks aren’t interested anymore in making something that comes from time-honored tradition. Ours is largely a throw-away, ‘I want it quick, and easy’ society, wherein most folks create more garbage than almost anything else — literally, and figuratively. One simply need to examine the conditions of the nation’s many landfills, and the flotilla of plastic flotsam large as the State of Texas awash in the Pacific Ocean, as evidence of that statement.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) writes this about the matter — of which, they write in part that, “For NOAA, a national science agency, separating science from science fiction about the Pacific garbage patch (and other garbage patches) is important when answering questions about what it is, and how we should deal with the problem.”

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“The most famous of these patches is often called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” It is located in the North Pacific Gyre (between Hawaii and California). “Patch” is a misleading nickname, causing many to believe that these are islands of trash. Instead, the debris is spread across the surface of the water and from the surface all the way to the ocean floor. The debris ranges in size, from large abandoned fishing nets to tiny microplastics, which are plastic pieces smaller than 5mm in size. This makes it possible to sail through some areas of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and see very little to no debris.”

Point being, is that there’s an ABUNDANCE of misinformation out there, in the wild blue yonder, about so many, many, things — including aioli.

But hey… once again, that train has left the tracks. So let’s try to set it back on course, eh?

It doth seem, however, that in order to FIRST identify the AUTHENTIC, the GENUINE, that the imitation, the fraudulent, the ‘fake,’ must also be mentioned. And that is the purpose in writing about the inauthentic. Treasury Agents, the FBI, and Secret Service, when learning to identify fraudulent counterfeit currency, FIRST examine AUTHENTIC currency, so much so, that the imitation is easily, and readily, spotted.

And again, there’s ONLY 3 ingredients in aioli:
1.) Fresh garlic;
2.) Olive Oil, and;
3.) Salt.

So, here’s an example of a recipe from a “respected” food website, Epicurious, of a counterfeit aioli recipe: The prominent ingredient is… mayonnaise. With 1/2 cup of it, the olive oil and garlic are merely afterthoughts, with a mere 2 Tablespoons of olive oil, and only 2 garlic cloves.

Here’s a wretched counterfeit from Chelsea Winter a “celebrity chef” in New Zealand — which, you know, is actually part of Australia (sarcasm to make a point): With so many constituent parts, and a complicated process, it could hardly be called aioli, and, in fact, is more like a garlic-flavored dip: soy milk, grapeseed oil (or sunflower oil), white or black pepper, apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar), Dijon mustard.

Here’s a product made in Australia (branded as Good Fat™) that calls itself “aioli”, but which contains apple cider vinegar, eggs, tapioca starch, lemon juice, rosemary extract, etc., though the product description does say “Made using our GOOD FAT™ Mayo as a base…”

Here’s another knock-off, wanna-be-aioli recipe — this one from the BBC — that uses eggs, black pepper, lemon juice, mustard powder and saffron.

Here’s another wretched mess from British “celebrity chef” Jamie Oliver that’s just as wretched as the one from Chelsea Winter, that uses extra virgin olive oil, “regular” olive oil, eggs, Dijon mustard, black pepper, etc., of which he describes as a “fragrant garlicky mayonnaise.” Why doesn’t he just call it “garlicky mayonnaise,” instead of aioli? That’ be honest, because aioli it is NOT.

Even the “Gray Lady,” the once-venerable New York Times, puts egg and grapeseed oil in their “recipe” for “aioli” which they have the audacity to write of that, “Aioli is the quintessential Provençal condiment, a very pungent garlic mayonnaise that in its home country contains more garlic than the version below – which is already pretty garlicky.” But, one should NEVER FORGET that it was the NYT that put green peas in guacamole. Morons. One should NEVER trust them for recipes, and their “news” has, unfortunately, become equally suspect.

There are a couple of websites that do contain accurate information about aioli, such as,

“The word aïoli literally means oil and garlic (“ail” is garlic in French). The most original form of aioli, which I’m hoping to taste in Provence this summer, is made only with garlic and olive oil emulsified in a mortar and pestle.”

