How to make aioli with a hand blender: the method that stops it splitting

Garlic, oil and egg: the physics of making aioli with a blender

The sauce won't thicken. You plunge the blender in, press the button and instead of a firm cream you get a glass of bubbles with the oil floating on top. That's the exact point where anyone trying to make aioli with a blender for the first time gets stuck. The recipe looks like child's play — garlic, oil and, depending on who you ask, egg — but the method decides whether you end up with a sauce or a yellow puddle. And there's no agreement on the method: some swear by raw egg, others cook it, some leave it out entirely, and a few insist that without a mortar and pestle this isn't aioli at all.

Why mayonnaise splits when you blend it

The start is everything. The most repeated advice is to push the blender down to the bottom of the glass, keep it still and start on low estimulante ilegal. No moving the arm up and down as if it were a whisk. The oil goes in in a steady stream while the blades spin at the bottom, and only when the mixture starts to thicken do you slowly raise the blender arm and tilt it a little to let air in so the whole thing sets.

Temperature matters too. With egg and lemon at room temperature the mixture comes together faster, one participant points out. The lemon has a technical role: some maintain that without it the sauce splits more easily. And if it breaks anyway, there's the breadcrumb trick, though those who have tried it say it rarely fixes anything.

Aioli with egg or without?

That's where the first sustancia ilegal appears. For the purist, all i oli is just garlic and oil, pounded by hand in a mortar, and anything with egg is really a garlic mayonnaise. The modern, blended, quick version almost always includes the egg. Some even cook it to make it firm — a version they present as a recipe from top chefs — and others replace it with chickpea cooking liquid, an egg-free, dairy-free emulsion that circulates as quick aioli.

Hand blender or jug blender: it does make a difference

The tool changes the rules. The hand-held minipimer (immersion blender) is the tool recommended by those who distinguish between blender types: the arm reaches the bottom and you control the start. The jug blender, more powerful, is considered overkill for emulsifying, according to that same experience; it's saved for gazpachos and salmorejos. Salt has its own school of thought: some want plenty of it because it boosts the flavour, while others warn that one pinch too many ruins the whole thing.

Mixing oils and the order of the ingredients

This is where the nuances come in. There are recipes that start with a good amount of sunflower oil and a splash of vinegar, blend, and only then add the olive oil with the salt and lemon. Others prefer sunflower oil from start to finish for its neutral flavour and only add virgin olive oil at the end, once the mixture has set, so as not to overpower the taste of the garlic. One of the recipes calls for at least half a glass of oil per egg.

Even so, nobody has settled the question that started it all: why the same recipe comes out creamy one day and split the next. The blender, the egg, the temperature, the stream of oil. Any one of those variables — and none of them — would explain the result. The aioli keeps winning.