Easy Caprese Salad Recipe made at home 🥗 MasalaHerb.com (2024)

Caprese Salad is an easy Mediterranean salad prepared with a handful of fresh ingredients.

Make this Italian salad all year round and enjoy for lunch or as an appetizer or make it your own with my flavor options!

Caprese Salad makes me happy, and I can eat it all the time, not just in summer.

My husband was mesmerized by the flavors the moment he was introduced to it.

He describes the tomato mozzarella and basil as a brilliant marriage between ingredients, and the olive oil completes the dish.

Sounds promising, right?

📕 What is Caprese Salad?

Caprese Salad, Insalata Caprese in Italian, means salad from Capri. The island of Capri belongs to Italy.

The salad consists of fresh basil leaves, fresh buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes.

The green white and red ingredients represent the Italian flag in the Caprese Salad.

Green for the basil, White for the buffalo mozzarella and red for the tomato. The textures and flavors make this layered salad so special.

It's served as a dish on its own or as a side dish salad.

🔪 How to make it?

The best homemade caprese salad is easy to make. This is how it's done

Here is an overview, the details are in the recipe card further below.

Step 1

Cut open the mozzarella packet and remove the cheese ball from the brine. Drip off excess water.

Cut the soft mozzarella into slices.

Step 2

Wash your tomato, pat dry and slice.

Rinse off fresh basil leaves to get rid of impurities and pat dry as well.

Step 3

Layer the salad the traditional way by placing a basil leaf to a mozzarella slice and a tomato slice (for the Italian flag). Arrange on a serving platter.

You can also place all ingredients into a salad bowl.

Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and black pepper.

Serve your salad.

🍅 Ingredients

Getting and using the right ingredients for your Caprese salad is crucial!

Mozzarella

Use only fresh buffalo mozzarella, not the processed mozzarella cheese which is used on pizzas and which looks like cheddar.

Soft fresh mozzarella cheese is turned into a ball and then kept in brine.

Soft mozzarella can be stored for a few days in the brine in the fridge. Follow the expiry date.

You can use small mozzarella balls too.

Basil

Use Italian fresh sweet basil for this recipe. That's the most common basic basil in stores.

Don't use Thai Basil or Holy Basil (Tulsi), they taste different.

Young Italian basil leaves are always preferred.

Tomato

Pick red fresh tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes from the farmers market are great for this. I love juicy tomatoes in my caprese salad!

If you intend to use mini fresh mozzarella balls (known as bocconcini), use cherry tomatoes or small grape tomatoes.

You can use orange or green ripe tomatoes varieties too, but then it's just a tomato mozzarella salad.

It's called a caprese salad because the colors of the ingredients represent the Italian flag.

The tomatoes can be room temperature or cooled. Cut the slices of tomatoes not too thin, nor too thick.

Olive Oil

Quality olive oil is the dressing for this salad. Drizzling a bit of olive oil over your caprese salad makes it a proper Italian dish.

Use extra-virgin olive oil with this salad, which can taste a bit spicy. This just adds flavor to your dish.

Seasoning

The seasoning is basic, salt and black pepper, but essential in an Italian caprese salad.

You can use pink Himalayan salt or French sea salt. Try to use only freshly crushed quality black pepper for the best result.

I like fruity black pepper varieties such as Tellycherry.

📜 Variations

You can enhance your salad by adding the following ingredients to it. Italians would call this an adulterated version.

• leafy greens such as lettuce, arugula and baby spinach.
• strawberries {Panera Copycat]
• other fruits such as peach and watermelon
• chicken cooked such as leftover rotisserie chicken
• avocado

For the dressing, you can also sprinkle balsamic vinegar, a balsamic glaze reduction over the salad or enjoy it with basil pesto.

Another idea is to use burrata instead of a mozzarella ball in this caprese salad recipe.

💭 FAQs

👁️ More international salads:

• Caprese Pasta Salad
• Greek Salad
• German Cucumber Salad
• Mexican Salad with Corn and Black Beans
• Mediterranean Salad by unicornsinthekitchen.com

📖 Recipe