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“Aioli is one of the oldest and most classic sauces in the Mediterranean area. There are reports of aioli recipes as early as the beginning of the 10th century. Spain and France received it from the Romans, who learnt it from the Egyptians.”

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that aioli is “One of the mother sauces of the Mediterranean cuisine…”

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True aioli originally had nothing to do with mayo, believe it or not. It’s started off as a popular sauce in the Mediterranean consisting of a whipped emulsified blend of olive oil, garlic, and salt resulting in a creamy textured condiment. However, to be able to get to this creamy texture from olive oil and garlic takes a lot of effort, so a shortcut version was born. Hello, mayo.

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Aioli is an often-confused condiment. Now when I speak of “aioli” I am talking about the French version from Provence, not the Spanish, Portuguese or other variations on the same theme. The confusion comes from the two schools of thought on exactly WHAT aioli is.

The first group states that it is a simple emulsion of Garlic, and Olive Oil. Unlike Mayonnaise, Aioli contains no eggs, (at least, it’s not suppose to) as the garlic itself is capable of providing the emulsion power, and is always made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. No substitutions.

Enter Escoffier, the grandpappy of sauce classification, who deemed Aioli to be a small sauce that was built from Mayonnaise. Hmmmmm…. Even Larousse Gastronomique claims there is egg in Aioli. So suddenly Aioli has become nothing more than garlic flavored mayonnaise… Or has it?

True, you can add a ton of garlic to a cup of any insipid mayo and call it aioli. But it’s still more than likely just “Garlic Mayonnaise”. Don’t get me wrong, that is all well and good, but it’s not Aioli. What sets Aioli apart and makes it so unbelievably wonderful is the flavor combination of the Garlic, Lemon Juice and Extra Virgin Olive oil. So please, use an Olive oil that you love the flavor of, cause you are going to taste it.

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Aioli must use crushed garlic and extra virgin olive oil to be named as such. Mayonnaise is made by the emulsification of egg yolks, the addition of pepper, oils, vinegar and salt. It is a little bland to taste and is considered to have a lighter texture than aioli. Some mayo recipe variations add several other ingredients like lemon juice, mustard and even herbs like oregano, rosemary and paprika. Those will help enhance the mayonnaise’s flavor. Lastly, the main fat foundation of mayonnaise is the neutral oil; examples of which are canola and grapeseed vegetable oils. Though rarely, some also use light olive oils.

Richard Cornish, writing for the Australian website Good Food in March 18 2014, makes a further differentiation, and provides a bit more history on aioli, by writing that, “Allioli goes back even further. It’s from a family of oil and garlic-based-emulsion sauces found around the Mediterranean rim. Pliny the Elder, based in Roman Tarragona in the first century AD, observed a sauce made only with garlic, oil and a little vinegar. Tarragona sits in the south of Catalonia. Allioli, pronounced ah-ee-ohlee, is a Catalan emulsion sauce made with pounded garlic, olive oil and a little salt. That’s it. In his authoritative book Catalan Cuisine Colman Andrews quotes an old Catalan saying, “allioli made with egg is just fancy mayonnaise.” In greater Spain it is called alioli (ah-lee-ohlee) and is often made with egg. Aioli is another garlic and oil emulsion sauce from Provence in France. This velvety garlic mayonnaise is emulsified with raw egg yolk and is famously napped over morsels of fish in the fish stew bourride.”

Another source validates the ancient origination of aioli citing Pliny the Elder by writing:

“If there’s one good reason why you shouldn’t label just any mayonnaise as an aioli, it’s because aioli goes way, way back, so it deserves some respect. It can be traced back to at least the first century A.D., when Pliny described alioli, a mixture of garlic (a weak emulsifier) pounded with olive oil that was common in present-day Spain. Eventually, the recipe picked up some egg yolk and became more strongly associated with Provençe and the dishes from that region that utilize the sauce.

“Some hardcore chefs will tell you that true aioli can only be made with a mortar and pestle, although really no one will bat an eyelash if you opt for the food processor or blender. Aioli absolutely must contain olive oil and must contain garlic, however. So while aioli is a garlicky riff on olive oil mayonnaise, adding any ol’ cockamamy flavor to your mayo does not make an aioli. Which is why I would like to beg restaurants to stop passing off every single mayo-ish sauce as an aioli. I can see right through your shenanigans.”

And Susan Waggoner, for the website ForkNPlate on Wednesday, February 25th, 2015, gives some excellent timeline information about aioli, and similarly validated the ancient origin of aioli, by writing that, “The first mention of a condiment similar to aïoli comes from historian Pliny the Elder, who described a common Roman sauce of garlic and olive oil called aleatum, after the Latin word for garlic. Since Pliny died in the Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D., this makes the aïoli at least 2,000 years old, and it is probably much older than that for it have become commonplace by Pliny’s time. Because the Roman empire expanded throughout Europe and north Africa, with an entourage of bureaucrats, tradesmen, soldiers and households bringing their cuisine with them, historians theorize that Italy is the true home of aïoli.

“Old as aïoli is, no recipe appeared in English until the early 20th century, when Auguste Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire was translated in 1907.”

The folks at Joybilee Farms write about aioli, that “Many of the aioli sauce recipes you’ll find on the internet call for an emulsion of eggs, lemon juice, and oil with just one or two cloves of garlic added. That sounds like mayonnaise to me.  If you like mayonnaise and are looking for some interesting flavor, a recipe like this for garlic mayonnaise is fine.  But garlic mayonnaise is a different condiment than aioli sauce.

“Aioli is made with just garlic and olive oil.  Some cooks add salt to taste, but it isn’t essential to the process.  Forget about adding just one or two cloves of garlic.  Aioli IS garlic.  Use two or three HEADS of local garlic.

“The olive oil in aioli is very important.  Please use the best quality of extra virgin olive oil that you can.

“The texture of aioli is more like butter than mayonaisse. In France it is referred to as “beurre de Provence (butter of Provence)”. Aioli sauce should hold it’s shape like butter when chilled. At room temperature it should be stiff, creamy, and not at all runny. When added to a baked potato, just like butter, it should loosen up, melt, and drizzle over the food. Once you’ve experienced authentic, freshly-made aioli you will understand the distinction. Aioli has been with us for over 2000 years. Mayonnaise is a recent invention of just the past 250 years or so.”

But the MOST EXCELLENT information about aioli comes from the What’s Cooking America website. Here’s what they write about aioli:

“The word “sauce” is a French word that means a relish to make our food more appetizing.  Sauces are liquid or semi-liquid foods devised to make other foods look, smell, and taste better, and hence be more easily digested and more beneficial.

Because of the lack of refrigeration in the early days of cooking, meat, poultry, fish, and seafood didn’t last long.  Sauces and gravies were used to mask the flavor of tainted foods.

200 A.D. – The Romans used sauces to disguise the taste of the food.  Possibly to conceal doubtful freshness.  According to the article Food & Cooking in Roman Britain by Marian Woodman:

The main course, or primae mensai varied both in the number and elaboration of dishes.  Roast and boiled meat, poultry, game or other meat delicacies would be served.  No dish was complete without its highly flavoured and seasoned sauce.  Contrary to present day preference, the main object seemed to be to disguise the natural taste of food – possibly to conceal doubtful freshness, possibly to demonstrate the variety of costly spices available to the host.  Sometimes so many ingredients were used in a sauce it was impossible to single out any one flavour.  One Roman cook bitterly complained that some of his fellow cooks ‘When they season their dinners they don’t use condiments for seasoning, but screech owls, which eat out the intestines of the guests alive’.  Apicius wrote at the end of one of his recipes for a particularly flavoursome sauce, ‘No one at table will know what he is eating’.  These sauces were usually thickened with wheat flour or crumbled pastry.  Honey was often incorporated into a ‘sweet-sour’ dish or sauce.

Highly flavoured sauces often containing as many as a dozen ingredients were extensively used to mask the natural flavours of Roman food.  The most commonly used seasoning was liquamen, the nearest equivalent today being a very strong fish stock, with anchovies as its main ingredient.  This was so popular that it was factory-produced in many towns in the Roman empire.

1651 – A little heard of sauce today, but very popular in the 17th century is Sauce Robert.  It is similar to the present day Espagnole Sauce.  Both Sauce Rober and Espangnole are basically a brown roux (a combination of fat and flour to create a thickening agent).

In le Grand Cuisinier (1583) there is a mention of a sauce Barbe Robert, sauce already found in le Viandier under the name “taillemasl” (fried onions, verjus, vinegar, mustard) for roasted rabbit, fry fish and fry egg.

Franis Rabelais (Circa 1483-1553)in le Quart-Livre, mention: “Robert, the one who invented the sauce Robert indispensable for roast, rabbits, duck, pork, poached eggs…”

There are Five Foundation Sauces or Basic Sauces

Grandes Sauces or Sayces Meres

Two of them have a record of two hundred years behind them; they are the “bechamelle” and the “mayonnaise”.  They have lasted so long, not only because they are very good, but also because they are so adaptable and provide a fine basis for a considerable number of other sauces.

The other three, which also date back to the 18th century, are the “veloute,” the “brune,” and the “blonde.”  These five sauces still provide the basis for making of many modern sauces, but no longer of most of them.

Modern sauces may be divided into two classes: the “Careme” and “Escoffier” classes.  Among the faithful, in the great kitchen of the world, Escoffier is to Careme what the New Testament is to the Old.  See “Mother Sauces” for descriptions of the five basic sauces.

Aioli (eye-YO-lee) – Aioli is a thick garlic sauce used in the cooking of Provence, France, and of Catalonia in Spain.  It is often compared to mayonnaise in its texture, but it is not actual mayonnaise.  It is though by culinary historians that Aioli is a Roman sauce, the one the Romans called “aleatum” made of garlic and oil.

History:  The first apparent written mention of a sauce resembling aioli was by Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), the Roman procurator in Tarragona (a city located in the south of Catalonia on the north-east of Spain.)  He writes about garlic (Latin term: aleatum) in his first century book Naturalis Historia.  Information below by Peter Hertzmann from his la carte website:

Natural History (Naturalis Historia) is an encyclopedia published around AD 77–79 by Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD).  It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover all ancient knowledge.

Whether garlic was introduced to France by the Romans, brought back to France during the crusades, or a native of French soil is not known for certain.  (I think it was introduced by the Romans.)  Pliny the Elder discusses garlic at some length in his work Naturalis Historia, published in the year 77.  He states that it “is generally supposed, in the country more particularly, to be a good specific for numerous maladies.”

Later, in a chapter entitled “Garlic: Sixty-One Remedies,” Pliny writes, “Garlic has very powerful properties, and is of great utility to persons on changes of water or locality.  The very smell of it drives away serpents and scorpions, and, according to what some persons say, it is a cure for wounds made by every kind of wild beast, whether taken with the drink or food, or applied topically…. Pliny does not discuss the use of garlic as food, he does comment extensively, however, on how to best grow garlic.

They similarly have some phenomenally wonderful and informative history on mayonnaise, as well, and write that:

Mayonnaise (MAY-uh-nayz) – Mayonnaise is an emulsion consisting of oil, egg, vinegar, condiments, and spices.

History:  When first invented, it was called Mahonnaise.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the sauce got its present name of mayonnaise purely by accident through a printing error in an early 1841 cookbook.  There are many conflicting stories on the origin of mayonnaise:

Most authorities believe the first batch of this mixture of egg yolks, oil and seasonings was whipped up to celebrate the 1756 French capture of Mahon, a city on the Spanish Isle of Minorca, by forces under Louis-Francois-Armad de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (1696-1788).  The Duke, or more likely, his personal chef, is credited with inventing mayonnaise, as his chef created a victory feast that was to include a sauce made of cream and eggs.  Realizing that there was no cream in the kitchen, the chef substituted olive oil for the cream and a new culinary creation was born.  Supposedly the chef named the new sauce “Mahonnaise” in honor of the Duc’s victory.  Besides enjoying a reputation as a skillful military leader, the Duke was also widely known as a bon vivant with the odd habit of inviting his guests to dine in the nude.

Early French immigrant cooks that originally lived in Fort Mahon brought the original recipe to Minnesota.  An old superstition is that a woman should not attempt to make mayonnaise during menstruation time, as the mayonnaise will simply not blend together as well.

Some historians state that Marie Antoine Careme (1784-1833), celebrated French chef and author, proclaimed that mayonnaise was derived from the word magnonaise (magner means “made by hand” or “stir”).  Due to the time period of when Careme was a chef, this theory doesn’t make sense, as he would surely have know the history of the name, had mayonnaise been created as recently as 1756.

The French cities Bayonne and Les Mayons also claim to be the place of birth of mayonnaise.

Les Mayons, capital of Minorque in the Balearic Islands, occupied by English and conquered by the French admiral Louis-Franis-Louis-Franis-Armand of Plessis de Richelieu.  He brought back a local sauce based on lemon juice key and egg yolk, olive oil, raised of a little black pepper and marine salt, garlic or fresh grass.

Bayonne, a resort town on the Aquitaine/Basque coast in southwest France.  It is thought that mayonnaise could be an alteration and corruption of bayonnaise sauce.  Nowdays, bayonnaise refers to a mayonnaise flavored with the Espelette chiles.

The sauce may have remained unnamed until after the Battle of Arques in 1589.  It may then have been christened “Mayennaise” in ‘honor’ of Charles de Lorraine, duc de Mayenne (1554-1611), supposedly because he took the time to finish his meal of chicken with cold sauce before being defeated in battle by Henri IV (1553-1610).

Other historians claim it received its name from the Old French words “moyeunaise” or “moyeu,” meaning, “egg yok.”

1910 – Nina Hellman, a German immigrant from New York City, made a dressing that her husband, Richard Hellman, used on the sandwiches and salads he served in his New York delicatessen.  He started selling the spread in “wooden boats” that were used for weighing butter.  Initially he sold two versions of the recipe, and to differentiate between the two, he put a blue ribbon around one.  In 1912, there was such a great demand for the  “ribbon” version, that Hellmann designed a “Blue Ribbon” label, which he placed on larger glass jars.  He did so well that he started a distribution business, purchased a fleet of trucks, and in 1912 built a manufacturing plant.  Also Best Foods, Inc. in California did the same.  Hellman and Best Foods later merged and account for about 45% of all bottled mayonnaise sole in the United States.

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So, perhaps it’s easy to understand how, since original recipes traveled around with the people to various regions, they were modified, and often fundamentally changed from the origin.

But when the recipe calls for egg, or ANYTHING OTHER than 3 ingredients of 1.) Fresh garlic; 2.) Olive Oil, and; 3.) Salt.. that’s where I tune out, and change channels.

But, there IS at least one website, and two, that accurately gave a fundamental “Aioli 101” overview to their readers, and that is the cooking/recipe website Bon Appétit.

Here’s some, in part, of what Alex Delany wrote in 2018 about aioli in an article entitled “OK, What Is Aioli, Anyway? Is aioli… mayo? Or is it something else entirely? What the heck’s the deal?“:

“Nowadays, the word aioli is pretty much synonymous with mayo, and is often just a simple mayonnaise (store-bought or homemade) that is flavored generously with garlic — a nod to its origins.”

“In some Mediterranean cultures, aioli refers very specifically to a sauce made from olive oil that has been emulsified into mashed garlic, usually with a mortar and pestle — and that’s it. (Well, salt too, natch.) No egg yolk, no acid, just a shit-ton of garlic mashed up with oil to form a fluffy, vampire-repelling emulsion. It’s not that often that you see this hyper-traditional version in restaurants these days, partially because it’s labor intensive and breaks easily. (A “broken” emulsion is one in which the droplets of oil have fallen out of suspension, leaving you with a greasy, separated sauce.)”

As he contrasts mayonnaise and its production process with aioli, he writes that,

“In the case of mayo, oil is emulsified into a mixture of lemon juice or vinegar, mustard, egg yolk, and salt by whisking it in gradually — drop-by-drop at the very beginning — and vigorously. The droplets never truly become one with the mixture, but they become tiny and evenly suspended in the water, creating a creamy, almost fluffy texture.”

Janine Jones writes for the website Webstaurant, and has some good information on aoli, as well, and she too, makes a distinction between the vast majority of imposters, and genuine, authentic aioli.

What is aioli?
Aioli, meaning “garlic oil” in Catalan, is a sauce made by emulsifying mashed garlic with extra virgin olive oil, typically with a mortar and pestle. It originated in Catalonia, Spain and is often used in French cooking, especially in the region of Provence.

The Difference Between Aioli and Mayo
Although aioli and mayonnaise are both creamy emulsions, aioli is made from garlic and olive oil while mayo is made from egg yolks and canola oil. The final result may look similar but the two sauces have distinctly different flavors.

How to Make Aioli
To traditionally make aioli, several cloves of garlic are pounded into a paste in a mortar. Olive oil is then added slowly while the chef constantly stirs and mashes the paste to begin emulsifying the mixture.

Emulsification is the process of combining two ingredients that typically cannot mix, such as oil and water. As the oil is whipped or mashed, the oil particles break down and spread evenly throughout the mixture, resulting in a creamy and blended texture.

What is mayonnaise?
Mayonnaise or mayo is a sauce made by emulsifying egg yolk, canola oil, lemon juice or vinegar, mustard, and salt with a whisk. It is a creamy and spreadable cold condiment, possibly French or Spanish in origin, that is used world wide today.

And so, it is what he describes as the “hyper-traditional version” that you’re about to learn how to make.

But, I do want to emphasize this one point, which is that, depending upon the tool one uses to make aioli (some use a food processor, traditional jug-style blender, or even a mixer), it IS POSSIBLE that the resulting product COULD come out of suspension, but if an IMMERSION BLENDER is used, it’s highly unlikely to do so.

And so… without further ado, here’s how to make

AUTHENTIC, GENUINE AIOLI!

I started out using a mortar & pestle, then, after about an hour, graduated to the immersion blender.

Now, THAT! tool, my friends, is the key!

What’s in aioli?

1.) Fresh garlic;

2.) Extra virgin olive oil, and;

3.) Salt (optional, but recommended).

And that’s ALL!

No egg, ‘cause the original, authentic Italian recipe does NOT have it. The French — god love ‘em — added that item.

And NO, aioli is NOT “garlic mayonnaise.”

It IS an emulsion, however (old school photogs, you’ll know about emulsions), which is simply when two polar opposite items — like oil & water, for example — are combined, unified, and thereby transformed into an entirely NEW substance.

Think of it kinda’ like soap-making:

The saponification process CHANGES lye + oil into something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT & NEW… soap!

Same principle here.

Now… if you have an immersion blender, and have a thing for garlic, you ought’a try your hand at making this.

Next time I make it, it’ll be made entirely with the immersion blender.

I used coarse kosher salt initially, in the mortar & pestle, to give something for the garlic to break up with. Then, after about an hour of pounding, grinding, stirring, etc., as I said, I graduated to the immersion blender.

How much of each ingredient?

Well… let’s just put it this way: One chef said that aioli has “a shit-ton of garlic” in it. And, that’s true — in NO WAY is it garlic shy. It’s GARLIC, baby! And you REALLY gotta’ love garlic to make it… and eat it.

Squeeze extra water out of the garlic. One way to do that is by using a large spoon, filling the ladle, then using your hand to press out excess water. THEN add it to your bowl.

One key is drizzling the oil, that is, adding it little-by-little, not all at once.

And, taste it as you go, to see if you need more/less salt, more/less garlic, and more/less olive oil.

It won’t “come together” immediately, but I assure you that using the immersion blender will save you time, and effort.

Because,

REMEMBER: Tools increase speed, and efficiency… in any endeavor.